August 6th, 2005, revisited

I am a day late with this and I apologize. I wasn’t going to post about the daily events of me in the ICU, but then I remembered an important date.

August 6 was the third anniversary of the day I was transferred from one hospital to another.

That in and of itself was not anything that I was going to post about, but I remembered something that needed to be said, and I am ashamed that I did not do this sooner. This is the third anniversary of the second time my wife saved my life that year.

At this point I already had ARDS and sepsis on top of the Legionnaires’ Disease and my body was shutting down. My wife is very intelligent and perceptive, and when she saw the numbers for my kidney values, the blood work that indicated how well – or not – my kidneys were functioning, she knew how bad it was. The doctors were saying that I was doing bad but not that bad, but she knew that my kidneys were failing. They said I would need dialysis, but they didn’t have the right equipment at that hospital, but my transfer could wait until Monday.

You see, it was Saturday, and the doctors just didn’t want to be bothered. By Monday I would have been dead.

My wife spent something like 10 hours on the phone, making dozens of calls to doctors and hospitals trying to get me transferred to a hospital with continuous dialysis equipment. The nurses at the hospital were quietly encouraging. They had hinted that they thought that I needed to be transferred and they were cheering my wife on as she hounded the doctors to get them to do what needed to be done. They practically cheered when she did it. Apparently it is not common to transfer patients on the weekend – patients may die but at least the doctors aren’t inconvenienced. Assholes.

First, not having a dialysis machine that is needed to save the life of a patient in the ICU who has sepsis, which is a very common problem in ICU patients, is criminal. The other campus of the hospital had it, which meant that they could claim to have all that equipment in the hospital with that name, but that meant transferring me, which they didn’t want to do.

Not wanting to be bothered transferring a patient because it’s a weekend is criminal.

We knew from a friend who is a nurse that there was an ICU bed available at a good hospital not too far away. But it was being held by a prominent doctor in case he wanted it for one of his patients. Not a patient that needed an ICU bed and care, just a patient who would want special care to stroke their ego. Criminal.

It was also almost impossible to get the doctors to call the other hospital to arrange the transfer, even after my wife found an available ICU bed. Criminal.

From Saturday morning until late evening, my wife was on the phone to hospitals and doctors and friends and she did the virtually impossible: she got me transferred. It was supposed to happen by 10PM, but didn’t happen until 1 or 2 AM. First they said they couldn’t have me and all of the equipment in the helicopter because it would weigh too much. Right, the extra weight of a portable ventilator would push the helicopter over its usable limit. It was an insurance worry. They weren’t sure they were covered for the procedure – me on the vent, and having a respiratory tech in the helicopter.

Finally I was transferred in an ambulance. And here I must commend the respiratory technicians at the hospital. They knew how bad I was and they did everything possible to insure that I was not injured during the transfer. I needed high pressure ventilation, but a standard ventilator wouldn’t fit in the ambulance. There’s a lot less room in there than you might think, and I was too unstable to risk manual ventilation. One of the techs remembered that the hospital had recently acquired a high-pressure pediatric ventilator, which was small enough to fit, so he went and got it.

So, on a Saturday night, my wife got me transferred to another hospital where I was admitted to the ICU, and immediately put on dialysis. Like I said, she saved my life.

Just as an example of my wife’s determination and ability, she actually got in touch with the head of the ICU department at the new hospital. This may not sound like much, but he is an internationally known leader in the field of critical care. He runs national programs on ICU care and new methods to increase survival. His reputation is such that he has been called on to treat royalty. He gave my wife his private cell phone number so she could call if she needed anything.

My wife is an amazing person, but I repeat myself.