Update on Mark

Mark's surgery went very well yesterday. It lasted 4 hours, but Dr. Blalock said that everything went as planned-no surprises. He removed a golf ball size portion of Mark's left kidney. The male recovery room nurse allowed me to go back to see him since it was taking a while to have his room assigned. He looked terrible when I first saw him-his face swollen and pale. I wasn't back there long when they said that he finally had a room. He wanted me to stay and go to the room with him, but I had to go back and tell everyone what was going on. After getting him to the room around noon, he spent the rest of the afternoon awake. He wanted to sit on the side of the bed, so he did. We were amazed how well he was doing.

After everyone left around 6pm, I walked downstairs to get a coke. When I got back, things changed-he was in a lot of pain. He came back from surgery with a pain pump of dilaudid and it was no longer helping with the pain. At 6:30, I pushed the call button for the nurse. I was told that it was "shift change" and it may be a little while. From then until 7:30, I called them two more times and went out to the nurses station twice all while you could hear Mark moaning from out in the hall. When I was standing outside his door trying to get someone to come in and check on him, one nurse stepped in and said that all he had ordered was the pump. Mark said, "someone's giving me something!" and she replied "no, this is all we can do". Finally, at 7:30 his new nurse (who just came on duty) came in the room. It was a male nurse and he promised that he was going to take care of him. He went out to get another nurse who he called his "mentor" to help. She came in and the two of them stayed with him for the next hour doing everything in their power to make him comfortable. The first thing she did was tell the male nurse to check his chart and see what Dr. Blalock had ordered for "breakthrough" pain medication. I told her that the last nurse said he couldn't have anything and she said that surgeons always have something oral ordered to be given if the pump isn't managing the pain. She said the nurse just didn't go look. She also gave him a Xanax to relax him as well as 2 Loritabs! All of this was ordered for him, but the day shift was too worried about getting out of there to take time to look. I told Jarrett (the male nurse) and Miss Mae Boyd (the one he called his mentor) how much I appreciated what they had done to help Mark because I had cried from 6:30 until 7:30 when no one would help him. Mae Boyd walked over to where I was sitting and said "you listen to me....don't you ever let anyone do that to you again. No one should have to be in as much pain as your husband was in. That's just wrong. You jump up and down, throw a fit or whatever it takes." She said that the patient's care comes first, not preparing for shift change.