A reader of this site who asked to remain nameless sent the following…
I feel the need to thank you for your articles about your family and in particular about the loss of your father and mother. I am going through this right now. I am about your age I think and I do not know how long my mother will be with me. She is spending more time in the hospital than at home and I am at a loss as to what to do for her. If you have any advice, I would love to hear it. Perhaps you could post this on your site and answer it so I will not be the only one to benefit from it.
Well, I think the main thing to remember is that your mother needs an advocate and a pair of legs. If she's going to the hospital a lot, she needs someone to take care of her home and affairs. It's easy to neglect bills and such when you're being shuttled off to see doctors and reside in a hospital often. But she also needs you to be around to help her be in the hospital.
Between my father and my mother, I became an expert at coping with the Kaiser Hospital to which they both went. (My father died at Kaiser. My mother died at another hospital, a few blocks from the nursing home in which I placed her.) I learned my way around Kaiser. I learned which departments handled what services. I learned shortcuts and ways into restricted areas. I learned to understand to the extent humanly possible, the bureaucracy in the place — which person could overrule which person, which person could make things hurry up, etc. I learned where the vending machines were and how to get a prescription filled, a.s.a.p. instead of waiting hours.
One of the main things I did for my parents was to go in and make friends with everyone. I was never rude or unpleasant with any hospital employee but I learned the nice way to say that I thought they needed to do more or do it sooner. These people spend their lives getting yelled at by angry/terrified people who don't understand the reality of a hospital's organization or how each person has limits on what they are allowed to do. That nurse may not be authorized to give the patient a sedative, for instance, and it doesn't do a lick of good to shout at her or make threats or demands. They're very appreciative when you understand their problems and you say things like, "I know you aren't empowered to do this for my mother…can you point me in the direction of someone who is?"
I was familiar with some of the senior officials of the hospital and I was shameless in dropping their names. When lower-grade staffers took care of my mother, I wanted them to know that I knew their bosses. It would have been counter-productive to say something assholish like, "If you don't do such-and-such, I'm going straight to Dr. Wasserman and get you fired!" Hysterical Loved Ones do that all the time and it doesn't help. It really doesn't. It makes hospital employees want to avoid you, not extend themselves. So I didn't do that…but it sure didn't hurt to let them know I knew Dr. Wasserman and would at some point be speaking to him.
I learned to carry a notebook with me (later, my iPad) and to jot down the names and titles and direct phone lines of everyone I dealt with and everyone to whom I was referred. I had special business cards printed. My regular business card is kinda fancy and it has a caricature of me on it — a drawing done by the legendary Al Hirschfeld. I even have three NINAs in my hair. Cute card for business reasons…distracting in this context.
I had another, simpler one printed that just has my name, my phone number and my e-mail address in large, easy-to-read letters with no frills. When I took my mother into the hospital, I would pass the simpler one around to everyone who had contact with her and tell them, "Call me at any hour if I can do anything for her." And I'd leave a small pile of the cards next to my mother's bed. Those were of great help. Even when they never resulted in anyone calling me, they reminded all that the patient had someone keeping an eye on her…someone who might complain if she didn't get the best possible attention.
Another tip: Have one phone number. The number on my cards and all the forms I filled out at the hospital had my home number. When I was out, especially when my mother was in the hospital, I put my phone number on call-forwarding to my cell phone. So they could call the number I'd given them and always reach me.
It helped that they knew me. Often, a new nurse would come on duty, I'd go meet her and she'd say, "Oh, the nurse on the night shift told me you were so funny and helpful." Exactly the reaction I wanted! One time, my mother was taken in by ambulance without me being around. She phoned me from the hospital and told me where she was. I said, "I'll be right over." She said, "Good. You need to walk around and make all the nurses laugh and make them all think I'm someone special because I'm your mother." I laughed and I thought, "Yeah, I guess that's pretty much what I do."
My mother would help that along by telling every single Kaiser employee she encountered, "My son does the Garfield cartoons for TV." Actually, late in her life, she for some reason took to asking each nurse and orderly what their favorite cartoon show was…or if applicable, their kids' favorite cartoon show. And whatever they answered, she'd tell them, "Oh, my son writes that show." I walked in one time and a nurse said to me, "Oh, so you're the person who writes SpongeBob SquarePants."
I'd never seen the show but you can't make a liar out of your own mother…so I'd say, "Yeah, sure." The nurse then said to me, "I watch that show every day with my kids. Which is your favorite character to write?"
I said, "Uh…why, SpongeBob, of course!" When I was away from her a few minutes later, I hauled out my iPad, found the Wikipedia page on SpongeBob and learned some things about him in case I needed to engage in further bluffing. (Another nurse who found me charming had given me the password to the hospital's non-public — and therefore, much faster — Wi-Fi.)
Maybe you can't convince a SpongeBob fan that you write SpongeBob but you can find some reason they'll remember who you are. It could just be that you're unusually polite and congenial.
One time, I used my cartoon connections to get my mother a special consultation with a hospital ophthalmologist but I've told that story here already. I'll close this with one other incident though but first, let me summarize: You need to be there for your parent or other hospitalized person. You need to be around and to let the hospital staff know you'll be around and that you understand what they can and cannot do.
You need to cut through the Red Tape and navigate the infrastructure and hierarchy of the building. (I also learned where the employee parking lot was. More than once when I was having trouble reaching someone through official channels and I knew they were out to lunch, I'd get myself a sandwich, go down and wait in their parking space for them to return.) And you need to learn to do all this while still being a reasonable, friendly human being.
Now then. A final story…
One Sunday, my mother was ready to go home from the hospital. She was eager to get out of there and impatient that the paperwork to spring her had not been processed. "I want to be home in my own bed," she said over and over. I went to the nurse — who of course was on my side — and she said, "The only person who can expedite that is the Charge Nurse and she's not around at the moment." So I went in search of the elusive Charge Nurse. For an hour, I ran all over Kaiser Medical Center looking for her, being told, "Oh, she was here but she just went down to X-Ray" or "You just missed her…she went to the cafeteria to get some lunch." Inspector Javert did not pursue Jean Valjean with half the fervor of me searching for that damned Charge Nurse.
Finally, a nurse I'd made laugh several times phoned me on my cell and told me where to find the fugitive Charge Nurse. I rushed to that location with a sense of "Now I've got her" and a determination that I would not take no or even "in a little while" for an answer. I was relentless. I was unflinching. I was resolute.
And then I spotted the Charge Nurse. A lot of the nurses at Kaiser wore these colorful scrubs decorated with flowers or cartoon characters. The Charge Nurse was wearing one covered with pictures of Garfield. I did a drawing of Odie for the woman and had my mother out of that place in ten minutes.
Sometimes, it's just so easy.