Complications

I haven't been able to find much time (or time to think) over the past two and a half weeks. My grandmother (an 84-year-old with a complicated medical history which includes the removal of her thyroid, one kidney and her gallbladder, the replacement of a hip, and the addition of a shunt in her skull to drain fluid into her abdomen, and congestive heart failure) has been a patient at local hospital here in Pittsburgh.

She was admitted with shortness of breath, and even though the swelling of her abdomen was enough to look like she was in the last trimester of a pregnancy, tests weren't run on her abdomen until several days later. And what they thought was the cause of that problem now might not be--since that was resolved, and her abdomen is swelling again. She's seen doctors from her primary care practice, a cardiologist, an infectious disease specialist (because now she has a blood infection), and (we think) a hematologist/medical oncologist.

This is very frustrating for me because I work in a hospital, in administration in a surgery department, and when I talk to my work friends they seem frustrated about this, too...mostly for the lack of figuring out what's wrong and anything being done to treat it. Although they work in a specialty that wouldn't be beneficial to my grandmother at this point, they do serve patients who are very complicated medically (and surgically), and from observing them I have a good idea about how things should work..only in this case they're not working so well.

And I'm looking at the clock and I should be at the hospital, and I need to take out the trash.