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Page 116 from
Chapter 6
His Prostate and Me
truthful about his pain and weakness, he gave Dr Fishman the
wrong information. I was a better judge of his condition and
was convinced he should remain in the hospital. We found
out that I was right as soon as he was home, when he had to
immediately return to the hospital and spend half of the night
in the emergency room.
The next month was very difficult for him. He remained
sick, weak and needed a great deal of care. I was the caregiver,
so what could have been a short hospital stay with help from
many nurses, was a month of night and day responsibility for
me and sadly, continued illness for Dick.
I share this account not to grumble about caring for
Dick, but to encourage caregivers to hold tight to their
convictions and instincts. I could have saved Dick a great deal
of agony and illness and me a month of a different land of
hardship had I only insisted that he remain in the hospital
until we discovered what was causing him to be so ill. If that
didn't work, I should have spoken with his nurse and his
doctor.
Later we discovered that his condition was not related to
the surgical procedure but rather to his previously unknown
drug allergies. That problem could have been far more
quickly resolved in the hospital than at home. The subsequent
trips to the emergency room and the doctors office were
difficult for someone as sick as Dick. He continued to have
allergic reactions to the pain medications, which in turn,
made him quite ill and covered with a nasty looking rash.
Unfortunately, the circle of illness continued as the
medications changed. Finally, through much "trial and error
research," we were able to identify the culprit medication, and
he began to improve, but the progress was very slow.
To make matters worse, Dick's twenty year-old cat,
Chin, began dying at the same time as Dick was recovering
from surgery. She had kidney failure and was not making it to
her cat box. I had two severe cases on my hands and thought
to myself at the time, "Why do women spend so much time in
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