This whole situation is too outlandish and bizzare not post about it.

My mother's boyfriend is in the hospital right now. He is quite a bit older than she is, has middle stage Alzheimer's, and has become quite frail. He has just gotten in to a program which provides an adult day care, further support as needed for the person in their home, and comprehensive healthcare through the program. He currently lives in the household and my mother is his caregiver.

Day before yesterday, he returned home from the program and it was evident that he had had an innoculation of some sort (turned out to be pneumococcus). His arm was bruised and swollen and painful, and he felt chilled and tired, but could walk and was coherent. A few hours later he became incoherent, unable to walk by himself, and unable to get to the bathroom. The program was notified and an ambulance summoned, and he was taken to the ER of a local hospital. He was eventually given a room, diagnosed with pneumonia (what the vaccination was for, it was too late and the reaction helped to mask earlier symptoms) and started on antibiotics.

My mother did not try to spend the night that night, but went down the next morning. She found him very much improved, quite lucid, and clearly responding to the antibiotics. She was in and out throughout the day and he continued to improve, was eating heartily, and looking like he would be ready for release the next day.

She was away for a few hours that evening and returned to the hopital at 9:30 pm to find him semi-delerious and unable to communicate verbally. It took my mother a while to piece together what had happened, and the wildly inappropriate "treatments" that had brought him to this state.

The apparently tested his blood sugar for no good reason. He is not diabetic and has no history of diabetes or any other blood sugar issues, and no blood sugar related symptoms. They found his blood sugar to be a few points above the official limit for normal, and so gave him an injection of fast acting insulin?!

After this he was having difficulty walking to the bathroom and getting confused about the urinal, so they placed a Foley catheter. Not a condom catheter which is non-invasive, or just using Depends. No, they had to place the Foley.

The Foley was uncomfortable and upsetting to him, so they decided to sedate him with a shot of Morphine?!

Morphine of course is a very powerful narcotic painkiller, but it is not a sedative. The effect of the Morphine on him was to make him completely disoriented and extremely agitated. Oh, and the one thing they hadn't given him was the Aricept and Nemenda that he has been on for years for the Alzheimer's. The runaround that my mother got in trying to get him those medications is a different story.

Finally, at around 11:00 that night, in order to counteract the extreme agitation from the Morphine and the catheter, he was given a drug called Zyprexa. At the time it was given, they told my mother that it was a substitute for the Aricept?!

My mother then came back home for a couple of hours and we did some rapid internet research. What we learned about Zyprexa is that it is a powerful antispychotic, and that Eli Lily has gotten into a shit load of trouble for encouraging doctors to prescribe it off label to treat agitation in elderly people with dementia, for which it is not effective.

We also learned that it is given every 24 hours because it has a half-life of 21 to 54 hours, and that the half-life is considerably longer in the elderly and that extreme caution in dosing is reccomended. It is not in any way, shape, or form a substitute for Aricept.

Oh, and they didn't know about his vaccination earlier the day before, so they gave him another one (for the illness he already had). This is the level of communication that exists between this program and the hospital with which it is affiliated.

At this point it was decided that he could not safely be left on his own at this hospital, and my mother went down to spend the night there with him and make sure they didn't do anymore damage, something whicht they apparently strongly discourage.

She has been there with him all day today. She has power of attorney and has told them not to give him anything besides his regular medicatication and his antibiotic without first informing her and getting her consent.

He has been knocked completely on his ass by this last drug. He is sleeping most of the time with only brief periods of semi-awakeness. He has been largely unable to either eat or drink. A person recovering from pneumonia needs fluids, and they apparently had not seen fit to place an IV. He has gradually been becoming a bit more coherent throughout the day, but a very slow process.

My mother has just been informed that they are no longer allowing overnight visitors, and she must leave him alone there tonight.

This is how things stand at this point. What the fuck is it with the healthcare system in this country? This man was given four different inappropriate medications in the space of a few hours, as well as being placed with an inappropriate urinary catheter. How many other people does this happen to? How many frail elderly people who have no one to advocate for them go into the hospital for something relatively simple and routine and never get out, or are sent to nursing home because they develop accutely worsened dementia symptoms? How many younger people does this happen to? How many people are there who think that hospitals are safe places to entrust their loved ones and end up with an unexplained tragedy on their hands? Is this another type of death panel that is operating in this country?

People who have more familiarity with hospitals than me, is this sort of scenario common? Is there any accountability for this sort of thing?

Is it any surprise that some of us are accutely mistrustful of the medical establishment in this country?