Sunday 27 January 2008

I went to see Barry for three hours at the hospital yesterday - three hours was the longest I could get on the parking meter without having to go back out to top it up.

It is so sad to see Barry, such a dignified, quiet man, lying on a hospital bed with a drip in his arm and oxygen up his nose.
He has had several different IV antibiotics tried and one by mouth, and none seem to have had much effect.

One of them turned him bright red on his chest and face as you can see from the picture, but they were not sure which one it is and being a weekend I only got to speak to a student nurse!

He says he is not having any other side effects, which is good. As every time I have been on IV antibiotics ( when I had the fixator on my leg and got infected and before this when I had peritonitis after my appendix burst) I have become very ill from side effects of the IV medication. One time I had anaphylactic shock and nearly died - at least he is tolerating theses drugs well- better than I would. ( which does make me worried for me if eventually I become unwell and have to have them)

But he just does not keep a note of what they are putting into his body. When I was there yesterday I asked the nurse who set up his latest IV what was in this and she said Septrim.

I am a bit worried about this now as I have looked it up and this is an 'older' antibiotic that was used in the early days of AIDs patients with pcp pneumonia. But many of them died!! i thought that treatment had moved on since then with lots of medication available to tackle such infections and he is on one used first for this in the 1980s?
And it is not seen now as being a very good idea to use for those with HIV: http://www.rethinking.org/bmj/response_34477.html

I am very concerned because they have not got the test results back to target his bugs specifically and being a weekend they may not until Monday.

And while they are trying different IV antibiotics they are not working as I know that if the IV antibiotic is having an effect you will start to feel better once one of two bags have run through.

But he does not feel any better - in fact he feels worse

He was able to walk around slowly when he first got there without too much chest pain and without coughing too much, but now he can hardly move without this. I worry that by Monday when they get the results, he will be so much worse. I am not feeling very confident at the moment about the treatment he is getting.

This is confirmed by the fact that when I go there yesterday ( Saturday) Barry said they had not changed his sheets since he had been there!!! He was admitted Wednesday!!!!!!

This is so shocking I will write about this in a new post.

How can people keep their dignity when they do not even get basic nursing care?



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