Screwed J test & bad personal news

[ghostjmf]

My Mom was given too much of own prescribed pancreas-stimulating drug, not straight insulin, but the real question is "why".


Nursing homes get orders telling them what meds their patients are on. They should not be changing doses, or adding new meds just to make the patient meet some statistical average.


They also do something equally lethal; when the patient is admitted, they take all their meds away to test them. This is to make sure their 89-year-old, stroked-out diabetic patients are not sneaking in heroin (I'm only being slightly facetious here; they do have younger patients with a drug-abuse history, why not limit this check to them) & if they can provide the patient with replacement meds at 17 times what the cost was when the patient bought them via insurance, they will do so.


If they can't provide them, the patient finally gets their own meds back.

The patient waits a couple days or more without getting life-sustaining drugs. I bet there are fatalities directly accountable to this.


Also, my Mom was released to a particular home because they said they had a wound vacuum, something people with deteriorating large skin ulcers need to help them heal. Mom had the use of it in the hospital. When she arrived at the home, they said "oh, it's on order from Detroit. It will be here in a few days". She should never have been released to the home until the apparatus was on the premises.

[ghostjmf]

Another thing nursing homes do is tranquilize patients beyond belief, unless the families actively stop them from doing this.


Their excuse is that they don't want batty, infirm patients wandering all over the hallways & falling down. (If we could have gotten my Mom to walk anywhere in that place, she wouldn't have deteriorated so quickly. Even if she had fallen on their carpeted hallways. She was an athlete, & knew how to break falls from years of practise. Seriously.) They also don't want to have to deal with combative patients. But they're not allowed to use physical restraint anymore. so they've substituted mental restraint, at great cost to many patients.


They also kept trying to give my Mom opiates for pain in situations where a Tylenol would have done just fine. My sister was at the home full-time, almost, trying to stop all this.

[SportsFan68]

Another thing nursing homes do is tranquilize patients beyond belief, unless the families actively stop them from doing this.
. . .

I know of a case like this also; one of my Toastmasters friends had to put her father in a full-time residential facility, and Ghost's description of "tranquilized beyond belief" is fully accurate, according to her. Because of the distance, my friend was unable to put in the hours that Ghost's sis did (well done, Sis), and she went directly to the facility administrator to assure that proper medication levels would be provided in the future.

[thguy65]

The nursing (rehab) homes in Dallas are just as guilty of giving too much insulin to patients. My Dad (diabetic type 2 ) was given insulin why he was there 2 weeks ago (never in his life did he need or take it) and ever since he has been so lethargic. He was given pain killers which always make his sugar levels rise and his regular pills for diabetes plus the insulin. He is home now, but still is not himself. I took him to his PCP and he didn't give me an answer. I went to see the head of the nursing home and asked why in the world would you give him insulin and they said everyone gets it. So word of warning to everyone with elderly parents, make sure you monitor all medications. Does anyone know why my Dad is so lethargic/ Does it take time to recover from getting insulin when you don't need it?

If your Dad's blood glucose levels are not too low (under 70) now that he is home, then the use of insulin while in the nursing facility should not be the cause of him still being lethargic unless his glucose level dropped severely low for an extended period of time and caused brain damage. You would need to see what his blood glucose levels were from the nursing staff's monitoring records of your Dad during his stay there.