PTSD WARNING - GRAPHIC PHOTOGRAPHS are posted in this diary.
The Gainesville territory... got to love the care. These are pictures of a veteran I have been advocating for. The Villages CBOC farmed this 70 year old Vietnam Veteran out to a civilian hospital. When he went in, he had absolutely no skin issues whatsoever. He was put in wrist restraints 24/7 for 7 days. He was never turned or repositioned at any time as required by law. They then transferred him to a sister hospital, where he was put in a 4-6 point restraint for another 3 days. Because of this, this veteran developed a necrotic decubitus (bed sore) the size of a pancake on his buttocks, a blister the size of a light bulb on his heel, and a decubitus the size of a silver dollar on his wrist. The pictures I am posting are graphic, but it needs to get out!
The wonderful Doctor's have said "there is nothing wrong with him" and have been trying to farm him out to a KNOWN nursing home that is bad. They say that there is "no infection," - I beg to differ. I know gangrene when I see it and smell it, yet we can NOT get someone to look at this seriously. He is on no antibiotics and all they are giving him for pain is Tylenol - even when his pain level is 20 on a scale of 1-10. This is bullshit - no other word to describe it, sorry for the language.
They are killing our veterans slow and hard. I have been trying to write a diary about my own husband that I am having to watch die because of the VA. It's up close and personal and the stories need to get out.
Here are the photo's of how he arrived after he was transferred/farmed out to the sister hospital (some of the photo's appear to be cropped, but if you will click on the photo it will take you to photobucket to see the entire picture):
Notice the black necrotic tissue.
Blister on his heel.
Damage caused by wrist restraints.
This is now what he looks like, these were taken yesterday:
This is his heel - the one that had the blister. This is now considered at stage IV Eschar Ulcer. This needs to be debrided.
The decubitis on his buttocks now has an ulceration. Notice the 'lovely green' color and it is tunneling.
What his toes now look like. It took over a week to get a bed for him that wasn't too short.
Pressure wounds caused by being in a bed that was too short for his 6' 3" frame.
This has affected both feet. We we told that "They would have an extension for the bed on 4 November 2014 - we didn't get a proper bed until 10 November 2014.
We have no idea how he got these.
I also forgot to mention that this veteran is totally blind based on a bad surgery done by the VA. If this story is upsetting to you, imagine how the veterans, family and advocates feel.
Some kind of care, eh? I have gone to the executives of the hospital and had a meeting with them, and nothing has been done other than getting him the correct type of bed, and THAT just happened yesterday and the meeting took place of 4 November 2014. In that meeting was the Chief Nursing Officer, Director of Clinical Risk Management, The Administrative Nursing Director and the Director of Case Management. We went over all of our concerns, including JCAHO violations. Obviously, we got a lot of lip service and very little action. We have also made complaints to the Florida Department of Children and Families and they are investigating these issues. This has to stop, it is criminal.
We have begged to have podiatry, vascular, and infectious disease doctors to come back in. We are told that have signed off of the case - that there is nothing wrong. Now, I am not a doctor, but I can sure as hell tell from looking at him that we have a serious problem. If that infection gets into the heel bone (osteomylitus) we're in for a long hard ride - possibly even amputation. He was hospitalized because they thought he had had a stroke - and this is what we get.
We had arrangements in place to have him transferred to Bay Pines - all that was needed was for the case manager to call the patient advocate and say ok. Instead, she called and falsely reported that he had been discharged which stopped everything dead in it's tracks. We have tried working with the Assistant Director of the Villages CBOC to get him moved to Tampa or Bay Pines, but we can now not get any information from her.
Secretary McDonald, I hope that you see this diary. This is not a lone case, it's happening all over Florida - especially in the Gainesville Region.