Happy New Year everyone

Yeah I know it's late, so sue me. Wait don't, I have no money.

So it's been a while but things have been crazy as you can imagine. The ribs are healing and almost no pain at all for a couple of weeks now, except when I have been asleep or sneeze or try to lift something I'm not ready for like my 35 pound puppy :/

I saw the surgeon and he said the scars look great, I noticed he wasn't worried about the dwarf vampire bites above my navel, claiming they were from the chest drains uh huh.

Last year we had more than our quota of bad things coming in threes so this year we are hoping to have a break please.. k? thanks.

Hope you all have a good year,I'm sure Annie will be back soon, well as soon as the tidal wave ebbs from work.

Be nice to each other, you just never know. I was lucky.

Claire

Asking for community feedback on hospital experiences

If anyone in the TS community has had any experience being a patient at St. Joseph's hospital in Atlanta, would you please contact me?

After a really bad experience (extreme disrespect and bad treatment) at another hospital, we'd kind of like to know what others have experienced at this one before we attempt to schedule a surgery.

Thanks!

Annie

Non-Surgery - followup

By request of the surgeon (who is extremely dismayed) I have sent him a 3 page letter detailing what happened, and CC'd the CEO of the hospital and the ethics board of the holding company (Tenet). I'll see what they do.

My biggest issue is that they had a patient in severe distress and never, ever checked on her. What if she had fled into an area of the hospital lost, passed out, and hit her head? What if she'd been hit by a car when she bolted across the street in a blind panic? This could have had catastrophic results.

But then again, if this was the level of care given to a patient that the surgeon had specifically requested extra care for, then what would have happened post-op? What if she woke and panicked because she had a chest tube in? Would they have ignored the situation then too?

In addition, since the day of the surgery, I have heard from 3 medical professionals that they avoid that hospital (AMC) like the plague.

One is a firefighter/paramedic that took a patient to the ER that had previously been seen at Grady. The ER at AMC told him they didn't want him because he had been seen at Grady, not AMC. This was a patient transported by ambulance to an ER. He told me that because of that incident and others, they avoid going to AMC at all costs.

The second was someone who took their father to the ER after he had a seizure - when he'd never experienced one before. They did no urine or blood tests, and performed no cat scan. They said he'd had a fainting spell and sent him home. The next day she took him to his regular doctor, who clearly saw he was very ill, diagnosing him with lung cancer, enlarged heart and liver.

Let's just say that I shall let everyone I know to never, ever go to this hospital.