The 3rd was just a few months ago in the new clean bright VA facility in the south suburbs of Grand Rapids, MI.
The difference in attitude of staff in these two places, was night/day; up/down; yin/yang; Hillary/Melania. This last time I was treated with respect as a person, and even more so as a Vet. In Detroit (anyplace in MI east of Lowell is Detroit,) I was cattle interrupting their paid working vacation.
I have only praise for the GR VA.
Hopefully, the Detroit (Allen Park) VA has improved in the 36 year interval.
Here is my VA horror experience (WARNING, long post):
Late on a Sunday night, I started to feel terrible and went to the nearest Emergency Room, the VA ER in Long Beach. I went to reception to check-in and was handed the usual papers to fill out and told to take a seat.
I was wired up and running a fever of 102. After being fed antibiotics and other drugs for 8-hrs, I began to feel better and was released. One hand holding release papers and antibiotics in the other hand, I departed for a small corporate studio apartment for rest. This was Sunday. I was told to return to the VA clinic on Thurs for follow-up.
A day later (Monday) found myself in worse shape, more pain and new symptoms. I returned to VA on Monday, mid-day, went to the climic where I was supposed to go on Thurs. I waited until 1635hrs before a doc could see me. By then I was in agony and really running a fever.
The doctor examined me and said he was going to give me different antibiotics and send me home. I told the doctor I was beginning to REALLY feel bad and perhaps he should check my temperature again and check my prostate. As you know, men usually don’t ask for “the check.”
The doc refused to take my temp, insisting VA civil-service rules prohibit that and we needed to find a nurse to take the temp. A nurse was found and took my temperature (103.5).
Next he did the prostate exam. OUCH—boy-howdy-slap-my-grandma-and-call-me-Sadi-May!!! This is not good and I was whisked into an isolation room. I saw then taping a sign on the door saying anyone entering this room must “Mask Up.”
Thus began my nightmare with the VA hospital.
I noticed if I hit the “call” button the first night (and all others) it took a very long time for anyone to respond.
And when others would hit the buzzer, I clearly could hear the buzzer alarm go off at them nurses station and be ignored. The ring would go on and on and on and eventually I would hear grumbling and one of obama’s nurses would split from the pack and go to the patient.
It was during the night shift I met “Nurse Ratchet” from One Flew Over the Coo-Coos Nest.
One early morning I woke up because I was due another dose of morphine, I waited for the nurse to arrive with my medication. I eventually went back to dozing. I woke up because the pain was now agonizing and my morphine never arrived.
I hit the call button—again. After nearly 10-minutes I got up, leaned on my IV-tree and went to my door and stood there. I observed the nurses’ station. It was empty.
After a few more minutes “Nurse Ratchet” arrived and turned off the buzzer at the nurses’ station. I said I needed my morphine. She gave me a “surly” look and blandly told me she would get it. I went back to my bed and waited.
After a while, Nurse Ratchet came back with morphine for my IV. As she was giving me morphine I asked for my Vicodin as it was also now due.
Nurse Ratchet mumbled something about getting another nurse and left. 15-minutes later, no one came. 30-minutes later, no nurse, no Vicodin.
I hobbled to my door and saw just one nurse, a guy, sitting at the nurse’s station. He was a good RN and he asked what I needed and I told him. He got up and looked down a hallway behind the nurses’ station, and I did too, and saw Nurse Ratchet sitting there with feet on desk and, I am NOT kidding, filing her nails. He asked if she would get my (now over-due) pain meds. She doesn’t get up and hollers at him that she told Nurse So-and-So to get my meds.
Nurse So-and-So, in a room down the hall, heard Nurse Ratchet and hollered that she told Nurse Ratchet that she was working one-on-one with a patient and could not leave her patient. Apparently, Nurse Ratchet thinks merely passing word absolves her of any responsibility.
I waited in my door expecting Nurse Ratchet to arrive but many minutes later, she is still missing. I stepped outside my room and peeked again down the hallway. Again I see Nurse Ratchet sitting at a computer with her feet up on the desk! I am overdue pain meds, in pain, and she is just sitting there.
After about another 5-min, Nurse Ratchet slowly emerges from the hallway and blandly asks what I want (like she didn’t know). Playing games, making the old White Colonel wait. SHE wasn’t going to move at a pace other than what SHE wanted.
I said my pain medication, Vicodin. Not saying a word, she turns slowly and casually sluffs back down the hall. A few minutes later a different nurse arrives and administers the Vicodin pills.
According to several nurses, Nurse Ratchet was known to be a “bad” nurse but the VA being the VA, she can’t be fired (female, obama’s girl).
I was moved from my single room and wheeled to a room with three other patients. As I was being wheeled into the room I see them taping on the door that anyone entering this room must “Mask Up.” Seems logical that I would share a room with other sick people. . .in Bizarro-World
What?!
There were three other patients stuffed in a room that was designed to hold two. We were wedged next to each other and the guy next to me dropped his arm and it hit me—yes, we were that close.+
Early one morning I got up to urinate in my urine container and missed. I was sick, after all, and frankly I am NOT John Holmes. Some urine spilled on the floor next to my bed.
Embarrassed, I went and found a (sleeping) nurse and told her. She came back to my room with a few towels and threw them on the floor and left. I sat on my bed, wondering when housekeeping would arrive to clean/disinfect the floor. Much time passed.
I went out and found the (again, sleeping) nurse and asked when we can expect housekeeping. Incredibly, she, a NURSE, asked, “Why?”
I told her that the floor needs to be disinfected because doctors and nurses and others would be in and out, tracking throughout my room and the hospital whatever they pick up from my floor, besides I am sharing a room with three other guys, one that would at random time YELP in pain, and another one was just laying there and died, and the third guy, the VA was trying to find a care facility for him.
Her answer was “Housekeeping won’t come this early.”
Goodness. I was diagnosed as having MRSA and related medical issues and “they” won’t come and clean the floor?
I pointed out the risks associated with having the nurses walking through the remnants of my urine on the floor and that this places risk to other patients and staff. The nurse was unmoved.
I waited until I saw a cleaning lady and asked her to disinfect the floor. She was a Russian immigrant and was the ONLY hard-worker I ever met at the VA. She also despised the obama nurses for their sloth.
I used the shower—twice.
First shower: I found two stalls. Both had visible mildew on the walls. Ugh. I also noticed lots of small black gnats flying in the showers. Then I saw that other patients bandages on the hand-holds in the shower. The showers looked like a third-world environment.
Days later, second shower: I found the stalls still had mildew, small black gnats flying and the exact same bandages were on the hand-holds!
Another major health hazard with the VA are their pajama-type clothes I was issued.
After a few days I needed a change and asked for new PJs. A nurse delivered the tops and bottoms and I put them on, only to find many snaps on the shirt were missing and it was torn. I took the shirt off, went to the nurse and gave her the unusable shirt and asked for another. She gave me a new shirt.
Now fast a couple days. I need another change and I discover that after I put the new PJ shirt on, it is the SAME top with the missing snaps and torn fabric.
The nurses aid took the original torn snap-less shirt that a guy with MRSA wore and returned it directly to the linen closet for re-issue to other patients.
I was identified as a MRSA patient, I had worn the shirt and it is unhealthy to just place it back in the linen closet for re-issue.
You and I know that but apparently NOT the VA. I gave back the PJ top and told the nurse to get a new shirt and I tossed the other shirt in the bio-hazard bin.
I need another change. I ask for new PJs and, yes, I was given the same shirt that I turned back previously. Apparently the nurse removed it from the bio-hazard bin and returned it to the linen closet.
I told the nurse she must trash the shirt and give me another one. She obtained another shirt and after she left my room I went to my door and watched as she opened the linen closet and tossed my previously worn, un-serviceable and MRSA infected shirt in the linen closet for re-issue to other patients.
One evening early in my stay, a nurse came into my room and saw I still had some medicine remaining in the IV bag. The nurse was impatient and squeezed hard the bag to “finish” the medicine. When the bag was squeezed my forearm with the IV in it exploded in pain and a knot several inches long appeared under my skin where the influx of medicine flooded in.
Throughout my stay it became clear NO ONE CARED and when I raised objections they responded to my comments with, “not my area” or “what can you expect” or “call the patient advocate.”
Food was cold, mush, delivered from the downtown VA Los Angeles hospital. . .abut an hour away. So the meals were put on a plate, covered with one of those metal covers with a hole and trucked to Long Beach.
Nasty, bland, cold, sticky, awful. . .and you had no choice of meals.
The doctors came by and told me I was now released. Paperwork was quickly done, medications issued and I departed. I was told to return for a follow up visit the following Friday. Like heck I would.
A day later the doctors called me at home at the corporate apartment and told me I was discharged in error, to get back to the hospital immediately for admission to be treated, via IV-drip, for a 14-day IV treatment.
I told the doctors I was NOT going back into VA because they tried to kill me with their care. I would instead fly to Texas and go to a private hospital for professional, clean and attentive care.
The doctors were adamant about my returning immediately but I would not budge. I knew from first-hand experience just how horrible the conditions were at VA, too include how risky it is to patients like me, with compromised immune systems and other ailments. Moreover, I was not going to subject myself to further abuse by staff.
I verified with the doctors that while I had MRSA I was not contagious. The next morning I was on a jet heading to Texas.
I entered the Texas Health Presbyterian hospital for 9-day’s of in-patient treatment. The facility in Texas was wonderful, a single room, CLEAN, flat-screen TV and internet (stuff the VA did not have). The staff was courteous and attentive—totally professional.
I filed a formal VA IG complaint against the Long Beach VA and yes, “they” turned it over to the VA Long Beach hospital to investigate themselves.
The same VA Long Beach director that refused to accept from me a written complaint listing my abuse and terrible “care” was placed in charge of conducting an IG investigation against her and her hospital. Good gawd. . . .
Of course she found no problems, none at all, with her hospital, of course.
Welcome to the future under Obama “care.”
After 45 years, I carried my yellowed VA card into a VA facility on only one occasion. 'Filled out an hour's worth of paperwork, and ten days later, received a letter saying I was ineligible. I learned that I would be treated if I'd served in Afghanistan or had been raped.
:-/