A Tale of 2 Surgeries

Surgery #1

MIL's husband was admitted to the hospital about a week ago for bleeding on the brain. He has been having a variety of difficulties for some time now. He is bipolar and from a generation that didn't understand that kind of thing very well. I remember years ago, when something interfered with his medication and he ended up in the hospital, he was very worried that they'd put him in the psych ward, as they had done in years gone by. Sometimes when he was younger, he was a bit intense, apparently.

Anyway, he was in the hospital and his right side was responding less quickly than his left. We waited for the specialist to evaluate him so that he could be transferred to another hospital for surgery to relieve the pressure. We waited. And we waited. He got worse. He started swearing and became violent and had to be restrained. He didn't know where he was and we weren't sure if he knew that MIL was his wife, or if he thought she was his first wife. His right side was non-responsive. No doctor came to see him.

Finally, SIL went down to his family doctor and demanded that someone evaluate his condition. Were they just waiting for him to die and save themselves some trouble? Nearest we can figure, they thought someone at the hospital was doing that and the hospital thought the family doctor was doing that. Already too-long story short, he had the surgery the next day, because it was pretty serious. Well, duh.

It will be months before he is well again, if at all. He has apparently been having mini-strokes for months now. He doesn't like doctors because he doesn't want to go to psych again, so it's probably been going on for longer than we knew.

*****

Surgery #2

Cousin's DBF broke his collarbone in 2 places riding his motorcycle at a track. The hospital (an hour's drive from here) released him with a recommendation that he see a surgeon. He came home and went to a clinic around here, not having been to a doctor since 1982, and they evaluated him and referred him to the fracture clinic at a local hospital the same day. He had surgery to put in a plate by the end of that day and went home the next.

I'm not sure if there's a moral to this story. Maybe : "A good doctor makes all the difference."