When I took out my brother this morning for breakfast, on the way out he asked our favorite nurse, Stephanie, to button his pants. She made a remark that he was putting on weight, so I mentioned that I thought he looked a little bloated and voiced my concern that his congestive heart failure might be acting up. She mentioned she had been working 2 16 hour shifts (she doesn't get along with the new nursing director), and that she wouldn't be around during the week to follow up. Actually, she wasn't even his nurse today anyhow. So we left for breakfast. I noticed he had a gurgle in his throat and was breathing somewhat heavily, so when we got back, I started looking through his chart to see what his weight was. I couldn't find it, it turns out it gets entered into the computer, not his "book", and they hadn't done it for several days. One of the CNTs overheard us (another better one who has been taken off of helping my brother to "walk" patients (she doesn't like doing that), who weighed him. It turns out e has gained about 15 lbs in about 2-3 weeks! When Stephanie found out she called the doctor who comes into the nursing home. He told her he would see my brother tomorrow morning, but that he had just seen him 2-3 days ago and that he had appeared fine.
This does not give me confidence in the medical care at the home, to say the least. If I can tell there's something wrong just by looking at him. why can't the medical staff who works there? I had a strong feeling that the doctor was just covering himself. My expectations of the nursing staff is somewhat low; for the last 2 weeks, they have stopped shaving him unless I make a fuss. Some of this is from the frequent turn over in staff, I expect it to just get worse because of the crisis in public aid in our State and the lack of timely payments to the nursing homes.
Meanwhile, Stephanie mentioned to me that she thinks the new girlfriend is not good for my brother. She says she berates him because he doesn't pay enough attention to him. She thinks the beratement makes my brother depressed. Apparently the girlfriend is often quite depressed. So the nurse separated them for the evening Saturday night, and she said my brother was singing and laughing with other patients.
When I asked my brother if the girlfriend was making him depressed, he started laughing. He said the nurses have nothing else to talk about! So I am thinking about all this and trying to take it in. I will call the head nurse in the morning and request again that my brother see a doctor. The way things work at the home, it's my guess he won't see anyone for several days.
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