Penthouse…Hospital Style
The medical drama within my family continues. As I reported before, my niece has had mitochondrial disease since birth and has been in and out of hospitals her whole 3 years. A few weeks ago, my sister-in-law, Heidi, had a stroke related to mitochondrial disease (it’s a hereditary disease carried through the mother’s side of the family…this was my sister-in-law’s first major symptom of it, though).
Anyway, after her stroke, the doctors wanted her to be admitted to the hospital for 4 or 5 days for testing/diagnosis. She was admitted on Sunday so I went to visit her yesterday.
What none of us expected was that she’d be admitted to the Phillips House! This is the penthouse levels of Mass General Hospital’s 24 story tower. Mass General being one of the top 3 hospitals in the country, this is where the celebrities go. When you get off the elevator you enter a wood paneled lobby with harbor views. You can’t access the patient rooms until you get buzzed in through security.
Once inside, there is a lounge with floor to ceiling windows overlooking the skyline of Boston. GORGEOUS. The hallways leading to the patients room are also wood paneled. I found Heidi’s room toward the end of the hall and it, too, had floor to ceiling windows, but hers were overlooking the Charles River (this building is along the river). In addition, the room had two over-stuffed chairs, a love seat (that pulls out in to a bed) two end tables, wall sconces, two brass table lamps, blinds and draperies and a TV and DVD player. It was a hotel!
I’m not sure how she scored a room in this section of the hospital – but with all of the shit my brother’s family has been dealing with these past few years – I say good for her.
She looked like she was doing well, but like my niece, her digestive system has stopped working. She’s being monitored and will have the test results back this afternoon. The results will determine whether she will either a) go back to eating normally; b) require a J and G-tube (which would be tubes surgically installed through her belly and into her intestines…allowing her to eat normal food but also take adidtional nutrients into her system by feeding tubes); or c) TPN. All of this stuff confuses me, but TPN is something my niece does because she can’t eat any food at all. In that case, all food and nutrition come through tubes and no food is consumed. I think.
Anyway, we’re all just waiting for the test results to find out what will happen. If she needs the J and G tubes or TPN, she will have surgery on Friday.
Meanwhile, my niece is at the Franciscan Hospital in another part of Boston. She’s doing pretty good and, if all goes well with Heidi, they’ll both be going home by next week. Of course, if that happens, my brother is going to have his hands full so hopefully he can get some rest this week.
On an unrelated note…I read in the Metro newspaper this morning that some idiot in Texas called the police because somebody broke into his home and stole something. When the police arrived, he explained that the robber had stolen his stash of marijuana. Needless to say, the robber was arrested for theft and the apartment dweller reporting the crime was arrested for posession. Seriously, dude…are you that stupid?
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Wow, nice! I hope everything goes well with her tests.
As far as I’m concerned, we should give Texas back to Mexico.
Total Parenteral Nutrition. A mixture of vitamins and other nutrients compounded by pts need, and based on weight etc.
Jeez Karl………..
Your brothers family has been through so much.
How is he holding up.
Yeah, Jeez Karl. 😉
How’s your niece making out at Franciscan’s? As I told you, every one of our experiences there has been overwhelmingly positive so I hope she is having similarly good results.
The suite sounds pretty good to me! Although I confess, I don’t know about having upholstered stuff in a hospital room. It just gives me the creeps, like ew, what might have seeped into THIS? But then, I have spent an extraordinary amount of time in hospitals and have had too much time to think about these things.
Well, it counds like their both in the best places to receive the kind of care they need. But I feel for your brother. I hope he can find some rest this week and gain a store of energy for when they are released. I’ll keep your family in my prayers.