Perfect Patient

I think that it's funny how all the nurses and therapists argue over me and over who gets me. They fight over me. This weekend, the aid had me in the morning. For second shift, another aid was assigned to me, but the first aid that I had had in the morning wanted me. She offered to take 3 of the other aid's patients in addition to me, so long as she could have me. This would give the other aid 4 less patients, and thus a much easier load. The nurses love me because I make their life much easier. They don't really have to do much. I do my own trach care. I give myself my own neb treatments and can set up the o2. I can administer the Benedryl as needed. Really all they have to do is give me access to the medication. The physical therapist told me how even they fight over me. I asked why. There is nothing that I do that is extraordinary. I am knowledgeable. I am pretty much independent and don't require a lot of "care." The psychical therapist told me that the reason they all love me is because I am motivated to get better. A lot of the people that come here are not. Many of the patients here are depressed and have no motivation to engage in therapy and get better. They are depressed about their condition and their limitations. They feel hopeless. They have lost functioning ability in some way or another and they are trying to adapt to life which can seem impossible at times. Thus, they seem to give up. They don't engage in therapy because the feeling is "why bother anyway." I am not like that. I am engaged in therapy and I am motivated. I am working hard to get back as much function as I can.

The truth of the matter is that you only get so much time here. Insurance will not pay indefinitely for a person's care here. Nor will they wait until a person gets ready to do therapy. You are given only a certain amount of days that insurance will cover for acute rehab. Though there are times that insurance will cover a few more days if the rehab doctors felt it necessary and helpful towards reaching your goal of independence and going home, but they won't make exceptions if you're not engaging in therapy. What's the point of paying extra when you aren't even participating? The staff here aren't gong to appeal for extra days if you aren't participating. They need the bed for someone else, someone who will engage in therapy, is motivated to get better, and who needs it more. So what is gained by doing this? Nothing. You are still unprepared to cope with living. You haven't worked on improving your ability to function. Therefore, most likely you will end up going to a nursing home or long-term care facility.

I worked so hard to get here. The first time I was sent home, it was hell. I wasn't prepared to go home. I didn't have the services that I needed setup. In reality, I should never have been discharged home. Once discharged, we tried to get me into rehab but doing so on the outside, when not a patient of the hospital, is near impossible. You have to go through insurance and jump through a million hoops, whereas when your a patient in the hospital, it is easy to get services. When I was admitted the second time, I refused to be discharged. I demanded to go to rehab. Even that wasn't easy. My case is complicated and several of the rehab facilities wouldn't take me because of the Igg treatments. During this time, which was about a week and a half, the social worker asked several times if I wanted to be discharged and work on it from home. I refused this as an option. It would certainly make their life easier, but then I'd be in the same place as I had been when initially discharged, unable to function. I couldn't live that way. My goal was to regain as much function as possible, so that my life could go back to being as normal as possible as soon as possible. I knew that insurance would only give me so many days, so I had to make the best of what I got. I had to work as hard as I could in order to regain my strength and functionality as much as possible. It is hard. At times it's very discouraging, but just sitting there and feeling sorry for myself wouldn't change things. I need to make good use of what I do have, and focus on my strengths rather than my weaknesses, what I have rather than what I have lost. The goal of the trach is to give me more time and to help me function as normally as possible with a decent quality of life. Thus, I can't go around feeling sorry for myself. I need to learn to live with this. So maybe it is my thought pattern that helps me.