LopLover- that?s interesting about the port! Thank you for sharing I?ve never heard of it i will wait on a doctor to ask. I?m not fond of the cutting open idea myself but if it works! Lol. What was your experience with pneumonia? How long did it last? And wow you are lucky to get people to listen, I?ve gotten maybe 3 nice nurses altogether that will even talk to me, out of 10 here so far plus the aides who can?t be bothered they stand outside the room discussing how & why they might buy the iPhoneX instead of answering my help calls to tend to another swelling. A head nurse came in just to insist i keep in in my hand it?s like I?m invisible at this point. And I?m an ex- iv user but it?s obvious they see the track marks, and i hear them laughing about the ink too. All around sucks
To answer your questions, they said they did a port on me because my veins were so bad, and they didn't want to keep sticking me. I was in varying degrees of consciousness, and don't remember them putting it in, so it might have been done while I was unconscious. My pneumonia was a bad one! I already had COPD/emphysema and sleep on oxygen, but then I didn't have to use it any other time. When I called the ambulance at 3 in the morning, I could not breathe, even on oxygen. I had a viral infection and a bacterial infection in both lungs. They didn't expect me to live, especially after I refused intubation. I have a horror of being kept alive on machines, and I know that's always a possibility with a trach tube. Plus I'm already terminal-ish with cirrhosis of the liver, so I've been a No Code for a long time. I was barely conscious when I heard the doctor say they were going to put a tube down my throat and I sat straight up and told him, no you're not. We had a conversation, and at the end he said, I believe you're in your right mind and you have the right to refuse medical treatment. I told him if they could save me with a BiPap (external mask with oxygen at a high flow) then OK, but no ventilator. So they stabilized me, put a bunch of drugs and antibiotics in the IV and sent me to the ICU. I've never been sick like that before or since. They did all kinds of different breathing treatments, nebulizers, inhalers, etc. I had a full-face mask for the first about 5 days.
I think the reason some of the nurses treated me OK was because I know a few people who work at the hospital--it's a small town. Also, I always had someone with me. My best friend lived across the street and she was there all the time, plus I'm related to a lot of people here, who don't come visit me when I'm not in the hospital but came to see me there. Yeah, a lot of hospital people really suck, but our local hospital really does try to treat people well. I've been in a hospital where I was treated worse than I'd treat a dog, up in Seattle and in Boise. But I can't bitch about this one. Plus they have seriously amazing food! I think the fact that I had another person in my room who I could send out to get them if they didn't show up made all the difference--most hospitals are a little scared to treat you too bad if you've got a witness. After that illness, though, which was about 3 years ago, I've been completely dependent on oxygen to live, 24/7, and it's really affected my quality of life. I have a portable concentrator, so I can go places, but I can't walk more than about ten feet without a walker. I did quit smoking, though!
Any other questions, just ask. Hope you get treated better--if you have a friend or relative that can come down and just be there with you, they'll shape up and treat you like a human being. One thing they are really, really afraid of is being sued, and what it sounds like they are doing trying to stick you over and over is not acceptable medical practice. I asked a nurse where I was what they did in that event, and she said they had a two-stick rule. If someone tried twice and couldn't get a vein after two tries, they'd get someone better, and if that didn't work, they'd do like they did to me and put in a port so they didn't have to keep trying and they didn't have to worry about the IV infiltrating. I've had that happen before, and it sucks!
