The squeaky wheel

I am an empathetic person. I try to imagine what the other guys are thinking, walk a mile in their moccasins and all that jazz. I know that it must be really irritating for the nurses and support staff to deal with a guy like me sometimes, who wants to know what all the settings on the life support equipment are, who gets snippy if I detect a note of condescension in an explanation of a medical condition, or who sometimes demands to talk to managers if I am unhappy with the care or the procedures that are happening with Woody. "That guy doesn't know how busy we are," might be a comment made as I go off on another tirade.

And I'm sure that's true-- the NICU has been absolutely swamped with new arrivals, and without some advance notice I have no doubt that the same number of nurses have to watch over all the babies whether they're critical or not. But none of the foregoing seems to excuse a situation where my child is getting substandard care, as I see it. A baby born at 23 weeks 2 days is highly critical, even four weeks+ into his stay at the NICU, and assigning a nurse to watch him, watch a kid next door (who requires every-other hour feedings while being held), and backing up another nurse's two kids (while that other nurse is at lunch!) is utterly ridiculous. Add that to the fact that the general order that came down the pike after my last round of complaining about 'grouping cares' for Woody seemed to be roundly ignored this morning, leading to a stream of Woody Harassment procedures*, and when I get back to the hospital tonight I am likely to be on the proverbial warpath.

The care grouping thing is the item most likely to cause me to descend into a flurry of spittle-flecked invective. I have done this before, thankyouverymuch, and after complaining mightily to three consecutive nurse practitioners last week, a discernible difference was achieved-- for a while. It is absolutely not a coincidence to me that Woody is more unstable, requires more oxygen, and needs more sedative drugs after several hours of near-constant "cares".

All that being said, I do recognize that they were probably just having a hard morning, and Woody appears to not be any the worse for wear. His weight gain has appeared to slow down a little, so despite the fact that they said he was up to 'full feedings' last Friday they are actually going up another cc of milk per feeding today, so he is now '11q2' in the NICU argot (11 ccs every 2 hours). Moreover, they are supplementing his milk with some calcium and most likely giving him some protein as well. No word whether it's going to be in shake form.

Maggie's milk production continues to inch up, and she is certainly able to meet his needs for milk in terms of the volume she's producing. I have had to give her pep talks and reassure her on a daily basis since the lactation "expert" struck last week, which continues to make me slightly crazy. I have told her that this fear of low production (known to the Germans as "die Pümpenangst") is normal and not to worry about it, as she's doing great. It remains to be seen if she'll believe me at some point.

*Rumor has it that several shadowy groups have arisen to ensure that Woody is taken care of properly and with as little bothering as possible. Reference here has been made to the "HHW" group. I am aware of a smaller group known as the "People Against Poking Woody Unnecessarily" (PAPWU). The hospital should probably most be afraid of the "Woody Hobbs Order Of Preventing and Ameliorating Stressful Situations" (WHOOPASS). I hear they can get real mean.

**Followup to the aside at the end of this post, where I accused Auntie Krista of denying that the flu is a respiratory disease. She loudly has protested, using some spittle-flecked invective of her own (well, I'm supposing she did, although she is in San Francisco/Oakland and I can't really see her spittle from here). The truth is that while we've argued about what her exact point was when this started, her position now can be distilled to the basic statement that "there is no such thing as phlegm balls". That being said, she's still wrong, wrong, wrong. There is so.