A colleague called me today from home after being off work for several weeks due to a back injury. He wanted to thank me for a basket of cookies I sent for his recovery, and we started discussing medical treatment and work, which brought us to our present economy. As of now, he’s on some pretty strong and addictive medication that he feels is debilitating his healing. I told him about a different pain medication and suggested he consult his doctor about it. Last year, my mother was hospitalized and in therapy for many months for a staph infection. Her doctors weren’t sure she would survive, but she did. During those tough months, I learned many things about the medical field. First and foremost, you need advocates who will challenge the doctors and follow your progress. I learned about my mother’s diagnosis/prognosis, her medication, and my sister, aunt and I stepped in when we felt another form of treatment should be implemented. It helped to have a sister who is in the medical field explain things in layman’s terms.My colleague thanked me for the advice and then said he was nervous about his position in the company hoping they won’t take it away. I thought how sad it is for him to have to worry about losing his place in the company, but the fact is, he could, anyone could. We talked about job instability and how companies are no longer faithful to their employees. Lehman Brother’s bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch buyout and the unsteady AIG Corporation is only adding to our country’s uneasiness regarding what the future holds for us. It’s hard to understand how an established 108-year old company can get swallowed up by a few years of a bad economy. I believe the greed of upper management in corporations is partly responsible for these company's demise. With the lack of job security, government not intervening over gas prices, along with other issues, we will have more homeless people than those with homes and crime will continue to rise. Our government can step in and close down places for price gouging in the aftermath of Hurricane Ike, yet they can’t do anything about the price of gas or oil?
We ended the conversation wishing each other well, and I hoped to see him soon, yet our topics of discussion left me sad. I wish the best for every one out there, and I’m crossing my fingers that our next President will turn this whole thing around.
Hi Bea,
ReplyDeleteI learned of your blog last December and I was catching up on some of your older writings and wanted to share a story about staff infection. Glad your mother came through it OK. As you know some people can’t be cured in time and die.
My wife also had a staff infection about three years ago. Don’t know where it came from as Doctors asked her where she got. Ironic, but we were told you usually get it in the hospital and she was not. Anyway she was in Orlando two months prior with family and they all got sick. She was the only one to later get the infection. Maybe it happened there. It started with chest pains and we went to the ER. After several tests that showed nothing wrong they were about to send her home. Thank God at that moment an RN said lets do a culture to check for infection and they found it. Boy what if they just sent us home. You’re right Doctors need to be challenged.
She too was in the hospital for several weeks. After that she also had home treatment of antibiotics for six months. Unfortunately they had to be given daily as IVs and there were also daily injections of a blood thinner. Under our insurance coverage home health care only came twice a week and I was assigned the duty of being a male nurse for the other days. Home health care trained me, but gosh I could never get the shots right. I just hate shots for myself or worse to give them. (:
I had a great employer who pretty much allowed me to work from home and have shorter hours at my work site. A co-worker was kind enough to drop off my computer with network access and documents so I could do this.
Things turned out well. When it was over I asked my employer if I could continue to my work arrangement. LOL! Of course no way.