I overslept which means that we were 25 minutes late getting to the hospital, although when we got there, the most unusual thing happened.
We were just getting into the lift to go up to the Oncology Outpatients when a woman I had never met before stopped us and handed us a ticket for the car park. Apparently she had been given a couple of free exit passes to the carpark and she only needed one, so she gave the other one to us.
It was such a surprise, but such a totally welcome surprise! It was nice to have something nice come our way... especially when the rest of the day went so badly downhill!
After getting to outpatients, we saw Dr Peter really quickly, and then we started to wait...
And we waited...
and waited...
and waited...
6 hours after we got there they FINALLY had her chemo ready to administer.
Because one of the drugs causes damage to the kidneys and the bladder, they have to do 8 hours of intensive IV hydration post chemo, so then we had to wait for a bed on the ward...
And we waited...
and waited...
and waited...
By the time we got to the ward I had one very tired, very cranky, very moody little girl who wanted nothing more than her dinner and her pain relief and her bed... so I got her into bed, I fed her, I settled her down, and then I went to ask for her pain relief... which is when things went from bad to utterly insane!!!
When the resident came around to do the medication chart for Nicola's admission, I told her that the easiest way would be to just copy from the last one. We were only discharged 6 days ago and nothing had changed except the morphine dose which had gone from 7mg twice daily to 8mg twice daily.
Sounds easy right?
Just copy from one piece of paper to another?
Well, you would think so! But apparently someone with a Bachelors Degree in Medicine can't comprehend the simplicity of such a task!
When I asked for Nicola's oxycodone we discovered that instead of being prescribed 2mg every 3 hours as required, she had been prescribed 10 (TEN)mg every three hours!
This is a hard core heavily controlled narcotic drug that has some insane side effects for overdose, including heart attack and respiratory shock... and this doctor bungled her dose?!?!
Out of every medication on her chart, there was ONE that was correct. ONE. Out of well over a dozen!!
To say that I was furious is an understatement. I am trying to work out how the hell such a monumental screw up could happen... and what scares me even more is that if it wasn't for the fact that we picked it up, there is no guarantee that anyone else would have! I mean, sure, you would think that a nurse would question such an extreme dose for such a high child, but mistakes do happen... we see it in the media all the time!
The whole thing just left me so totally, completely and utterly livid at the whole thing!
Complaints have now been filed and the charts have been rewritten correctly... but still...
:@
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