Anyway, he goes into surgury and comes out fine, but obviously, in pain. He asks me to ask the nurse for his next morphine injection. During the surgury a shift change occured, and I had to figure out who his new night nurse was. I found her and said that M was asking for his pain medication, and could she please get it to him. She looked at me like I was asking her to give him some crack, and replied with an additude "Uh, no. I can't do that." I am perplexed and ask why not? She says with the same additude "I can't give him THAT!" Like I was crazy for even asking! Unsure what to do, I tell M that she refused and we figured that maybe he wasn't supposed to get the morphine anymore, and he would be recieveing something else soon.
A couple hours go by. He is still in pain, and is still running a fever. I use the call buttton this time and the same nurse comes into the room. He asks for pain medication and some Tylonol for the fever. She gives me her usual *look* and says no, she won't give him that. If we wanted his fever down he should be using this breathing machine someone had places in the room. (while I wasn't there and he was asleep I might add, so we had no idea what it was for.) She said that people normally run fevers after surgury and the breathing thing would get rid of it. I countered he snotty remarks with "well if you would check his chart, you would see that he has been running this fever since long before the surgury, so that is not the source." She really didn't have much to say about that. After M begs her for some pain medication, she finally begrugingly gives him a Lortab, becuase it had aceteometiphin (Tylonol) in it, and according to his chart she's not supposed to actually give him Tylonol until his fever reaches 101+ degrees. (By this point, his temp was literally .2 degrees under that). This is the first time we are given an actualy reson why he is being denied something, and apparently is the first time she has even bothered looking at his chart.It does not bring down the fever or even touch the pain he was in. This situation goes on all night and into the next morning. (I know, I stayed there the whole night.)
The next day, around 11 am the surgeon comes into see M, and asks how his pain was. M said "It would be better if they would give me something for it." The surgon looks confused, so I explain what happened during the night. The doc gets a weird look on his face and says "I ordered that M recieve Morphine every hour, plus Lortab every 4 hours, he is suposed to be getting both at the same time!" He runs out and gets the morning nurse plus the nursing supervisor. They immidiatly give him both medications and apologize up the wazoo for what had happened. They said his night nurse had been in nursing for years and they couldn't figure out why she would deny him pain meds, yada yada yada. We accepted the apology and requested that he not get the same nurse again, which was granted.
It just kills me to know he suffered all night long with no relief, and if she did look at his chart that one time she would have known he was supposed to be getting morhine every hour, and was just holding back for her own personal reasons. I was told that they would "look into it", and I'm wondering if I should call back there to see what was done about the situation or if they were just pacifying us, but I don't want to make a mountain out of a molehill if that's the case. Advice?
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