needs: meds in the hospital
It’s a hospital and I expect there will be meds for days. Chocolate milk, doctors who don’t look like McDreamy or McSteamy, paper hats that never hold all the vomit, blue plastic sheets that don’t catch all the wee, folders with my girls name, upside down watch broaches, lanyards covered in clacking stuff, menacing clowns and meds for days, or so I thought.
Time runs differently, slow and fast forward. Too much time without answers and not enough time for big decisions. In ED they assured me they would have her meds on the ward. Hospitals disorientate my straight arrow and I now reliant on their information as I forfeited my own.
Breakfast was wheeled in and I asked the nurse for the meds. She said she would check the chart but didn’t return. Doctors came in packs for all too brief rounds and the meds slipped to the back of my mind as they opened the menu of next steps: cat scan, MRI, a new line, some bloods, nil by mouth. I forgot about meds.
Two hours later and still no meds. My girl was strapped to a spinal board so the usual risk had dimmed. The worst had happened so the meds to prevent the worse seemed futile. I asked the nurse again who scanned the chart and said “No, not here”. My panic caused me to pause. paused. Gently, in a sad “like me, like me” way I suggested we get them charted, and a doctor was called and a pharmacist and a…
It wasn’t the familiar 200 mg tablet, there was a liquid and a lot of it to equal her dose. Knowing she would take her lead from me, I brushed over it. Sure, she can take it like that, she’s great with meds and she smiled as much as a kid strapped to a spinal board and loaded on painkillers can. I mean Velcro across your curls really does bring the smile out in everyone.
The thing is after being on a spinal board- which is exactly what needed to happen – her stomach wasn’t used to taking meds. There was vomit- from lying on her back, in her hair and eye balls… and nurses running and a 6 person roll to avoid choking. It was a peak time- peak in panic and peak in helplessness and peak in fear- and after? Well after, she smelt like vomit, and didn’t have her meds in her belly but she was okay and someone else had a code rainbow.
Nurses surf in and ride the waves with us. Quickly she was cleaned up, not just a washer, new sheets, new robe, some clever weird shampoo in a shower cap and settled. It was as if it never happened, except well… the meds. And it was the nurses who said right, let’s work this out, and as they set about sorting charting my beloved walked in with the pouch of meds from home.
means: what we do with meds at hospital
- We grab the meds from home on our way to hospital.
- The ward nurse can sign them in and then it’s same same easy peasey lemon squeezee.
- If I’m not going home before the hospital, my beloved brings them in with the hospital bag (link).
- This is why it is really good to keep the boxes and most recent prescribing letter with the meds.
- If you have to hand them over the letter and the boxes tell the story. (Link organise meds)
- I eliminate any meds she doesn’t need for a couple of days- stimulants for school are not as relevant when she is in bed and vitamins can be sorted later.
- If they have to chart them, I give them a copy of the review letter that prescribed them.
“I am in a hospital; nothing is the same but I am where I need to be.”
