jueves, 5 de junio de 2008

Someone is getting sick of being there


Well, luckily today they left Mauri mostly alone- no cleaning sessions or anything like that. They did do blood transfusions throughout the day.
We also cleared up what the plans are for him over the next couple of days. Tomorrow, Friday, they will do another cleaning session on all burnt areas except for his right arm (where he has the grafted skin). He will be allowed to rest over the weekend (when the hospital basically shuts down and is lacking doctors), and on Monday they will operate on his other arm and will try to also graft skin onto the right side of his torso if he doesn't bleed too much. If they are unable to graft the skin onto his torso, they will do another grafting operation next Friday. On Monday, when they operate, they will also take a look at his right arm to see how the grafts are doing.
Meanwhile, though, Mauri cannot sit up. He is confined to the special bed 24 hours a day, and is tired, hot, and frustrated. He didn't sleep at all last night, and is very bored and uncomfortable during the night. At least during the day, he sees people walking around, and that helps distract him- even though he says that noone really talks to him. At night, though, he can't keep the TV on (and even if he could, in the special bed he can't really see it anyways, and basically has to stare at the ceiling). So, despite the meds that they are constantly pumping into him, he was trying to stay awake all day today to see if he could finally sleep a few hours straight during a night. We'll find out tomorrow if he succeeded.
He's having a hard time having the patience to be where they have them- something that is very easy to understand. I'm having a hard time having the patience myself, and I only have to/can be there 2 hours a day.
I see that the people who work there complain about every little thing that they do, but they don't let me in to help out. As an example: today they had a blood pressure cuff on his left ankle area. On his right leg he has other monitors, and everywhere else he is bandaged so tightly that he cannot feel his legs or arms. (they broke 3 bandages trying to tighten them- if that gives you the idea- it needs to be tight to help assure that the skin grafts take). Anyways, even though they only take his bp every hour or so, they insisted on leaving the cuff on his leg. He complained that it bothered him- it scratched and just added to how hot he feels submerged in the bed, but it was just too much to ask for them to take the extra 10 seconds to take it off and 10 seconds to put it on again when they need to take bp. It wasn't worth that extra little bit of effort to try to lessen his discomfort. I can't understand their indifference. They treat him like an annoying plant that they have to water, and we can't be there to defend him. The logic of most of their rules and actions continues to baffle and frustrate me. He's constantly telling me who has "bad milk" (in English so that they don't get it) For me, it's the hardest part of this situation (no, it's not being in the bus 3 hours a day or sitting around waiting in the non-stop-since-may9 rain that falls EVERY afternoon). If only I could be there with him...
Today's picture shows the jail windows that we look through to talk to him. You can also see in the picture their stupid phones that don't work.
You can probably tell from the tone of the message that I'm annoyed.
How I LOVE socialized medicine.

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