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GRRR!/FRAK! -- fic -- nursing school
Apr. 24th, 2007 10:38 amWell, today is my mom's first chemo of the second round of chemo. We'll see how that goes.
We've received confirmation (yesterday) that the pathology report of her original surgery was amended. That's fine; I know that initial reports are usually hand written and then "signed off" on by everyone -- nurses, MDs, other specialists.
But what pisses me off is that, while she was under the knife last year, the surgeon sent the section of her lung down to the lab to get a frozen section, to see if there were cancer cells in the margin. It came back from the pathology lab saying that there were no cancer cells in the margin. If there had been, the surgeon would have gone back in and removed more tissue, until the margins were clear. But since the lab came back and said the margins were clear, he closed my mom up and finished the surgery.
Then the lab report was amended a couple days later to report that there were, indeed, cancer cells in the margin.
And that is exactly where the cancer has come back. In that exact spot.
So I'm pretty pissed. I think I will write a letter of complaint to the hospital (where we'll NEVER send my mother again, the nursing care was so shitty after she came out of the ICU), to the pathologist, and to the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation about this pathologist.
I'm too exhausted by everything I've been through in the last few years to fight through a malpractice lawsuit. (I get the feeling, however, that one of my older sisters will be pursuing that.) Besides, all the money in the world can't change the past. What's done is done. I'm just pissed off that this stupid pathologist may have shortened my mother's life expectancy by not identifying the cancer cells in the tissue margins WHEN THE SURGEON NEEDED TO KNOW -- WHEN MY MOM WAS STILL ON THE OPERATING TABLE. As my mom once said, "Someone has to graduate at the bottom of the class."
At any rate, I am going to work on my resume tomorrow. Tonight after we get back from chemo I plan to go over my Joe Dick/Jerry Bines story, and try to make headway on finishing it. I do so need the escapism and to get that feeling of "flow" from writing. Sigh.
In the world of finishing nursing school, however, I was cheered to read that this HESI exit exam I took (on which I scored in the 96th percentile) is predictive of passing the NCLEX-RN exam on the first try -- AND the higher the HESI score, the more predictive of passing the NCLEX-RN. (Other things have also been associated with passing NCLEX-RN on the first attempt -- number of Cs received (in my case, only 1; all the rest were Bs); ACT score (yay! mine was 29! But that was 23 years ago! Egad!), GPA (in my case, 3.25, a solid B average), etc. So it would appear that my passing the NCLEX-RN is a likelihood. That's a relief! Nevertheless, my friends and I are going to take this week off from studying (a WELL-DESERVED REST!) but then start a study schedule for the NCLEX-RN next week. Whew.
We've received confirmation (yesterday) that the pathology report of her original surgery was amended. That's fine; I know that initial reports are usually hand written and then "signed off" on by everyone -- nurses, MDs, other specialists.
But what pisses me off is that, while she was under the knife last year, the surgeon sent the section of her lung down to the lab to get a frozen section, to see if there were cancer cells in the margin. It came back from the pathology lab saying that there were no cancer cells in the margin. If there had been, the surgeon would have gone back in and removed more tissue, until the margins were clear. But since the lab came back and said the margins were clear, he closed my mom up and finished the surgery.
Then the lab report was amended a couple days later to report that there were, indeed, cancer cells in the margin.
And that is exactly where the cancer has come back. In that exact spot.
So I'm pretty pissed. I think I will write a letter of complaint to the hospital (where we'll NEVER send my mother again, the nursing care was so shitty after she came out of the ICU), to the pathologist, and to the Illinois Department of Professional Regulation about this pathologist.
I'm too exhausted by everything I've been through in the last few years to fight through a malpractice lawsuit. (I get the feeling, however, that one of my older sisters will be pursuing that.) Besides, all the money in the world can't change the past. What's done is done. I'm just pissed off that this stupid pathologist may have shortened my mother's life expectancy by not identifying the cancer cells in the tissue margins WHEN THE SURGEON NEEDED TO KNOW -- WHEN MY MOM WAS STILL ON THE OPERATING TABLE. As my mom once said, "Someone has to graduate at the bottom of the class."
At any rate, I am going to work on my resume tomorrow. Tonight after we get back from chemo I plan to go over my Joe Dick/Jerry Bines story, and try to make headway on finishing it. I do so need the escapism and to get that feeling of "flow" from writing. Sigh.
In the world of finishing nursing school, however, I was cheered to read that this HESI exit exam I took (on which I scored in the 96th percentile) is predictive of passing the NCLEX-RN exam on the first try -- AND the higher the HESI score, the more predictive of passing the NCLEX-RN. (Other things have also been associated with passing NCLEX-RN on the first attempt -- number of Cs received (in my case, only 1; all the rest were Bs); ACT score (yay! mine was 29! But that was 23 years ago! Egad!), GPA (in my case, 3.25, a solid B average), etc. So it would appear that my passing the NCLEX-RN is a likelihood. That's a relief! Nevertheless, my friends and I are going to take this week off from studying (a WELL-DESERVED REST!) but then start a study schedule for the NCLEX-RN next week. Whew.
