In the last couple of weeks I have been practically living in a hospital. This is the kind of thing that happens when you have a close relative as a patient. The experience was not one that I would like to see anyone else have to go through. I can only say what it was like in the hospital I was in and can't speak to any of the others. First of all the money that hospitals get in this area has been severely cut. I know that you hear about that all the time, but this is the first time that I have ever experienced the results of this first hand. The first thing that happened was that there were no beds available. Now folks I am talking about the largest hospital in the entire area, a hospital that just had a huge wing built on to to. It is one of the largest private hospitals on Long Island. There are tremendous staff shortages. My relative had to remain in the emergency room for over two days where hardly any of the staff checked on him. Trying to get pain killer medicine for him was a constant battle. Even though he was in pain, no one came around and I had to constantly go to the Nurse's station and ask for pain killers, but the nurses never came. After a couple of hours I demanded to speak to a doctor and I was told that, "you don't want to do that and make him mad", to which I replied that if I didn't see a doctor I would go to the hospital administrator and the news papers. A doctor finally came and administered the pain killers.

After a couple of days, a room finally opened up. Here is the strange thing, it seems that rooms were available, but just not in the ward where he needed to go. This indicated to me that he could have been put in a different ward temporarily, instead of laying on a rolling bed in the middle of an emergency room where people were all coming and going. The emergency room looked more like some macabre bus station than it did an emergency room. Everyone was very busy there, but it seemed like an awful lot of wasted motion. For example if you had a question and could get a nurse to come over to answer it, you would get, "sorry I am not allowed to tell you his condition, you have to see the doctor". Trying to get the doctor was an expatriating experience as I outlined above. Here is the worst part, when the pain killers wore off, you had to go through the same thing again, because you would be told only the doctor can authorize that medicine. Can you imagine, the doctor made no provision and left no orders for the administration of more painkillers if needed. What kind of hospital was this? It used to be one of the finest in the area, then it began to slip as the new wing was going up.

Well you finally get a room and you begin to notice little things. These things might be little, but they are important. There was only one scale that worked, on the floor and I could hear workers complaining about that. The poor guy in the bed next to my relative had a breathing problem, but he was able to walk, but needed oxygen. He had an iv plugged into his arm. What would be the normal procedure for him getting exercise. It would be to get a portable oxygen bottle on a small cart he could take with him along with the rolling iv and let him walk up and down the hall. The people that were visiting him, his wife and children, wanted him to be able to get the exercise. They went to the nursing station and asked if he could go for a walk. They were told that someone would be in the room soon to assist them with that task. To my amazement a nurse came to the room with twenty seven feet of clear oxygen line. I know that it was twenty seven feet, because I heard her tell this to the family. The line was in 3 pieces and she hooked it all together and then plugged in into the oxygen supply spigot on the wall and into the oxygen apparatus on the patent's face. She then told the family they could take him for a walk, but to be careful and not to go beyond the length of the hose. Well here was this poor guy walking in the hall trailing this line that anyone could have fell over with a relative on his right arm pulling the iv stand along and another relative in back unraveling and raveling line, depending on the direction he was walking in. It could have been in a comedy movie if it hadn't been so deadly serious.

That told the whole story right then and there. We asked for an extra pillow and was told that they had no extras. Oh well, you can live without an extra pillow, but then we needed a blanket, because my relative was cold and only had a sheet over him. The nurse came in and told us that they actually had no blankets either. My goodness, how can a hospital be out of blankets? It wasn't her fault, but we told her we absolutely needed a blanket and she told us that while there wasn't any, she knew where there was a batch of extra sheets. She left and came back with about four sheets and we put them on him and that made him warm enough. The next day while we were visiting, we began to hear his medicine pump, that is the thing that the iv hangs on, it has a blue electronics box on it that pumps medicine,it began to constantly beep. The nurse came in and replaced it. The unit we got was also faulty and began to beep like mad. She went through several units before finding one that worked correctly. Hey these are the things that patients depend on to pump the correct dosage of their medicine when it is being administered, it also monitors blood transfusions. This is not a piece of electronics that you want to malfunction when you are depending on it.

Have you ever noticed that people usually come around to a hospital room about every couple of hours to monitor your blood pressure and take you temperature? That is called monitoring your vital signs. It is usually done by an assistant nurse. There I was, sitting in the room and in came the lady with a blood pressure machine and an electric thermometer mounted on a pole on wheels. She tried and tried to take the blood pressure and then said, "these things are always breaking down". Well if that doesn't destroy any confidence that you may have had left, nothing will. A couple of times even his temperature had to be taken several times before it would register, which led me to believed that this device had a serious problem. A few nights I looked out in the hall and could not find even one person working the floor, which is huge. Then one day, while sitting in a small waiting room in the ward, I overheard a person who was apparently a hospital administrator talking to the head nurse. He said something to the effect that he knew how short staffed the nurse was and since there were only two nurses on duty, including the head nurse, he was giving her another body. I don't know if the other body was a nurse or not.

So what did we have here? We had a hospital with at least certain sections severely overcrowded, while others may not have been. There was a severe lack of equipment and what there was, was mostly not in correct working order. We had doctors in the emergency room that just didn't care how much pain you were in and couldn't be bothered coming over to administer pain killers and when they did under threat, they were so inept that they made no plans for future administration of medicine. As far as house keeping goes, there were no extra pillows or any blankets. This is a hospital in an upscale area, I can't imagine what a hospital in the poorer areas must be like?

As of yet I haven't mentioned what could be the worst part of all of this and that is the constant waiting and not being told anything. After a few days, a sign appeared over the bed that stated the patient was on a restricted liquid intake. It took a couple of days to find the kidney doctor and find out why. We found out, but haven't been told anything about the progress since. I am talking another 7 or 8 days here. I constantly went to the nurse's station to find out why and when I found a nurse, they would tell me that they were sending the resident to talk to me. Well the resident came in several times and the first thing he told me was that this condition was improving ,but he had no more info. There was also a major medical problem, where a biopsy had to be taken and I still haven't found out the results yet and he admitted that he didn't either, but then went on in front of the patient to say maybe it is cancer and perhaps it is inoperable, at which point I almost threw him out of the room. I said, "didn't you just tell me you haven't seen any result of the test yet?" He replied yes, then I said, "well then you know nothing so don't start telling me stories like this", he left.

Our stay at the hospital has lasted two weeks so far and while improving somewhat, is still terrible. The patients get a menu to choose their meals from and my relative carefully chooses what he wants. Inevitably when the meals arrive there is always something different included on his tray. Worse yet, sometimes they forget to bring up his food and just give him what ever tray of food is left over or bring a meal of something he doesn't like.

Recently my wife had a knee replacement in a different hospital and she was treated like a queen. Nurses and doctors popped into her room at least every 20 minutes and asked if she was ok and if she needed anything. She was then transferred to a rehab facility and again had great food and was treated extremely well and had fine care. It is hard for me to see what is going on in this hospital, but I really have no control over it. He is going to be moved to a rehab facility soon and I think that things can only get better.