roller coaster

Ugh. We just got back from emergency. Joe is back in the hospital. At around 4:30 a.m., Mark heard Joe calling out. When Mark got to Joe's room, he found him on the floor, he had fallen on the way from the bed to the washroom. We called 911 and the paramedics were there in no time.

We got down to the emergency room by 4:55 a.m. but didn't see a doctor until 8 a.m. By emergency room standards, that's not bad I suppose. Joe had cut his head and his arm, he has 4 staples in his head and 12 stitches in his arm. I felt kind of bad for the poor doctor who had been treating him, he started to tell us about how to change the dressings and I interrupted him. I gave him the reader's digest condensed version of what had be going on for the past couple of weeks and the poor guy's jaw dropped. Because Joe had been released on Saturday, and it was a long weekend, his file was somewhere en route to patient records so this guy didn't know that Joe had just been released 36 hours before.

So, we met with the social worker about crisis placement and she's working on getting him a room in a long term care facility. Joe is agreeable to this and has signed all of the appropriate paperwork. I feel bad for the poor guy, he's weak and battered and bruised, he's been put through the ringer over the past 14 days and I can't help but feel that if he had been admitted on June 14, when we made the first trip to the emergency room, all of this could have been avoided and he'd be at home with us right now. I'm a little angry about the way the health system has let us all down and honestly, I'm feeling a little guilty about the nursing home thing. Right now though, the three of us are out of options. He cannot stay in the hospital and he's not well enough to come home so this really is the other solution.

Right now, Mark and I are getting ready to go back down to the hospital for the afternoon. One way or the other, hopefully we'll know what's happening today.