Day 429 - Combative & Incompetent Home Health Nursing

Friday, March 4th, 2022

We started off the morning with physical therapy at 8am, when that was over Mom started getting James down for his morning nap. Mom looked at the online portal and saw the results had come in for the bloodwork. James numbers all looked great, all within range, even on the higher end. Mom let the nurse know the numbers looked great and that we would be hearing from the Doctor soon.

Mom reminded the nurse not to give him the Sodium Chloride, but then out of nowhere the nurse blew a gasket! 😤 She just went off about how she was going to give him the med because there was not an order to "discontinue". There may be a language barrier here because Mom already explained that "holding" is "refraining from" for a period of time and that we would hear from the Doctor on whether or not we would start again. She did not understand the order and instead got really rude with Mom repeatedly saying her name in a condescending tone. Mom let her know that it's pretty common sense to hold a med when a Doctor said "do not give for a week and then get labs". After that she threatened Mom to call the Doctor to get an update or she would call. Yes, Mom was able to see the lab results in the online portal, but the Doctor let us know weeks ago to not call just because we see the results. They were very clear that we were to wait for them to call us after they had reviewed. Mom was in the middle of getting James down for a nap, suctioning, changing his diaper, but this nurse wouldn't even let Mom finish.

Mom called the Doctor's office from another room and explained that the nurse from the staffing agency was forcing Mom to call about the lab reults that just came in. Then she walked back into the room with the nurse put them on speaker phone so the nurse could hear the order to "stop the Sodium Chloride". 

Mom then was about to reconnect his feeding bag (which we always disconnect during PT) and she says, "You can't reconnect. I already put the Sodium Chloride in there". She kept calling Mom by her name, which she had never done before, very patronizing. So the nurse gave James his Sodium Chloride even though Mom just went over this on Wednesday. Even though we just got labs yesterday to check on this. Even though Mom told her today that the lab results showed on the higher end. This was another full bag of formula that we had to toss again! She blamed the other nurse that he only have on Tuesdays for not writing up an order.  Never ownership for anything. The rest of the day was horrible in dealing with her.

What's ironic is that a few weeks ago, we had a similar situation where Mom had told the nurse that the labs were high and she decided to stop the Sodium Chloride all on her own without waiting for the Doctor's order. Now all of a sudden she can't make a common sense decision and is putting her stubbornness before the safety of the patient. 

Soooo Mom is at a breaking point with our nurse. The ONLY reason we have them is for going to appointments. Overall Mom has been handling the ineptitude for 5 months (by doing everything). But we will not tolerate them being rude and condescending on top of that. Not in our own home. It seems pretty backwards but it's impossible to find any Home Health nursing that is competent. So we've been settling for them just washing syringes. 

It's turning out that for having nursing the Cons are far outweighing the Pros.

Never wake a sleeping baby.

Can't move.

P.S. Do you follow James' journey? James would love to read an email from you. His email is JamesWestonAbramowitz@gmail.com. How heartwarming for him to receive these and fun for you to get a response from him in like 10 years...