Day 100

Today was almost discharge day. They are ready to get my dad out of rehab. The average stay at Sunny View for an orthopedic patient is something like 8.2 days. So as you can imagine my dad is not doing much for their numbers. Although he is not your average ortho patient with a joint replacement. Anyway, I will attempt to give you the facts of the day without muddling it too much with my emotions (this is my third try so I can't promise you anything). It is all very frustrating since from the beginning of this whole ordeal my mom has been on people to "just do their job". Well, people don't always "just do their job".

The big toe that was broken in the accident has become infected down to the bone and nobody seemed to "notice" even though we discuss it with every nurse on duty. Today, when they were ready to sweep my dad right out the front door the Infectious Disease Doctor put a stop to everything. Ultimately, it was my mom who forced him to take a look and give her some answers. Once he x-rayed it he determined it is infected down to the bone. The nail needs to be removed and cultured to find out what type of infection it is so they can begin treating it.

We knew the nail needed to come off about a week ago when my dad starting visiting some of his surgeons for follow-up appointments. Both the ortho and plastic surgeons recommended having a podiatrist look at it and remove the nail. The doctor wrote an order for this which was ignored by the nurses at the rehab facility. The nurses told my mom that they can not do that here and handed the order back to her. This was on Monday. Now almost 5 days have gone by with the infection having time to worsen! Let's hope that they are able to clear up this infection and that it is not more staph. If people had "just done there job" in the beginning the toe could already have begun the healing process. Today when Dr. Leibers told the nurse to call and make the appt. she jumped and got one right away for later this afternoon.

It has been a roller coaster of a day, and I did not even mention the fact that there was NO discharge plan written for him, the podiatrist appt. finally scheduled for today was changed 3 times and he did not make any of them, the X-ray tech dragged and dropped the walker on his lower left leg where the plate is and may have damaged it, and my parents sat around for 5 hours before anyone bothered to say that they were probably not going home today! Ahhh, it's so crazy. As my mom said, "You can't make this stuff up, people wouldn't believe it!"

As always, we have to be thankful for how far my dad has come. It really is a miracle and a tribute to the unbelielvably strong man that he is. We are also so thankful to have friends and family like you and for all of your prayers, kind words, strength and positive thoughts. It helps us tremendously to get through these tough times.

Good night for now,
Stacy