By the time most of you receive and read this I shall have returned to my beloved NYC apartment following the 'The Big Cut' other wise known as my knee replacement. Ahhhhhh, there is so much to take from every experience...
The most important thing I learned from this one, is to never go 'under the knife' in any way shape or form unless a beloved family member, friend or hired aide is going to be with you 24/7 for quite some time. Hospitals are there to assist with whatever is needed in the OR, to carefully tend to the patient's vitals and medicinal needs directly following surgery, and then to bring the patient to a room.....AFTER THAT....FUHGETTABOUTIT!!
When you do not need help and really can benefit from sleep, they are there...every 10 minutes! When you do need help (to perhaps go to the bathroom) they don't know from you! You could wind up sitting on a bed pan forever before anyone answers the little cord you pulled. They have their own schedule to which they are trained to adhere, and you could be lying on the floor bleeding to death and they would step right over you in order to get the lunch meals out on schedule!
Our health care system appears to have taken everything into the equation but the PATIENT! They have to do what they have to do, and don't you, Mr. or Madam patient, get in the way!! This is why everyone taking a bed out should have an advocate. Maybe that way you won't have to wait till your pain is, on a scale from 1-10, a 20, before receiving your pain medications.
Just a note about medicines. I have 3 computerized pages of my medical history as well as everything I regularly ingest, both medicinal and herbal. Every doctor, either in an office, or in the hospital has always mentioned how good an idea that is to do. I always thought so, until on this recent trip I realized that there is absolutely no communication between the doctors, the nurses, and the pain medicine or pill people. On the rare occasion that they do seem to be on a wave length, the problem will then be that the medicine they ordered, (which you, of course, have plenty of in your own home), has not yet arrived from the pharmacy!!
And the nursing home/rehab care is about the same, only there, the food at least matches what you ordered...it may be inedible, but it matches. In the hospital it became a game to see how far from what was ordered the end result was. And pain does not help the PT process. Your advocate (and I had a great one named Leah!) needs to make sure that the painkiller is taken prior to the therapay. Most often the PT person would arrive and the painkiller had not been given so the therapy would be unbearable. Or, on the occasion when the painkiller had been given and you are 'rarin to go', the PT person is nowhere to be found!
Point is, New York doctors are indeed among the best, but our healthcare here is in the toilet! Could we not try to pay these people (who indeed are still attempting to do God's work) so that there is some compatibility between the two areas of medicine?
Hope today's session was somewhat enlightening. Owwwww! My knee hurts!!!!!
Mimi Scott, Ph.D
917 846-2449
212 721-2979
mscott13@aol.com
www.drmimiscott.com
Saturday, March 26, 2011
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
PREPARING FOR THE BIG CUT..
Something will be CUT out this Thursday (HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S DAY)...but it will be REPLACED! I'll be saying good bye to the knee I've been walking around with these past 70 years (well, I haven't really been walking around with it these past several months). BUT, I'll be greeting a new one (don't ask me if it is a gel one, I haven't found out yet). Of course I'll be moving around like a robot (you wouldn't believe all the equipment you go home with!), but a PT person will be around several times a day for a few weeks and then I can go to a local PT place. A nurse too will be visiting me repeatedly.
I'm having it cut out, otherwise known as 'surgically removed', at the Hospital for Joint Diseases on the corner of 17th and 2nd here in NYC. Dr. Joe Bosco (actually from Albany) will be doing the destruction and construction. The only thing I'm worried about is Lucie...I don't want her to miss me too much (I lost one dog of a broken heart, Coconut, when Kramer died. I don't want Lucie's heart to break when I go out the door. I'll have to talk to her on the phone so she knows I'm alive. Lorilu lives in another planet so she won't even notice I'm gone.).
So right now I'm ready to prepare, but I have to wait until they call me with the details tomorrow evening. I don't even know if I'm supposed to bring a night gown or pajamas. I can't imagine a pajama bottom getting over the knee, so I would think in terms of night gowns, but they will probably wind up being the stunning 'gowns' that the hospital gives you. I will bring my makeup however---I don't want to scare any visitors or even hospital personel. And I will bring my brush. Are any of you out there of a 'certain age' experiencing hair problems? When I wake
up mornings you do not want to be there. I look like I just stepped on an electrical plug! You know---the Albert Einstein look. It's terrible. So, the brush will definitely come. And the tooth brush as well as tooth paste. What do you think about slippers? I wear my open sneaks as my slippers....I think that's what I'll bring. But I can't go home in a night gown! What should I take to go home...I'm so fat already from not being able to move around as I always did, that I don't think I have a pair of sweat pants to fit. Guess I'll have to get a men's large to wear home.
Other than that, I have my dear little Jenny staying with the pups, (she cleans for me as well, so the apartment will look terrific when I return), and my dear friend from early theatre days, Justine, staying right beside me. She's a counselor, so she can calm me down periodically when I 'freak out'.
Thanks for listening---hope you have a great St Patrick's day---you know what I'll be doing to celebrate....can you drink with vicodin??
Love y'all...Hope you enjoyed my session.
Mimi---you know the doctor thing.
917 846-2449
I'm having it cut out, otherwise known as 'surgically removed', at the Hospital for Joint Diseases on the corner of 17th and 2nd here in NYC. Dr. Joe Bosco (actually from Albany) will be doing the destruction and construction. The only thing I'm worried about is Lucie...I don't want her to miss me too much (I lost one dog of a broken heart, Coconut, when Kramer died. I don't want Lucie's heart to break when I go out the door. I'll have to talk to her on the phone so she knows I'm alive. Lorilu lives in another planet so she won't even notice I'm gone.).
So right now I'm ready to prepare, but I have to wait until they call me with the details tomorrow evening. I don't even know if I'm supposed to bring a night gown or pajamas. I can't imagine a pajama bottom getting over the knee, so I would think in terms of night gowns, but they will probably wind up being the stunning 'gowns' that the hospital gives you. I will bring my makeup however---I don't want to scare any visitors or even hospital personel. And I will bring my brush. Are any of you out there of a 'certain age' experiencing hair problems? When I wake
up mornings you do not want to be there. I look like I just stepped on an electrical plug! You know---the Albert Einstein look. It's terrible. So, the brush will definitely come. And the tooth brush as well as tooth paste. What do you think about slippers? I wear my open sneaks as my slippers....I think that's what I'll bring. But I can't go home in a night gown! What should I take to go home...I'm so fat already from not being able to move around as I always did, that I don't think I have a pair of sweat pants to fit. Guess I'll have to get a men's large to wear home.
Other than that, I have my dear little Jenny staying with the pups, (she cleans for me as well, so the apartment will look terrific when I return), and my dear friend from early theatre days, Justine, staying right beside me. She's a counselor, so she can calm me down periodically when I 'freak out'.
Thanks for listening---hope you have a great St Patrick's day---you know what I'll be doing to celebrate....can you drink with vicodin??
Love y'all...Hope you enjoyed my session.
Mimi---you know the doctor thing.
917 846-2449
Saturday, March 5, 2011
HOW DO WE GET THROUGH??
Sometimes things get tough for all of us. We get overwhelmed by our work, our finances, our family, our relationships, or our health problems. It can make us all feel really bleak at times.
Just what can we do about all this?
Believe it or not a little bit of Charlie Sheen may not hurt. We can focus on WINNING! We can call upon our own 'TIGER BLOOD' to fight the fight, or maybe we can look at OURSELVES as the drug that will see us through. Maybe we're not "ROCK STARS FROM MARS" but a little bit of looking at ourselves as though we were is not a bad idea. I saw what everyone else saw going on with 'Charlie' this past week, but I also saw some brilliance in the midst of the madness that we can all draw from. In fact I have already heard from
people who have decided to look at themselves in a more heroic vein.
But sometimes all the desire in the world cannot make something come to fruition. Especially in a medical sense. We can search and search for answers and when they do come they may carry with them some scary elements, or we can find out answers and while we may desire to 'win' the fight it may be fought in a very different field. Not the baseball field, the basketball court or the battlefront, but truly a field of our own creation. If a physical condition limits us we may fight it by creating an arena for reading, writing, painting or any other quieter kind of activity. The end result may make us feel very proud in much the same way as coming home from a successful day at the office does. Who knows, maybe some of these efforts could even be turned into a financial plus, thus inadvertently resolving some of those horrendous issues.
Also, we have begun to lose the art of conversation as so much of our communication is via email and texting. Sometimes, regarding relationship issues, just the sound of another's voice can color our whole understanding of what is 'on' or 'off''. Some of our spoken words can be poetry when heard, or vile when seen on the written page. I would suggest the written word for clarity and the spoken word for the sentiment.
Finally, value the beauty of a good night's rest to make things look so much more attainable in the morning. To insure the rest, try a good program or book before closing your eyes. Maybe they'll put Two and a Half Men back on later at night...that would send us all to sleep with a smile.
Hope this session has been helpful.
Respectfully,
Mimi Scott, Ph.d
212 721-2979
mscott13@aol.com
www.drmimiscott.com
Just what can we do about all this?
Believe it or not a little bit of Charlie Sheen may not hurt. We can focus on WINNING! We can call upon our own 'TIGER BLOOD' to fight the fight, or maybe we can look at OURSELVES as the drug that will see us through. Maybe we're not "ROCK STARS FROM MARS" but a little bit of looking at ourselves as though we were is not a bad idea. I saw what everyone else saw going on with 'Charlie' this past week, but I also saw some brilliance in the midst of the madness that we can all draw from. In fact I have already heard from
people who have decided to look at themselves in a more heroic vein.
But sometimes all the desire in the world cannot make something come to fruition. Especially in a medical sense. We can search and search for answers and when they do come they may carry with them some scary elements, or we can find out answers and while we may desire to 'win' the fight it may be fought in a very different field. Not the baseball field, the basketball court or the battlefront, but truly a field of our own creation. If a physical condition limits us we may fight it by creating an arena for reading, writing, painting or any other quieter kind of activity. The end result may make us feel very proud in much the same way as coming home from a successful day at the office does. Who knows, maybe some of these efforts could even be turned into a financial plus, thus inadvertently resolving some of those horrendous issues.
Also, we have begun to lose the art of conversation as so much of our communication is via email and texting. Sometimes, regarding relationship issues, just the sound of another's voice can color our whole understanding of what is 'on' or 'off''. Some of our spoken words can be poetry when heard, or vile when seen on the written page. I would suggest the written word for clarity and the spoken word for the sentiment.
Finally, value the beauty of a good night's rest to make things look so much more attainable in the morning. To insure the rest, try a good program or book before closing your eyes. Maybe they'll put Two and a Half Men back on later at night...that would send us all to sleep with a smile.
Hope this session has been helpful.
Respectfully,
Mimi Scott, Ph.d
212 721-2979
mscott13@aol.com
www.drmimiscott.com
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