Patient, Nurse, and Technology Advocate.
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Being a patient is a difficult task for me.
I’m used to being the leader, the provider, the organizer, the nurse, but never the patient.
But when the diagnosis of a brain tumor stops you dead in your tracks, you have no choice but to become a patient. Then again, I should know better. As Six Until Me and Chronic Babe have already taught me, We Are All Patients.
Although it’s generally never been uncommon for many to enter into the profession of nursing after receiving post-secondary educations and degrees in other fields, the number of middle-age nursing students appears to be on the significant rise lately. In fact, the number of people pursuing later careers in life sciences in general today appears to be increasing. But as a direct case in point for nursing, the next graduating class of 40 from Heartland Community College’s two-year nursing program in Normal, Illinois, has zero “traditional” students scheduled to become RNs on May 18th.
Recently I received an Exergen TemporalScanner Thermometer to review and was pleasently surprised with just how simple and efficient it is. It’s so easy to use that even my toddler had it mastered in a matter of seconds and was going around the house attempting to get the temperature of everyone in sight.
In my opinion temporal artery scanning is the most efficient and therefore the best way to take the temperature of your child. In my experiences both as a nurse and a patient, temporal artery scanning caused the least discomfort and inconvenience for both the healthcare provider and the patient as well as providing and accurate temperature.
In my years of bedside care I often had to go outside of the 30 minute window for timed medications for the benefit of the patient. Most of the times these times are arbitrary anyhow. If a medication is ordered once per day it doesn’t really matter what time of day the patient gets it. It should fit within their normal routine not within what the pharmacy schedules it. I never once received any sort of reprimand for my medication timing. I often had to request the scheduled times for medications be changed by the pharmacy, but many times I had to give the medication at a different time and documented the reason why.
It would seem that if you are performing surgery specifically to remove a brain tumor, and when you get inside there is no brain tumor, you’d stop, right?
You wouldn’t dig around for your own satisfaction. You already knew it wasn’t cancerous, so you don’t need to look for anything else.
He extra time in my head lead to the CSF leak which made for the most miserable 7 days of my life.
I had to have a lumbar drain inserted to relieve the pressure of the CSF. If I wanted to lift my head off the bed at all I had to call a nurse to clamp the drain or else my brain my squeeze through the holes in my skull. (And that lovely gem came straight from the mouth of one of my nurses to another nurse… that really comforted me. Let me tell ya)
I obtained the MRI results and read for myself what the radiologist thought my my brain mass. Apparently I have a pituitary macroadenoma and has suffered a headache related to something called pituitary apoplexy.
The neurologist referred me to both an endocrinologist and an neurosurgeon. The result was the recommendation to undergo Endoscopic Transsphenoidal Surgery to remove the tumor through my nose.
The following infographic does a great job of illustrating the cost of various surgeries as well as detailing how many of that operations are performed in a year.
IT’s worth noting that cost for these procedures vary by region and also from facility to facility. What would be ideal was if a surgery cost $x.xx amount no matter where you had it or who performed it. But unfortunately that is just not so. Hospitals and insurance companies are constantly renegotiating their agreed upon allowances and changing what they determine is “reasonable and customary.”
What I found particularly interesting is that less that 5 hours of sleep can actually increase your risk of diabetes by as much as 2 1/2 times. It can also lead to increase in heart attack by 45%. In general it increases your risk of death by 12%. A 12% boost in death likelihood over a few hours of sleep every night. Pretty impactful.
Lack of sleep can also make you gain weight and feel lethargic. Your body goes into fight or flight mode and does not process food properly causing it to store excess fat. Over time the results of this can be noticeable and life impacting.
As you can see, the above infographic gives an excellent visual of how lack of sleep can contribute for various comorbidities that can certainly contribute to your early demise.
Technology continually improves healthcare and our daily lives.
The video below is a fantastic example of technology saving lives by providing improved access to trauma surgeons in areas that don’t have them on staff. Trauma surgeon Rafael Grossmann MD(@ZGJR) reached out to me on twitter and shared with me the video. In it, he discusses iPod Teletrauma: the $229 130 million sq. ft. Trauma Room.
Hospitals and healthcare providers every start shaking in their boots when they think of social media and healthcare. They freak out about the possibly of a HIPAA violation. But the fear that is struck in many of their hearts is really unneeded. There are 18 patient identifiers that are off limits when it comes to [...]
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