Fun in Rehab Land

My blood pressure was checked 60 bazillion times yesterday, I met with 40,000 docs, nurses, case managers, PTs, OTs and Speech Therapists.

n.b., I’m never sure of what the speech people are for in my case. I’ve been told, and they affirmed, that my mewlings, despite all the colorful language, are just fine—pre-deaf fine even. I guess these folks do a fuck-ton more than judge and work on my jibber jabber. They primarily grilled me on my minor but, nonetheless present, swallowing issues and my memory loss fears. So, I’ll see them again while here so’s they can help me recall Ravel’s and Eddie Veder’s names without consulting Google. Cool. They did give me the same test that the grifting, orange shitpile took. I was tempted to give his answer instead of my own but wasn’t sure how well that’d go over.

So, lots of evals, very little walking but progress all the same.

Meanwhile, in nurse and aide-ville, I had my first less than optimal experiences (of this go ‘round) yesterday. Some of the staff remember and forget that I’m deaf as it works for them. With ‘Dipstick,’ my silent translation device on (a Chrome running Live Transcribe), it can be easy to think that I’m ‘hearing’ the worker bees when they’re talking directly to me and sans ear function when they’re not.

The point? One nurse got into a huge personal convo with a coworker about an ex-patient who wanted to chat with her on the phone. He was coming in for a followup appointment and, presumably, hoped to connect. She was not having it but, instead of handling the shit like a mature and diplomatic adult (she’s probably around my age) just kept telling her coworker to hang up on the dude.This happened on two separate visits to my room. Given how melodramatically upset she seemed, were my meds done correctly? Also, at this point in life, if you can’t be diplomatic yet firm in your ‘thanks but no thanks’ to a person ON THE DAMN PHONE, maybe it’s time to stop working with the public. In addition, totally not cool to tell your fellow bees to take care of your shit for you.

This wasn’t her only faux pas—just the one that’s going to cause me to ask for a different evening nurse.

The other sitch? Very nice, sweet, young-ish aide or nurse, supporting the one noted above, seemed rather delicate about cleaning up ‘my friend.’ MY FRIEND? Fer fuck’s sake, this isn’t the ‘50s and I’ve had major spine just seven days ago but sure, I can clean myself up, sure. Next, when I wanted a boost up on the bed, she indicated that I was to do this myself. I allowed this wasn’t possible—see spine surgery above. This she did BUT assuming I couldn’t hear her (forgetting Dipstick could) she called me a ‘fat hyena.’ Huh, never been called that before. I kind of like it though I’m sure that wasn’t her intent.

So yeah, another point to bring up with the manager today. Everyone else has been wonderful though.