Halloween, NYC Style - October 31, 2010

Pete's father stayed with him overnight. They waited in the ER until almost midnight when he was finally transferred to a semi-private room in the cardiac wing. I wasn't there, but it was, as Pete described it, an experience he does not want to ever repeat.

I called the hospital first thing Sunday morning to learn his room number and immediately downloaded and printed directions to the hospital from MapQuest. Just as I was backing out of the driveway some time between 9:30 and 10:00 AM, Pete's father called. He said that he had just left the hospital and was about to head home, so our timing couldn't have been better.

I felt as if my car was the only one on the road; in truth, it practically was. There was absolutely no traffic on the way in. I had to make a few extra turns once I was in sight of the hospital in order to find the hospital parking garage. Took care of that and then off to find Pete. It was a little past 11.

He was not a happy camper. He had a miserable night and every time he moved or a nurse or orderly came into the room they were loudly and vehemently cursed at by his roommate. In all fairness, he was an elderly gentleman, a retired RU physics professor, who was recovering from a heart attack that occurred while he was in the hospital for a fall that resulted in a broken hip. From his behavior and overhearing his conversations with the many family members who were visiting him while I was there, I'm going to surmise that he is also suffering from some form of dementia/Alzheimer's. It certainly made our time there interesting but not necessarily enjoyable.

Pete's PCA was a wonderful, friendly and attentive woman, and the direct antithesis of the nurse assigned to care for him. I got the distinct impression that she had many more pressing things to do than to address the needs of the patients under her care. More about her later.

Some time before I arrived, two different doctors had visited with Pete. Neither had any idea why his heart rate had dropped so low (it had gone as low as 32 bpm), but what seemed to baffle them even more was the fact that he had no other symptoms normally associated with such a slow pulse. All blood work was good; EKG was good except for showing the low rate, but it was increasing, and Pete was feeling well, so that was encouraging. The main problem, he was told, was that only Dr R or one of his associates could give consent to release him, and the earliest the associate would be in the hospital would be Monday. That did not sit well with Pete. He placed a call to his nurse at the Cancer Center, who in turn called A to see if anything could be done to move things along.

Shortly after 1 PM, the attending came in and after checking all of Pete's information, reports, and listening to what he told her about being so unhappy about staying, she said she would call Dr R directly. It was just about 2 PM when she came back after talking with Dr R. He gave permission to release Pete when his blood counts were checked once more, after he was given 2 doses of magnesium, and with the condition that he come in to the cancer center tomorrow. After Pete promised he would, she told us she was going to give the order and directions to his nurse, and that he would be getting those doses IV soon. A different nurse came in to take his vitals and draw blood one more time.

It was not long afterward that the attending came back in with a very concerned look on her face. "I'm afraid I have some bad news. You might not be getting released. Your white blood cell count is off the charts." I could see the shock in Pete's face, so quickly said, "He had his Neulasta shot yesterday," and with that she gave a big smile and began to laugh with relief, saying, "That would do it."

Pete was starting to feel a bit hungry, which was a very good sign considering that the last solid food I can recall he had eaten was on Tuesday, before his first day of chemo. He did have a bottle of Ensure one morning, but I think that was Thursday. Each bag of magnesium takes an hour, so I decided, with Pete's urging, to go for a walk and on my way back would pick up a couple slices of pizza for both of us.

When I got back around 3 the nurse had not yet come around. A different PCA stopped by to see if he needed anything, so he asked her about getting the infusion started. She checked and came back to tell us that the nurse was busy with another patient right at the moment but would be in as soon as she finished.

Around 4 PM, I walked down to the nurses' station and asked when the magnesium IV was going to be started because the doctor had given orders that Pete was to be released as soon as that was complete. She checked on the computer and apparently found those orders and promised to advise Pete's nurse to begin the IV. It wasn't until just before 6 PM that the nurse finally showed up and hooked up the first ml bag of magnesium. While she was hooking it up she was complaining that she didn't understand why the doctor hadn't just ordered this be given orally, commenting that pills would have been so much easier.

A short time later the night nurse stopped in and introduced herself. She seemed much more pleasant than the day nurse and when the alert beeped when the first bag emptied, she came in immediately and started the second bag. She must have been watching the clock because she came back as soon as the second bag was finished and started unhooking the tubes. She hesitated when she got to the port and said that it should probably stay in. Pete said that he was done with chemo and that it could be taken out.

I got an uncomfortable feeling when I saw how she was looking at the tubing. She began removing the adhesive "skin" covering the needle, then stopped and left the room. She was gone several minutes and I commented to Pete that I thought she went to read up on how to remove the needle. When she came back I could tell she was nervous, especially when the adhesive kept sticking to her glove. I was just about to say something because it appeared that she was going to try to remove the needle by sliding it out the way you would slide a regular IV needle out instead of lifting it out perpendicular to the skin, when she suddenly stopped and scurried from the room. A few minutes later, another nurse came in with some papers in hand and said that these were Pete's discharge papers. Just as she finished going over them, the nervous nurse came back in. I suspect she had been standing just outside the door waiting for the right moment. The discharge nurse looked over at the wad of adhesive and said, "Oh, let me take care of that for you" and quickly and confidently, with nervous nurse closely watching, correctly pulled the needle out.

We were up and out of there so fast Pete was still putting his jacket on as we hurried down the hall toward the elevators.

The hospital was filthy. The restroom had a distinct odor of urine. The toilet didn't completely flush on the first try and when you turned the water on to wash your hands you had to be careful because the drain was clogged and the basin quickly filled with water and took forever to empty.

The lunch that they had brought in to Pete around 2 PM was cold. I'm not sure what it was, but I think it was supposed to be baked ziti with a side of mixed vegetables. It looked anything but appetizing, as if both had just been chopped up and then thrown on the plate. They started to bring in dinner around 7 PM, but Pete told them to take it back, that he wasn't hungry, so I don't know what it was or what condition it was in.

There was so much more unpleasantness at that hospital, but at this point it doesn't matter. We were finally in the car and headed home. Unfortunately, the NYC Halloween Parade was in full swing and it was headed up one of the streets between where we were and where we wanted to be. It took us almost an hour and a half to travel less than a mile. The masses of costumed people were largely contained behind the police barricades, but wherever there was an opening, crowds would spill onto the streets to block any possible movement of traffic. Police were everywhere you looked, but there were so many people it seemed that the individual officers preferred to look the other way when one of these groups left the sidewalk and headed into the street because to do otherwise might have been enough to cause these raucous revelers to become hellacious hellions.

We finally pulled into our driveway just before 11 PM. Pete took a quick shower and went to bed. I just went to bed.