Having no where else to turn... I will let it out here.

a reply to: Irishhaf

I totally understand your reaction and your attitude and YOU ARE RIGHT !

Do not let anyone tell you otherwise.

When your wife is gravely ill, you are angry inside, very. This is normal.

The illness is not the hospital's fault but you need to turn your anger somewhere; it is normal to "hate hospitals" under those conditions, provided you just feel the anger but don't actually take it out on anyone there, or yourself.

I truly wish your wife and yourself the best.

Star and Flag.

It sounds incredibly frustrating and scary. I would rant too. Prayers for recovery for your wife and peace and strength for you.

a reply to: Irishhaf


Hang in there! I will be praying for you both. I went through something similar with my mom. She had heart surgery, then suffered a stroke. That was last Fall, she's walking and talking fine. She was so bad at one point we were making arrangements because the drs advised us to.


Keep us updated. Praying she'll be ok

a reply to: Irishhaf

Woah! Ist thing! Be glad she's there now. Im an EMT and I'd have taken her myself and authorized her to go after a quick triage assessment. Be glad its looked at now...and not after a horrendous incident. Thank God.

Look...you have a history...very personal about this subject...and sensitive..I get that. And its normal. I'd rather say she needs to go now...than have to tell you the worst.

It happens, and I've had to. Personally, Im glad she's there. At least you'll know whats up and it can be a millions different things...some bad, some good true..or absolutely nothing at all.

Its normal to be upset...its good that you love her that much...so Ill pray for you. Take a breath, hope for the best...and support her. And You? YOU need to take it slow and calm it down....

Youre no good to her if youre not ok, right? I can tell youre a good and caring guy...and that important.

And thanks for your service...message me anytime about anything...even just to talk. Ill get right back...

God Bless you both....

MS
1st Responder
EMT/ERT
FEMA/Department of Homeland Security

a reply to: Irishhaf

It's beautiful you can be there for your wife. Support her, love her, be with her, and keep your faith. Will be keeping you in my thoughts.

a reply to: Irishhaf

That sucks, man. At least you managed to track your wife down. I hope that it's nothing. Please keep us updated. Good luck.

Hospitals are terrifying, overwhelming, and about as stressful as an environment can be short of - I have to imagine - being in combat or some such.

My advice to toss on the pile of everything others have said, based on my own experience having to care for an ill loved one both in and out of hospital:

• Your reaction is perfectly natural and normal, but you don't know how long this could go on or what may be demanded of you in terms of helping her through this, so while it may feel utterly impossible right now and is obviously far easier said than done... do all you can to remain calm, and conserve your energy. Gird yourself for what could be a long process that is both mentally and physically very taxing not just for her, but for you as well. Get your head around that prospect so you're ready for it, and steady your mind and spirit for the long haul no matter what that takes. And continue venting as part of that. We all take turns helping each other in life, we all have our time to need help from others. Right now, you and she need the emotional support to cope with this. Don't be afraid of venting some of that emotion both here, and in your personal life.
  
• Make sure you're getting up to walk regularly while waiting for the sake of your own health. You can't help her if you end up having a blood clot or panic attack or some such. Walking will help prevent both.
  
• Eat. It might be next to impossible to think about food, but find the most nutritious thing you can that will keep your blood sugar and nutrients up, and eat it. Drink, too. Make sure you're drinking enough that your pee is coming out at a normal pace, and isn't getting too dark. It's easy to get dehydrated when distracted and stressed out.
  
• Take each moment and each day one at a time. Thinking through all the possible scenarios, fearing what they may be, what may be required to deal with them, etc. will only drive you insane. Take each moment and day like a single slide in a film reel. Slow the reel down and view it slide by slide, rather than as a continuous nightmare you have to deal with all at once, all on your own.
  
• At night, when visiting hours are over, keep the phone on but go home and sleep. Trust the doctors (as maddening as they can be at times) to do all they can for her, and know that you need rest to cope with this process - and to help her cope with it. Cannot possibly overstate the importance of the mental "reset" sleep facilitates for coping with this kind of a situation. Stress will make you sick, exhaust you, and have you awash in cortisol and adrenaline unless you sleep.
  
• While others who have commented are absolutely correct that the frustrating policies you're encountering are for her protection... this doesn't mean mistakes cannot be made. Remain calm, but carefully observe everything happening and document it if possible. There may come a time when you do need to advocate for her, either with respect to her treatment, or even just her being treated with dignity and respect as human being. That happened to my mother. A combination of clerical errors, misdiagnosis, and lackadaisical policy inertia at her hospital resulting in a dramatic worsening of her condition, and far more suffering than was necessary before her quality of life finally improved with a change in direction once she was finally referred to the appropriate specialist. That didn't happen until we complained to the patient advocate, and calmly but insistently stood up for her rights and welbeing. I'm not saying this will be necessary in this case, but be mindful of it, and prepared to do so - again, calmly (getting angry will just put you at the legal and optical disadvantage) - if need be.
  
• Don't forget that, however dramatic a change in your life results from this... in time, even if it takes a long while, a new normalcy and routine will emerge. Your and her stress and fear levels will normalize and make this situation bearable. That doesn't help right now, but hang on to that knowledge and that - barring the worst, of course - "all things must pass" in due course. It was all that got us through the early days of her crisis. It changed her life for the worse unquestionably and I would never minimize that, but we both came to grips with it in time. While there is life, there is hope of this.
  

I will pray for you both. I hope it's nothing, and/or just gastric or musculoskelletal in nature. They did the right thing by hospitalizing her in this case.

Peace.

a reply to: Irishhaf

I had to deal with the same with losses, sadly as is live most everyone has their own issues to deal with. Good to have some medium even if a forum to talk on. Would seek groups in your area of people who meet to talk about grievance and more.

I said a prayer for you (and your loved ones) to our Lord and Savior, God/Jesus Christ

I am wishing the best for your wife.

I know it's a struggle here too any time a friend gets very ill or injured it's a hassle to find out where they are every time, I can imagine how much more aggravating that becomes when it is your wife you are searching for.

really really really hoping everything is okay or at least treatable.

-Alee

Update:

She is home now, they ran multiple EKG's, ultra sound of her heart and lungs, pregnancy test, and even considered constipation as causes for the chest pain... end result... they have no idea, by all accounts she is healthy as the proverbial horse, most likely cause stress.

Thank you all for the well wishes, we appreciate it.

a reply to: Irishhaf

Happy to hear that

Well Irishhaf, glad to hear your wife is well. So now she is not seriously ill have you jokingly reprimanded her for your dilemma?
Let me lighten the mood for you with my story. This actually happened 5 years ago.
I was riding home on my motorcycle when a guy rushing to catch his plane side swipped me. Now it's a nice summer day about 4 in the afternoon, rush hour time. Now I'm not hurt but lay in the road for a few seconds just thinking why me on such a nice day. But unbeknownst to me a couple in a van following me saw it happen and they were avid first aiders.
They held me down thinking I might be more seriously injured.
Three ambulances turned up, two police cars and a emergency paramedic. After a few questions they knew I wasn't seriously injured but took the opportunity to use me for a practice.
They strapped be to a spinal board and put me in an ambulance. Now in the ambulance asking me questions were 6 ambulance men and a paramedic. The police at this time phoned my wife and told her I'd been in an accident, to which she asked how I was.
The policeman responded by saying there are 7 medics working on me in the ambulance. That was the time my wife had kittens.

a reply to: crayzeed

Thanks for that the laugh was much needed..

Always takes me a few days to start to unclench after I get spun up..

a reply to: Irishhaf

glad your wife is ok, must be the stress situation she has at work that you mentioned...glad you made this thread so you could vent and let off steam in a healthy way..that is important...(((((((((((hugs)))))))))) to both of you!

a reply to: research100

As far as her work stress... my wife is a nice person I am not once you mess with my family, I have nearly 20 year in the military I know the regulations, and I know who to report the problem to in such a way that the higher ups on this base cannot protect him, she will be leaving active duty in the fall of 2018, right before we leave this base I will scorched earth this place.

In the mean time I am keeping my eyes and ears open for any more wrong behavior by this clown.

a reply to: Irishhaf

Germans and Japanese have a higher level of healthcare than other countries..that said Im doubtful about healthcare in general. I started ignoring experts and insisting on personal experimentation. Western medicine almost gave me a heart attack, and Ayurveda and TCM made me feel decades younger. IT shouldnt be surprising, those practices were hammered out over thousands of years, while our healthcare has been used as a means of control. Rockefeller took control of it 100 years ago with the Flexner report. He turned it into a great monopoly..great for him(to sell pharma), junk for the patient. Monopolies are always bad for the customer. While it sounds good that doctors have to study for 8 years..well what they are taught can be controlled, and what a medical researcher knows interestingly is different from what a doctor is taught. A perfect example is that doctors claim you can't "detox" from sweating when there is no shortage of studies on Pubmed showing you excrete alot of heavy metals in sweat. You can see how hard they want to maintain this narrative, they recently tried to ban naturalnews.com from google, erasing all 140k pages. They were well on their way to the 100k signatures they need to get the whitehouse to look at it and google relented. The average doctor has a shorter lifespan than the average patient..they are not to be trusted!