ONE MINUTE YOU ARE FINE...

This past Saturday Pat and I went to breakfast, came home and were ensconced in our recliners (no-not the new ones yet). Pat got up and found he couldn't put any weight on his leg. His knee was swollen and painful. By 3pm we were on our way to the hospital. We have a local hospital but I had heard so many people say "I wouldn't take my DOG to that place" - so we went to one 30 minutes from here that gets rave reviews from people I talk to at the thrift store. Pat hobbled in and filled out the usual forms, gave the lady his Tricare insurance card - and was checked into the ER.
Following this event was a chain of doctors, one of whom could not speak English well enough to be understood. We learned that in large sized hospitals today they have doctors who are called "hospitalists". They are paid by the hospital and evidently are money-making machines. When the ER doctors learned of Pats coumadin use and his past blood clots they honed in on that and ignored his knee and a rash which popped up on Sunday and was diagnosed yesterday as shingles. The hospitalists would come into his room, look at his knee, and say such erudite things as "Yep, that sure is swollen". They hung heparin drips, they injected Lovenox into his stomach. They woke him every two hours at night. AND THEN.....the business office opened on Monday and informed him they were NOT a Tricare hospital and basically gave him the bums rush! So to condense the facts - he went in on Saturday with a knee so swollen he couldn't walk - and he left with a knee so swollen he couldn't walk! Tomorrow we will head to a orthopedist to hopefully drain the blood from his knee which should relieve him of some of the pain. But we have learned a lesson which we long suspected....stay away from hospitals. They are bad for your health!