IEEE Consultants' Network of Long Island

Fourth Heart Attack, Part 7 - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

My surgeon wanted me to be transferred when I was ready, from that second hospital to a rehabilitation (rehab) facility before being sent home. On Tuesday, June 25th, I was transferred. At 5 AM on Wednesday, June 26th, I telephoned my doctor's office and left a message that I could not abide that place and that I absolutely MUST be sent home at once.

That evening of June 26th, there I was at home in my dining room with my wife and with everything I could possibly ask for at hand but with the thought of what another night in that rehab facility would have been like generating substantial upset.

It was a glimpse of PTSD.

There were two beds in the rehab room, but the other man there was quite out of it. There was a four foot long fluorescent light fixture above the head of my bed which had four settings of off, low, medium and high although the light levels of low and medium were the same.

When I turned that light off, the room went totally black. There couldn't have been a stray photon there. Since I had to get up now and then, total darkness in the presence of unknown objects and obstacles struck me as unsafe so that light needed to remain on.

Across the room from the foot of my bed was a television screen from which the fluorescent light reflected directly back at me. During the passage of the night, I couldn't shut out that reflective glare which gave me one nasty headache.

There was an HVAC unit that was vey noisy, especially with low frequency rumbling. As I tried to get some sleep during the night, I repeatedly woke up shivering with cold or else panting for breath in the heat.

I got up and looked at the HVAC controls and as I rotated the temperature setting knob, I could hear the compressor start or stop. The problem seemed to be that whichever side of that threshold the setting was at, the compressor stayed there way, way too long which was resulting in extreme swings of temperature.

I went along with some prescribed occupational therapy after breakfast that morning and things went well. Although I insisted on leaving and did indeed do so, perhaps to my long term recovery's detriment, the rehab environment I'd been through at night was too horrid to let be repeated.

 

 

Fourth Heart Attack, Part 6 - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

This matter came up later as I was being discharged to go home, I'm not sure if from the second hospital or from the rehabilitation facility (a topic to come), but it too was a communication issue.

The list of medications, their usage schedule and in one case their conditional usage instruction came embedded in the fine print list on the left. To me, it was quite difficult to interpret.

The SIG, as I find on line, is shorthand for the Latin, signetur, or "let it be labeled". What that means to the patient is "Here's how and when you are to take this medicine.", in short, the usage directions. Should I have been able to see that? Yes. In my befuddled state, did I see that? No.

Judy unraveled this mess for me and then I organized a small spreadsheet to help me reliably follow the doctor's instructions.

Here again, why this can't have been presented plainly and clearly lies beyond my comprehension.

Fourth Heart Attack, Part 5 - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

This suction tube device was in use at that second hospital. It is called a "Yankauer" and its purpose was to rapidly remove the nasty stuff that was coming up from my innards. It worked.

"Yankauer" is a trade name, but it is also the word that nursing staff used as a noun in referring to it. It is furthermore a word which I did not know, a word of which I had never heard and a word of which I had at first absolutely no idea of what it meant.

Amidst all of the bedsheets, things would often get lost. Picture trying to find the "call" button when I needed help. This thing would get lost in the cloth too and not knowing the y-word, when I asked for help to find the "suction tube", many of the nursing staff had no idea what I meant.

Once I learned the noun, communications issues were resolved, but how this could have been a problem in the first place is beyond my comprehemsion.

Fourth Heart Attack, Part 4 - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

The tem "hospital food" is an almost universal cliché for something unpalatable. This concept has long been the stuff of cliché comedy.

However, when we get into the realm of disgusting, revolting, repellent, repulsive, sickening, nauseating, nauseous, stomach-churning, stomach-turning, off-putting, unpalatable, unappetizing, uninviting, unsavory, distasteful, foul, nasty, obnoxious, odious and vomitous, we leave the realm of comedy and enter into a topic of medical importance.

The food that I encountered at the second hospital would in my opinion be worthy of every one of the above adjectives. Supposedly "steamed" broccoli florets came coated with some kind of dreadful sauce that made them inedible. A "green bean medley" was so foul tasting that I thought the beans must have somehow rotted before being cooked.

As bad as that was, the meat in one dinner of sliced turkey and the meat in a different dinner of sliced beef were so extremely salty that neither one of them was edible. I ate no dinner at all those two times which cannot have been a good thing for my health while I was trying to recover from surgery.

I asked one doctor about this. I'd had it made clear that sodium intake was of medical concern for me. Why then was there so much salt in those two meals? Wouldn't that corrupt attempts to achieve my medical goals?

The appalling reply was that the doctor had no control over the food service. The same question put to a nurse practitioner and to various nursing staff always elicited the same response.

I've been hospitalized several times in recent years at other institutions where the food service was quite good. I do NOT accept the cheap cliché that what was happening this time was in any way par for the course.

I do not know what the remedy for this might be, but I hope someone finds that remedy soon.

Fourth Heart Attack, Part 3 - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

HVAC in the second hospital is air ducted. Airflow out of any vent is of extremely low humidity, even in the Long Island summer. My bed was positioned in the hospital room between a hanging curtain and a vent grid located just above the room's window to the outdoors. With that set-up, the airflow around my hospital bed was as follows.

One could see that with the hanging curtain drawn, the fabric of that curtain was billowed out toward me by pressure from air coming in from the direction of the room's doorway to the hall. The curtain blocked that pressure pretty much completely.

However, when that curtain got left open, I got into some very serious trouble.

As I lay in the hospital bed with the curtain open, I could feel a strong flow of air coming down directly on top of me. Not realizing that there was any danger, I fell asleep face up and with my mouth wide open.

The result was sheer horror.

I awoke with a stabbing pain in the back of my throat. I spat out gobs of the most horrible blood carrying goo. In only a few minutes, the downward flow of low humidity air had desiccated the back of my throat to the point of tissue injury.

After getting the pain down to a manageable level by rinsing my throat with a lot of water, I let nursing staff know I wanted to talk to a supervisor. A hospital representative whom I will refer to as "H-Rep" came and a discussion began which I will try to summarize as follows.

The H-Rep response was silence.

Later that day, I was looked in on by a surgeon, a colleague of the surgeon who had operated on me. He asked me how things were going and I told him of the above incident. His reaction was to become enraged with me!

How could I say such things? He had seen this happen hundreds of times before and he spat out a rapid fire string of medical vocabulary as to what the cause had been in consequence of my surgery. His intent seemed to be to impress and intimidate, not to inform.

To me, this was clearly a deliberate case of a deaf ear. If he had seen this happen hundreds of time before, why haven't steps been taken against such things? What ever happened to the oath to "Do no harm"?

There is more to tell and I will be telling it.

Fourth Heart Attack, Part 2 - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

On the evening of June 11th, I was walking past the awning of a local restaurant when I was stricken with chest pain. I had to stop and had a grip on that awning's anchor when the restaurateur noticed me and came out with a wooden chair. That single act alone may very well have saved my life. My wife called 911 and I got taken to the nearest hospital where they ascertained that I had a life threatening arterial blockage of 90%. I needed to be transferred to a different hospital for remedial treatment and the following morning, that was done.

I arrived at an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) where I got tested and interviewed and medicated and taken care of in more ways than my fogged up mind could retain. On June 17th, I had open heart surgery for a double bypass.

I am still recovering. The recovery process will be lengthy. Perhaps in two months I might be allowed again to drive. Under the present circumstances however, I know full well that I am in no shape for any such thing.

Family support has been wonderful. My wonderful wife Judy has been there constantly, both of my sons have been there for me and I got to see the grandsons right up close.

Friends have come by and their inputs to me, both for moral support and with information based on their own experiences were a major boost to my sense of well being.

Professional staff, the 911 responders, the nursing staff at the first hospital and the nursing staff at the second hospital were of amazing caliber. I was taken care of at every step with finesse and good humor. I have nothing but the highest praise to offer for every single one of them.

I did have some issues with institutions themselves though and there, I will soon be offering some rather harsh criticisms.

Fourth Heart Attack, Part 1 - John Dunn, Consultant, Ambertec, P.E., P.C.

I returned home on June 26th from the experience of having had my fourth heart attack. In a time span of a little more than two weeks at this writing, I have been very well taken care of by many individuals, gotten tremendous support from loved ones and friends and endured stresses well beyond any previous personal experience.

I have also learned to appreciate that my recent experience, as personally extreme as it was, was not anything unusual or unique. Instead, what I have had has been shared by many and will be shared by many. Therefore, even with my personal energy still at a very low level, I plan to describe both the good things that happened and the bad things that happened.

Yes. There were both.

This will take quite some time, but I fully intend to discuss both in the hope that somehow, what I have to offer may do someone, somewhere some good.