"Let me start by saying, my mother has been employed by GBMC for almost 35 years, my father passed away (of cancer) at GBMC in 1984 and my daughter was born at GBMC in 2004 and spent 47 days in the NICU. I had VSG surgery on 3/1/2011. Everything went fine until the PACU. For some reason (I think it was because they didn’t have a room for me) I was in the PACU, awake and alert most of the time, for 5 hours. This surgery was scheduled for over a week, so I don’t understand why this was the case. My wife/family was only allowed to see me for 5 minutes out of every two hours. When I finally got to my room, I immediately began asking to walk. Four hours later I got to walk only after asking/demanding again. In the next 18 hours I was reluctantly allowed to walk 2 more times. At one point I mistakenly knocked the oxygen tube off of my bi-pap machine and couldn’t reach it. I pressed the nurse call button numerous times with no response. About ½ hour later I called the hospital operator to be transferred to the nurses station for unit 48 and was able to talk to someone. All I needed was someone to reach the oxygen tube. This situation was very disturbing, thankfully I was not in distress. This incident happened at around 7pm, so shift change may have had something to do with it. The next evening my Dr. was going to discharge me so the rn started removing my iv when the PA realized I had yet to urinate on my own. She told the rn, who was over ¾ of the way done removing my iv, to stop in case they needed to give me more fluids. The PA was telling me I need to drink more, and specific stuff that directly contradicted what I was told by my surgeon and the info I had learned in the COMP program. I urinated within about 30 minutes and was allowed to go home.
Because of the statement in the first sentence. I have always and continue to have a loyalty to GBMC. The hospital was very clean, even though a week later I was in the er and there was dirt/dust in the lights of the er exam room. All in all, I continue to have confidence in GBMC, but I was very disappointed in this stay in general. My wife is scheduled for RNY surgery on 4/5 and I can just hope her experience is better than mine.
"
