It has been ten whole days since Linda's chest tube was pulled out, she was given a narcotic overdose, her heart stopped and it took 90 minutes to resuscitate her. She is still on the ventilator, and she has yet to wake up. When I asked the attending liver doctor today when he thought she might come out of the coma, his response was "I don't know what a coma is." I guess they are in complete denial regarding what they did to her! I asked him to explain why she won't wake up if she is not in a coma, and he told me that he thought she was still under the influence of narcotics which haven't cleared her system because of the reduced kidney function. That theory is the basis of his treatment plan for her, he said. He expects her to waken when the drugs are finally cleared by her kidneys.
I asked him when the last time was that a blood or urine test was done to see if there are still narcotics in her system, and he told me they aren't testing for that. He says he has practiced medicine for many years and there is no need for such a test. I responded that police, employers, parole officers and others routinely test folks who have to "pee in a cup" for job reasons or otherwise for about $20 per test, and I didn't understand how he could base his whole treatment plan for Linda on the assumption she still has narcotics in her system when it is so easy to test that assumption. He stomped out of the room in a huff. It was only ten or fifteen minutes after he left that the student nurse told me he had written an order for a drug screen on Linda's urine. Yikes!
The doctors either say "I wasn't there and I don't know what happened," when I ask them about the narcotic overdose, or they deny any overdose occurred. I know what I saw. I saw the nurse injecting Dilaudid directly into Linda's central line catheter, and within three seconds I saw Linda's face turn blue and the doctor call for the resuscitation team. I don't believe that was a coincidence.
In any event, Linda now has a bed sore on her bottom by the tip of her coccyx, and another one on her right ear. Wednesday the nursing staff brought in a team of 7 people to put a ballistic nylon hammock under Linda, hoist her off her bed on a huge power lift, roll away her ICU bed and push in a special bed with air powered sand flowing underneath her legs, hips and torso constantly to help prevent further decubitus ulcers from developing. The pair of physical therapists with the ultrasound mist treatment for the sore on her bottom also came back this afternoon, and will return every day for the next for days to see if that treatment will heal the sore.
The doctors say they no longer expect to have to put Linda back on dialysis. They are still dithering and blithering back and forth about the possible need for a feeding tube into her intestine, and a tracheotomy to get her off the ventilator before her vocal cords are eroded by the endotracheal tube. I guess we'll have to revisit those issues Monday if she still has not awakened from her coma.
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