THE TRIALS AT ST TIMMY'S 16 ================================================================= THE TRIALS AT ST TIMMY'S -- The Continued Saga of Paul Ess's Rehabilitation ================================================================= Last night I had the dumbest CNA in the world put me to bed. I almost always request the bed pan upon becoming flat on my back because this is when I will finally let go, without much control, of all the gas which has accumulated in my gut over the day. Usually this stentorian blast will bring along with it the main of my buildup of groganpaste[tm]. If I don't get all the paste out at this time, I am likely to have wet farts all night long and be a mess by morning. Shitting with your poopchute at the horizontal is grossly inefficient. Usually when they come take the pan away they do not exhibit the contents. Now, I'm mildly interested in my output. I was always one to look behind me upon arising from the porcelain throne. This one sat the uncovered pan on the floor while she ministered unto my profuse need for cleanup. We'll let it go that she about scoured me shitless, literally, to the accompaniment of unheeded cussing and squeaks of pain. I looked in the pan below me. Children, the muck was most impressive. CNA then proceeded to take the quite-full bed pan to the toilet between our room and the groaners next door. She washed out the bed pan using our sink in which we shave and wash our face. She wiped it out with paper towels and threw the used towels and the muck into the toilet. So far so good, but then the toilet wouldn't swallow. It doesn't like paper towels. Why she didn't take this generous offering across the hall and blast it loose with the hydraulic powers invested in the Hooper, I do not understand. The occupational therapist came to see me and said she found out The ERR used up all my Cruel Cross allowances for physical and occupational therapies for the whole year 1996. They managed to do that in five months. NOW do you believe me that this rest home scam is what I tell you it is? That was 50 visits and they are all gone. Most of the visits amounted to having a semi- skilled employee drag my butt to the Torture Chamber and hand me the exercise equipment. I could have done most of this without any help. Now the California taxpayers are going to foot it for what I need and didn't get. I'll have an evaluation -- to see where I am "at" and six visits to be billed to MediCal. At the conclusion of this course I should be getting in and out of bed on my own, shitting in a regular pot, and able to go places by car -- all with minimal assistance, like if I get into trouble with the sequence of steps. I hope the car thing is handled by the end of the month cuz I want to go bye-bye with some a.t.ers. Rochelle and I are butting heads. I let her read some of the earlier ERR rants. She thinks they are funny. Her brother thinks they are funny. Her friends even think they are funny. She hasn't told me that I protrayed the situation as other than it is. That is, I didn't exaggerate nor tell lies. After all, she's been in the CNA business for a good while and has seen everything -- you can just tell -- except a mad amputee who's terminally pissed off and vows to write a book. She asked if I mentioned her in any of the writings. I admitted I had. She is the one who got Godammit Lady ready for the family to take away. She and I have finally come to terms and we agree that we each are bullheaded and have a 'tude on. We are both strong personalities and we are wary of each other. Neither of us sees him/herself as the world sees us. When we are told the effect we have, we find it strange and a bit disconcerting. I think Rochelle has magnificent potential as a sister in the tasteless fraternity, but I don't think she can put her reserve aside and just do it. I've been there; I understand that. It takes a piss-poor bringing-up or real study and effort to become tasteless and a conaisseur of ironic bawdiness without being just plain crude. There is no more ironic place than a hospital or tardfarm[tm]. Social Dining is getting too crowded. Only when I threatened to go elsewhere did they lower that silly table from chin height down to something moderate. Both tables are now seating five. This is capacity because we are knocking elbows. I still want my food left on the tray as does George because we don't want our slop handled by everybody on the planet. Breaded pork chop was the entree. We had bacon for breakfast. This is too much pork. I really crave rice, beans, and cereals. If I'm going to eat meat, I want it unseasoned and unsauced and to pour ketchup on it. They make a big fuss around here about cholesterol, yet here we are with all this pork and dark turkey meat. I prefer unadorned hamburger to nearly anything else off the haunch of a dead animal. But beef isn't the cheapest thing right now. Once again, money beats out real health concerns and aesthetics. Fuck it. There was quite a commotion in the hall this afternoon. Mr Salazar from The ERR is down the hall and hasn't shut up since he got here. He is farther away from me than he was over at the other place, but he is not far enough away... To help with his terrible bed sores which Mrs Salazar said they did nothing about at the other tardfarm[tm], they brought in a $30,000 electric bed which looks like a bathtub on wheels. It's filled with 1200 pounds of tiny glass beads. A compressor constantly blows thermostatically controlled air through the beads, keeping them constantly in slight motion. The physics of the situation are that the pressure exerted on human flesh by lying on this contraption is less than the compression necessary to close surface capillaries. The old boy can lie there on this thing, soothed with warm air, and supposedly heal up now. They claim that people in pain calm down quite a bit after being put on one of these beds. Gee, the place will save money on useless Tylenol and will have even less excuse to dose out the good stuff like codeine and morphine. So far the magical properties of the bed have not materialized. Salazar was bellowing damn near all night long. This is not pain bellowing; this is senile bellowing. His old lady should get real. The old bastard has the human equivalent of Mad Cow Disease. Scuttlebut is that staff like to take naps on vacant beds of this type. They often sleep so soundly that a honcho discovers their transgression with embarrassing, uh, complications. Here is the really tasteless bit for today. I got a letter from The ERR. It turned out to be a letter of request to them from a state bureau wanting information about me from my medical records at The ERR. Why The ERR sent this letter to me is beyond understanding. So I sent it back to them together with a copy of the letter to the agency saying I was returning the letter to its addressee, and would the agency let me know if the addressee does not comply with this perfectly legitimate info request within a reasonable length of time. I guess the assholes over there can't even read, I dunno. And it gets better. Here comes another letter from The ERR. It's over the signature of Dragon Lady, no less. "Dear Patient: Recently you were a patient at The ERR. You have been selected from a random sample of patients to take part in a survey that will help us to evaluate the services provided by The ERR. "The survey is brief -- it should take approximately 10 minutes to complete. Your opinions will help is to better meet the needs of future patients and their families, and to ensure that The ERR's patients continue to receive the highest quality of care. "Please mail the survey back in the enclosed postage-paid envelope. [Damn. I wish the mail had arrived all at once; I could've mailed the state crap back to them on their dime.] "Thank you very much for your participation. If you have questions or comments about this survey, please call me at your convenience. 000-000-0000. Sincerely, [Dragon Lady] R.N. Administrator" Gee. Howcome no "MBA" like on her cards? Did they pull her yuppie credentials? --Repossess her Lexus? Here goes-- Please rate your overall satisfaction with The ERR's admission process. [They dragged my ass out of the ambulance on a gurney, down the hill out front, into the front door, into the room, and transfer-sheeted my ass into the bed. Then two funny-looking women came in with a clipboard and looked at every square inch of mah bhoddy, muttered, and scribbled on the clipboard. Rating: Sucky.] Please rate The ERR for the planning of your care, or your family member's care. [I had little idea what was going on until I asked questions. Very often I had no idea what questions to ask. You dragged out my care as long as you could get away with and you didn't finish what you started. And I think you knew fully well that you wouldn't be able to do your rehabilitative job because you knew you lacked the facilities to do so. Rating: You suck shit through a cat catheter.] How do you rate the care you received from The ERR's staff physician, Dr Sawbones? [He loves to tell people what he is going to do to them. If it involves IV needles, he's in seventh heaven. Otherwise he won't even say Good Morning. Rating: Some people give the impression that, when they enter the room, someone just left.] Were your pain needs met to your satisfaction? [Not applicable in my case, but I heard plenty of screaming by people who were in severe pain. I have discounted complainers and hypochondriacs as such. I heard real agony expressed and, for whatever reason, they got no adequate relief.] How would you rate the care you received from the nurses? [Better than at this place. They answered calls a lot faster there. But you employ La Diosa (The Goddess) who stands around and primps and who finds somebody else to clean asses, not to mention two others who are the laziest human beings I have seen in my life. Here they may take a while to get to you but they just dig right into that ole groganpaste.] Were you or family members informed about the purposes and goals of physical therapy, occupational therapy, and speech therapy? Were these goals reached to your satisfaction? [By "goals" do you mean "claims"? Realized?! Don't get me started!] Were social work services excellent, average, poor? [Well, you lost my applications for the dole at least once. It is unclear whether you or some bureaucrat lost them two other times. You suck.] Did the food taste good? [Are you kidding?!] Please rate your satisfaction with food services. [What food?] Did everything in your room work properly? [Sometimes things did after I bitched enough. After I'd been there six months you decided I could have a string on my overhead lamp. You never did fix the gaposis of my closet door. My room was cold enough to hang meat.] Please rate housekeeping. [The place was kept excellently clean, but did this mean you had to use the noisiest vacuum cleaners on the planet and do it at six o'clock in the morning? Rest homes have a reputation for smelling like pee. This one never did. Sometimes it smelled like shit tho.] Were you or your family given adequate assistance with discharge planning? [You kept me in your hommmmme until my insurance quit paying. Then you sent bills to my best friend who ignored them because he isn't up for paying my debts. You didn't tell me you did that nor did you tell me you alleged that I owed you money. When it suited you to tell me, you did so using the information as a weapon and retaliation. You finally got half of what you allege I owe you, and you got it at taxpayer expense. Since your aim was to exhaust my insurance and then get rid of me, you could have done your scam a bit more carefully than that. But you didn't and so you will have to settle for half price which is about what your services were worth. You're perfectly free to find a palsy-walsy judge-friend to drop a judgement on me. You won't get anything even when I am dead. I have nothing more for you to take. In your favor I have to say that you dragged my ass around the East Bay at your expense so I could look at places your ethnicly-similar friends run or are associated with in hope of placing me in one of their joints. Most of these places were incapable of dealing with my needs or took one look at me and found me not to their taste. You people spend a lot of your time bullshitting each other and you compound the bullshit by involving innocent parties. Finally you foisted me off on another tardfarm[tm] similar to yours. Thanks to the way you dragged your feet and misrepresented your capabilities, I am no farther along now than I was nine months ago. Discharge planning, indeed! You discharge people like a hungry spider discharges its dried-up shell of prey.] Was your family or caregivers given all the information they needed for your recovery at home? [You sent half bogus information along with me to the new tardfarm[tm] which has caused me problems here because these people don't listen to the patient (who is the reason you are collecting any moolah at all) any better than you did.] How would you rate the care you received at The ERR? [There aren't enough different cusswords and not time enough in the world nor paper and ink enough to set them all down.] If you needed care again, would you return to The ERR? [No.] Would you recommend The ERR to others? [No. It's not good enough for my friends and it's too lame for my enemies.] =================================================================