Disappearing Sick
Posted: Fri Feb 05, 2010 12:37 pm
I'll take Joe's suggestion and start a new thread about this thing. One of the biggest
problems is that we can't officially report it as an outbreak or an epidemic, because
nobody's "died." They just disappear. Vanish. One minute they're ill, running a fever,
shaking with the chills, vomiting and the like. They complain of being ill, and then they
sleep it off.
First, we just assumed it was a really bad case of the flu. We only took in the patients
who really needed to be hospitalized--the old, the immunosuppressed, and the young. At
first, it really started like the flu.
Before they fell into a coma.
So we started watching them like hawks. Unfortunately, hawks have to sleep, too. And 168 hour weeks will sure tell on a guy. I din't know how I was doing it. He--, I didn't know how I was doing it. I was running back and forth, and one of the nurses--sweet girl, but a few cc's shy of a syringe--thought she could take a break and cal her boyfreind.
That's all it took. The alarms started wailing, and when we rushed in--no patient. Gone.
That was the first. We thought it was weird, at first. We had to label it as a self checkout. But then the second happened. And the third. And fourth.
The first I could've seen checking out. Small kid, college student who wanted to go back to college. The second, a single mother on dialysis who thought she needed to look after her kids, even thou she was puking her guts inside out. Third, and old guy.
In a wheelchair. Most of the 22 others were like that. Some could have left, some couldn't have. I asked around, but nobody actually *checked* them out. That's just what it's been billed as.
And it kept geting worse, on both sides of the hospital. I tried looking into it on my off days last week, but I was railroaded off. Why the hospital's being so quiet about it is beyond me, but I tried looking deeper into it.
Which is why I'm currently on suspencion without pay.
I smell major coverup, but I still don't see how they could do it. All it takes is for one second of unattention, and they vanish. I was literally staring at patient 22, and when I blinked and rubbed my eyes, the alarms started shouting.
problems is that we can't officially report it as an outbreak or an epidemic, because
nobody's "died." They just disappear. Vanish. One minute they're ill, running a fever,
shaking with the chills, vomiting and the like. They complain of being ill, and then they
sleep it off.
First, we just assumed it was a really bad case of the flu. We only took in the patients
who really needed to be hospitalized--the old, the immunosuppressed, and the young. At
first, it really started like the flu.
Before they fell into a coma.
So we started watching them like hawks. Unfortunately, hawks have to sleep, too. And 168 hour weeks will sure tell on a guy. I din't know how I was doing it. He--, I didn't know how I was doing it. I was running back and forth, and one of the nurses--sweet girl, but a few cc's shy of a syringe--thought she could take a break and cal her boyfreind.
That's all it took. The alarms started wailing, and when we rushed in--no patient. Gone.
That was the first. We thought it was weird, at first. We had to label it as a self checkout. But then the second happened. And the third. And fourth.
The first I could've seen checking out. Small kid, college student who wanted to go back to college. The second, a single mother on dialysis who thought she needed to look after her kids, even thou she was puking her guts inside out. Third, and old guy.
In a wheelchair. Most of the 22 others were like that. Some could have left, some couldn't have. I asked around, but nobody actually *checked* them out. That's just what it's been billed as.
And it kept geting worse, on both sides of the hospital. I tried looking into it on my off days last week, but I was railroaded off. Why the hospital's being so quiet about it is beyond me, but I tried looking deeper into it.
Which is why I'm currently on suspencion without pay.
I smell major coverup, but I still don't see how they could do it. All it takes is for one second of unattention, and they vanish. I was literally staring at patient 22, and when I blinked and rubbed my eyes, the alarms started shouting.