Dan is in the Hospital AGAIN

I have posted an excerpt from an email I sent to someone below, but it says what's been happening for us this week.

My oldest stepson was hospitalized May 31 for emergency abdominal surgery, in ICU after that for about 10 days and we brought him home May 17. He has cerebral palsy and is totally dependant so one of us has to be in the hospital at all times to communicate for him and watch out that they don't kill him. There are upwards of 12 doctors on the case due to shift rotation and the way the hospital management is structured. So we had a surgical, pulmonary, kidney, gastric, and infectious disease group assigned all at once, but the actual doctor in each specialty changes every day. In addition, there is a general doctor 'In charge' also on rotating shifts, but this doctor appears to be ignored by the specialists, so the result is no one is in charge. Meanwhile, the one doctor that actually knows Daniel and we trust is not directly involved because he is not on the hospital staff. They do have an excellent nursing staff, but we have to train them as well, every time he's moved, and shift changes.
We had to take him back in Sunday morning, and he is still there, but out of ICU already. He is improving but it will be a few more days if he doesn't have to have surgery again.

We've been managing OK, Brenda does the night shift and thank God I work at night so I can relieve her a few hours during the day.

If it didn't happen to me I would not believe the next part of this story happened as well, and I don't blame you if you think I'm lying. Last evening Daniel's 19 year old brother crashed his motorcycle and had to go to emergency. I was 1/4 mile away when I got the call, so I managed to get over to the scene and talk to Andrew and see that he was not too badly hurt, and convince them to take him to the same hospital where mom and brother are. He had his leg stitched up and was out in 2 hours, but mom and bro got to see him. He's asleep now, and will be pretty sore for a few days but he'll be OK.

Wow, life sure can be crazy.

Thursday June 26, 2008 - 11:07am (EDT)