THE ANGRY PATIENT (c) is essentially a web diary of one lone patient's nightmare incarceration at St. Frightening Hospital (not a real name) Heart Land, USA, and his valiant fight to get out of there alive.  This patient didn't survive Vietnam only to be imprisoned by a hospital bureacracy hell bent on some hidden agenda!

Welcome to his nightmare...................

The Cast of Conniving Characters:

Mr. Patient, Dr. Hell,  Dr. Don't, Dr. Sissy,  VP of Patient Care Nurse Lyin',  Risk Manager Nurse Kringle,  Nurse Manager Brew,  Nurse Manager Lowly,  Nurse Joke, Nurse Tech BJ,  Nurse Giant,  Nurse Tank,  Nurse J. Homely,  Die-a-tician Bimbo,  the Department of Inhumane Services,  Socialist Worker Rude,  Socialist Worker Crook, and Sister Hairy Lippa the un-Holy Nun.

Still interested?  This diary can be found at the following link:

http://theangrypatient.com/engine.php/submission;page=input,action=display,id=768

The following is a brief summary of this diary.  Take your time.   Treat it like a novel.   If you like it - forward it on to your friends and family.  If you ever end up in the hospital yourself - and you are not able to speak whether due to injury, illness, medication or anesthesia, be sure to always have somebody by your side 24/7.  

Don't ever be left alone in a hospital room if you are unable to fend for yourself.   It must be a 24 hour vigil till you are released.  Oh, and one more thing, take notes.  Copious notes.  Take pictures too.  Lots of them.  Film the patient.  Ask questions.   Get second opinions.  Your life depends upon it.  And document, document, document, everything!

Keep checking this website for updates.  We will be publishing some VERY interesting letters and doctor's notes here in the near future - from "threatening" letters sent by the hospital bureaucrats to a notice of impending death written by Dr. Hell. 

Timing is everything.  We are very patient (no pun intended).  The notes will be posted here soon enough.  St. Fright will be around for a long time.  And so will this website..........and those notes.

AND NOW - A BRIEF GLIMPSE INTO THE PATIENT DIARY:

Imagine yourself in the following setting... sit back, relax and read further.................

You are partially paralyzed on the side of your body that you write with. 

Your right arm and leg are limp due to a stroke you suffered over 9 years ago.  You vision in your right eye is impaired.  So is the hearing in your right ear. Despite these limitations, you have been in amazingly good health and quite strong for the past 9 years. Always tending to your needs, keeping track of dates and appointments, tending to your garden and potted plants, caring for your pets, dragging your trash out behind your wheelchair, and diligently checking your mail.

You go to the hospital for a bleeding hemorrhoid.  Three weeks later - you are in the fight of your life to get out of a hell hole of hospital abuse.

The hospital emergency room fails to administer your anti-seizure medication even though they were told you needed it ASAP.   You suffer a grand mal seizure the next day.  The nurse tells your wife "we almost lost him".

They dose you up with Ativan and put you in a daze.  Now not only your right side is paralyzed, your whole body is limp.  You can't even hold your head up. 

They tie you up -  not once, not twice, but three times, and with a straight jacket posey vest - without a doctor's order.  You are already half paralyzed and nearly comatose from Ativan -  where do they think you are going to go? 

You go to take a sip of  your water only to find a cup full of urine....beside a pitcher full of urine.

You develop an allergic reaction to some medication.  The condition remains ignored by staff and your doctor until your face is swollen and your tongue to the point of choking you, even though your family repeatedly brought it to the doctor's attention.

You have difficulty speaking due to the stroke but you comprehend everything that is going on around you.  You are able to signal your wishes.  You are extremely competent, so much so that you are the one often reminding your wife of the little things left undone around the house.  You have not been declared incompetent.  Not even close.

But the nurses ignore you.  Blatantly ignore you.  They are blatantly belittle you.

One nurse has a bad habit of whistling the song "Amazing Grace"  (the funeral song) while she tends to your needs, and talks to you in a high pitched, whining, baby voice even though she has been repeatedly asked to stop talking to you like that and to stop whistling that song. 

You are confined to a cubicle of a room with only a view of a pink wall across the way.  There are no trees in sight and even the sky is not visible from this room.

You are not provided a wheelchair even though you have been demanding it.  You are not given consistent physical therapy, and you are not allowed to get out of bed for days on end. 

You are not allowed to use the toilet even though you repeatedly requested it and it is how you have gone to the bathroom since you were about 2 years old. 

You have no calendar in your room and have no idea what day it is.  Any calendars placed there by your family disappear. 

You have become isolated from the outside world.  The nurses are constantly closing your blinds and darkening your room.  Why?  You can't tell whether it is day or night.  Sensory deprivation.

You give up on watching TV because your  IV drip beeps with even the slightest movement of your arm to change the TV channel on the bed rail.  They said they didn't have remote controls. 

You quietly and patiently endure being poked and prodded multiple times, day and night, until both arms are black and blue from the elbows down.  

The lab tech tells you your veins are like "rocks".  One young lab tech left the room in tears as she cried out,  "I can't do this to you anymore."

Your bed (an adjustable air bed to prevent bed sores) buzzes and beeps incessantly day and night, with every little movement of your body.  Amazing that the bed next door barely hisses.

For 24 hours, days on end, your room is filled with the sounds of constant beeping and buzzing and hissing and squeaking.  It's like a drip drip drip of torture.

Despite the "hi-tech" bed  - you develop bed sores and a fiery red rash on your back.  Now, they have to turn you and wake you every two hours, night after night after night.  Sleep Deprivation.

You experience swelling of the face, mouth, tongue due to an allergic reaction, and swelling of the arm and hand because of incorrectly placed IV, and bed sores on the back of your heels.

You develop a severe diaper rash and a skin infection because of improper cleanings by hospital 'staph'.   They won't allow you to use the toilet.  Though you attempt to signal your wishes to them -  they ignore you.  They pretend like you aren't there. 

You get choked on a whole potassium pill after a nurse gives you one during the time that your mouth and tongue are swollen (Potassium pills a large pills that tend to swell when they get wet, and are almost always cut in half).  Mean spirit or incompetent?  This happened in a prior hospital incarceration at St. Fright.  (Once is a mistake - twice is a pattern.)

At other times, your nurse gives you a bitter mix of crushed medications mixed with Maalox into a thick chalky paste because they say the doctor ordered it.  This is followed by a dose of bitter liquid decongestant to "wash it down".   Then you are expected to try to eat a dinner that is not what you ordered, or what you like, or it is someone else’s 'diet'.  

Just as you are about to get your appetite back and want to eat, your tray disappears.  It's the 2- hour rule - can't leave food sitting more than 2 hours.  But they won't even leave you the sealed applesauce container or juices. 

Early one morning you are treated for a heart attack by a nurse and given a nitro pill that sends your heart rate plummeting dangerously, and then have to endure an electro-cardiogram - even though you didn't have a heart attack.  They made a mistake, they said.  Your doctor tells you nothing by mouth for 24 hours.  You are starving. 

If that isn't enough,  had it not been for the fact your wife walked in,  you may have well ended up with a colonoscopy even though she had already refused to sign the authorization for it  - nor did you even NEED a colonscopy - according to YOUR gastroenterologist.

Your right arm swells and your fingers turn purple because someone left a tourniquet on it.  They made another mistake.

Your left arm swells to twice the normal size after some nurse incorrectly inserted the IV drip.   Now you are getting dehydrated.  Another mistake.

Even with the multiple lab draws and weeks into your visit, both your coumadin (blood thinner) and dilantin (anti-seizure) levels fluctuated wildly to the extent it required EMERGENCY intervention.  What have those nurses been doing?  This NEVER happened at home.  Big mistakes.

One day, your wife walks in and sees a nurse giving you a shot in your stomach.  The nurse claims it is "part of his routine".  This is the same nurse who gave you the whole pottasium pill and the one who treated you for a heart attack.  You had never had a shot in your stomach during this stay.   You  later find out it was an insulin shot.   You have not been diagnosed as diabetic.   Bigger mistake?

Because of your aphasia - You can't ask them what the shot is for, or inquire as to its necessity - you can only trust that the nurses are doing the right thing...... 

Ask Teri Schiavo about insulin shots.

They won't allow your wife of 47 years to be your voice either.  They treat her like an idiot.  She is Asian.  There is a language barrier.  They know that.  They take advantage of that.  They belittle her.  They ignore her too.

You have had to endure bed sores, catheters, ultrasounds, ekgs, gastric tests, brain tests, psychological tests, eegs, cat scans, IV's, hundreds of pills, liquid meds, rectal meds, diapers, diaper rashes, soft foods that look like regurgitated foods, blood draw, after blood draw after blood draw, they won't shave you nor will they allow your wife to shave you -  hospital policy they say - you have been ignored, disrespected, and belittled - and all you went into the hospital for was a bleeding hemorrhoid that cleared on its own in about 2-3 hours - over three weeks later - you are gaunt, tired, weak and sicker than the day you were admitted and now.....................................

They want to put a feeding tube in you against your will.  Frightening.  Very Frightening.