Moving rooms -- again???

I'll fill in the detail here later - but we are back in our original room after I let the staff have an earful. A polite earful. But an earful.

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Okay, so I'm back - and actually, we moved again. Back to our original room!!!

Now, I understand some moving around, and it's been long enough that I've cooled down a bit and am allowing that a couple of the moves couldn't have been avoided.

We were first moved because Antonia needed to watch two patients - and they need to be adjacent for her to do that safely. So we moved to the negative pressure isolation room. Yay! More space! Better windows! And then, ugh - it's hot. And you already know about being unable to fix the air from Sara's blog.

So we are moved to a room 25 feet from the original. It's a small room, but we get everything set up fine -- and it has air! Yay! And good windows! (It is small, but we're pretty efficient with the layout since this is our 3rd try.) And we're doing great. Then, in the morning after both of us get a nice snooze going -- moving again!!!

This was across the hall, 25 feet, back to our original room. I flipped. (Politely.) I wanted to know what possible reasons could we have for moving an ICU patient to her fourth room in less than 48 hours!! I was told the room we were in had to be a Peds room - all of them over there were Peds. I was told that the nurses needed to be able to cover for each other, and that across the hall was too far. At one point, the charge nurse even (I think) tried to make me feel guilty for asking by mentioning that the small child in the room next to us would be in danger because of the nurse arrangements. While I would never wish to endanger a child, when you're at a one-to-one nurse-to-patient ratio... Whatever. It's just been part of the repeated frustration working with a brand new hospital that doesn't have all the kinks worked out.

Like I said, I've cooled down. I still think it's ridiculous to move this many times. And I still think it's bad planning to move us to a Peds room if that was a known requirement. But if something else happens and we need to move to another ICU room... I'll still flip again.

Moving in ICU... twice

So I mentioned the issues with moving rooms on Sara's blog - it's amazing the issues that are still being worked out in this brand new hospital. Though I guess it's not really that surprising when you bring a whole building up in a week, and have everyone using all the things that hadn't been used before. It's really like releasing software as Generally Available, and using all your first adopters as beta testers.

So we were moved in the first place for a good reason - Antonia, the night nurse from last night that we liked, had another patient as well, so we were moved to the adjacent room. That it was a large isolation negative pressure room seemed an added bonus. But as soon as we were in the room we realized it was hot. So we ended up propping the door to the room to get some air flow in from the hallway -- but that means the alarm for the negative pressure seal was beeping constantly. And both at the room, and at the nurse's station! So we dealt with the incessant beeping for 8 hours! But I'm getting ahead of myself.

In order to change the temp on a room, you need to log in to the facilities management website and go through a four page form with a number of drop down boxes selecting different items (and they better be the right items or your ticket gets delayed). I'm familiar with this from work for IT support, and it's a pain. Add that the staff has never used it, and this form becomes something that takes two people 15 minutes to fill out. Then you get no feedback if the ticket has been handled, so who knows when the person downstairs was able to see you needed it adjusted and make the change in the computer. After an hour with no change, we asked what the status was, and if they could check on the work order. I don't think they really knew how to do that, so we got vague answers. After another hour I told the nurses that I was willing to get on the phone and keep calling people until someone came and fixed it. They pushed me off a bit and said they'd follow up.

After another hour, the charge nurse was brought into the equation and I repeated my offer to her. She preferred to call the nursing supervisor to see if he had any pull, and about an hour after that, we finally saw the first facilities person. He actually mentioned that he had changed the temp in the computer, but apparently it wasn't changing here. Uhhh... yeah. So he utilized a pretty high tech device to see if there was air coming from the vent. An extensible alligator clip with a piece of toilet paper gripped by the alligator. Sure enough, no TP movement. So after a couple of hours of him fiddling, we see an additional 3 facilities guys start going through the ceiling in the hallway, checking our vents, the control panels, and so on. All four people working weren't able to get the thing fixed, so we moved.

But the comedy doesn't stop there! While they were unresponsive to our work order, we were given a cooling blanket for Sara. It's a flexible blanket, with channels for water to run through in one direction. It's connected to a portable compressor that circulates water through the blanket, and while in the compressor, cools it to the temperature you specify. They actually work really well - when you connect the blanket to the compressor correctly, and make sure the tubes are locked. When you don't take that step, you typically end up with a little water feature in your room as the water is pumped out (quite quickly) from the tube that has been forced free of its bonds!

So, after cleaning up the spill, the compressor didn't have enough water in it to work correctly, but we didn't determine this for about 30 minutes. Finding water to replace it took a while as the assistant didn't know where to get any distilled water. Finally Antonia just grabbed a bottle of sterile water (even better than distilled, right?) and poured it in. Voila! After I notched down the temp of the water 30 degrees from its original setting, Sara was finally cooled. It did nothing for those of us in gowns and masks, but we had the freedom to actually leave the room if we needed a breather.

It was a fun evening.

Updates are a bit slower on this side...

All, I've been trying to make sure that Sara's blog is updated regularly, cuz I know that's where most people are going to be checking. So, I haven't had much chance between all the activity here and updating her blog to do much on mine. After some of the cavalry arrives tonight, I may be able to get more of these out!

Thanks all for all the support and love - it definitely helps!!!

Getting to UCLA

(I'm going to be going into more detail on this blog compared to Sara's. Just want to make sure you know what you're getting yourself into if you choose to continue to read... ;)

So we got the call just before 9 pm last night, and didn't really make it to UCLA until almost 3 am - so it took us almost six hours to make the trip - quite different from last time. It wasn't as quite a smooth journey this time, and so it made it a bit more stressful.

We called Medflight and the dispatch handled it fine - they estimated that it would take an hour for the flight team to get activated and about an hour more for them to make the flight to Phoenix. A 1.5 hour flight to LA would add up to a roughly 3.5 to 4 hour total time, getting us in by 1 am. Since the tx coordinator said we needed to be there by 3 am at the latest, this was all good.

However, 1.5 hours later, we still hadn't received the word that the plane was in the air and on the way. I called them back, and there had been issues with the flight plans - something about them not being received and having to re-enter them. But you can't fly without 'em, so it delayed the initial takeoff. They still arrived in Phoenix by midnight, so we thought that we'd at least be in Santa Monica by 1:30, and at the hospital by 2.

However, we found that the flight plan for this leg also had issues, and had to be re-filed. So we didn't leave Phoenix until 12:30 and learned that Santa Monica had been fogged in. Sooo... heading to Van Nuys instead. So we did land right at 2 am, and the ambulance hauled ass and went Code 3 (lights and sirens) to get us there as fast as possible (which was pretty cool)! The driver was really good and the medics took good care of us.

So we're at the hospital by 2:30 and Sara goes straight to Radiology for a chest xray while a medic and I go back and get all our bags. We are in the brand-spanking-still-has-the-bubble-wrap-new hospital at UCLA - so no one knows where all the rooms are nor how to get us to where we need to go. So, after a couple wrong turns, we do end up at the right floor. Where we learn they expected us at 1 am, and have already missed the OR that was scheduled at 3 am for her.

(continued...)

S.O.B. Sauce!

I frequented a little sandwich shop in East Lansing long ago (and I'm embarrased to admit that I can't remember the name at the moment...) (Update: Hobies!!! I remembered!!!) but it had a sandwich with the best sauce - I finally found the recipe that the owner gave me!

South of the Border Sauce

• 1 qt french dressing
• 1 oz black pepper
• 2 oz garlic
• 2 oz cayenne pepper
• 1 oz ground cumin
• 1.5 oz Tabasco sauce

Mix well! Try this on your next masterpiece! Now I just have to find the name of that shop...