What Next

An emergency appendectomy wasn't enough; four days later I'm back in the hospital with two bacteria in my wound. I got a fever while recouperating from the appendectomy when I got a fever of 102. My friend drove me back to the hospital where I laid in the emergency room for 81/2 hours.

The ER nurses hooked me up to an IV, and ignored all my requests to use the restroom. I had to unhook myself from the bed, drag the IV liquid down the hall, hold it above my head while trying to go to the bathroom. Welcome to the American medical system.

A room finally opened up on the post-op floor at 8:30 p.m. That's where I spent two days on one antibiotic, and then the doctor who performed the appendectomy opened the wound. The culture taken from the drainage showed two bacteria, one of which was E-Coli. Turned out that the antibiotic I was on wasn't useful in ridding the E-Coli so I was switched to another.

I spent four days in the hospital and then they told me I'd have to go to skilled care. I ended up in a nursing home. Anger doesn't even begin to describe my feelings at this point. I told the doctor I was about to go nuts in this home, and he sent me home with visiting nurses. They took several vials of blood, and I never received one report on results. Like I don't have a right to know what the hell is going on with me.

So here I am at home. The visiting nurse came two days out of the five to show me how to run the IV and pack the wound. Now I'm doing it myself while the visiting nursing agency gets paid by my HMO. The American health care system at its best.