A “club” of sorts

Posted by Sammy on Jul 15th, 2010 | no comments

The other night I sat down for the 2 hour episode of Deadliest Catch. I had been looking forward to this episode since early this year because one of the main characters, Phil Harris, passed away about a month after Gary passed away. It kinda hit home only because Gary and I religiously watched Deadliest Catch. I’d probably even go as far as saying that of all of the folks on the show Phil was our favorite. Tuesday’s episode was going to be “the” episode where he actually dies. Crazy that there were camera’s around for that. I had my tissues handy because I wasn’t quite sure how I’d react. I KNEW it would be sad, just wasn’t sure how sad it would be for me.

As I was watching it they’d do their normal boat clips and then they’d show clips of Phil in the hospital. One part with Phil really hit home. It was when he was talking and basically starts apologizing for stuff. That reminded me SOOOOOOO much of the last time Gary talked to me. I remember that day like it was just yesterday. Some of the things that he said just are things I could never forget. I remember him having full on conversations with Dr. P (his oncologist) even though Dr. P was not even in his hospital. I remember him apologizing to me for just everything. Ever since he got sick Gary felt like he was a burden to me, and that couldn’t have been further from the truth. He knew that if the roles were reverse he would have done the same thing for me, granted he’d quickly point out that he wouldn’t have done as great as a job as I had done. It’s that apology that Phil did that really hit home to me. It’s almost like when you are dying you kinda know its coming without really KNOWING its coming and you start making peace.

The other part of the show that really hit me and is really why I named this post the way I did was the moment when Josh got “THE” call from the hospital. At least he was awake when he got the call. But man that’s a moment he’ll never be able to forget because the moment I got the call about Gary is a moment I’ll never be able to forget. I could relive it and tell it in so much detail its crazy. There are things that I’d LOVE nothing more than to forget and me getting that call is probably one of them. That rush of adrenaline that I got was absolutely insane and quite frankly, I hope I never have to have another rush like that one. Anyone that has ever gotten a call like that knows that its something that lives with you forever. It’s not something you can ever forget.

Seeing “the” hospital

Posted by Sammy on Apr 8th, 2010 | one comment

It doesn’t help that I practically live down the street from the hospital that Gary passed away in. I thankfully do not have to pass by it every day but every once in awhile I do have to pass by it to get to where I need to go. And every time I do, I can’t help but look at that hospital and remember the last morning that I was there.

It’s kinda funny in a way how much I hate this hospital now, a few years ago Gary and I loved the fact that we lived so close because we were on the same power grid as the hospital. Which meant that when we had a hurricane hit us, we had power, whereas everyone around us did not. Gary and I used to joke about how we will never move because of that one reason, or if we did have to that you better believe that would be a HUGE selling feature of our house. Silly guy!

Now in a way I wish I could pick up this house and move it so that it was away from the hospital, so that I didn’t even have to accidentally pass by it. I hope that neither Mikey nor I ever need to go to a hospital because you better believe I’d make sure we’d go out of our way to go to a further one just because this one has way too many negative associations with it.

My new purpose/passion in life

Posted by Sammy on Jan 21st, 2010 | 2 comments

I think I have found my purpose in life besides the being a loving wife and mother job that I’ll gladly say I’ve done a damn good job at

Besides my passion to help raise as much money for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society to help bring us that much closer to a cure I’ve recently discovered that I have another passion, being somewhat of a patient advocate. While Gary was going through chemo I quickly learned what kind of healthcare was ideal and what flat out SUCKED. So it should not be a surprise if I tell you that normal healthcare just flat out sucks and definitely NEEDS changing.

Now I won’t be the first person to say that the healthcare plan that the Obama administration is trying to push through sooooooo fast isn’t the solution. I don’t think its that easy to overhaul a poor product. Ok enough of my soapbox political mumbo jumbo, now on to the real purpose of my post.

On two separate occasions when I took Gary to one of the Memorial Healthcare system hospitals we were asked who his primary care physician was when we checked into the ER. This is the norm no matter what ER you go to. Well our primary care physician is associated with the Memorial Healthcare system. He has rights to see patients at these hospitals, for gods sake the guy has an office in one of those hospitals so he better have rights!

Well on both occasions the hospital failed to even notify our primary care physician that Gary was in the ER. On the first trip I had taken Gary because he developed an oncologic fever. They ran cultures on him immediately. I had to call our primary only because the doctor the hospital assigned to Gary refused to release him and wanted to keep him in the hospital for 36 hours until his blood cultures came back. That wasn’t acceptable to us because we had to be on the plane back to the NIH the next day. After getting in touch with the on-call doctor for our primary he met us at the hospital and took over the case and you better believe he got Gary discharged!

On this last trip Gary was once again assigned some doctor that wasn’t associated with his primary doctor. The day after Gary was admitted I saw Gary’s wristband and saw the name of the doctor who wasn’t our primary doc, and immediately told the nurse about it. She said she couldn’t do anything about it. I told the nurse manager, he couldn’t do anything about it. Finally I told THE actual doctor that’s name was on the wristband that I wanted GARY’S primary doc to take over the case and he said he’d talk to them. Ummmmm let’s just say that NEVER happened, NEVER.

What the hell is the point in asking a patient who their primary care physician is if you have no intention on calling them at all. It took ME to call our primary for them to even know that Gary was admitted, that was 3 days after Gary was in the hospital in ICU!!!! It took ME to call our primary for them to even know that Gary was D-E-A-D! In my opinion that is unacceptable. The patient and their family should NOT have to be the ones to deal with this crap. They should just have to worry about being supportive for the patient and getting the patient back to good health.

I just so happened to have an appointment with our primary doctor this morning and I brought this up and she looked over my file and noticed our insurance type and she noticed it was a PPO. She said that’s why they didn’t call them. It’s because with PPO all of the doctors know they’ll get a decent payout from the insurance company so why the hell would they even bother to give the money to MY doctor. Better to keep it in the family right? This pisses me off and you better believe I’ll write a letter and call whomever I need to in order to voice my opinion.

This should not happen EVER, its extremely unacceptable and its not fair to all of the patients out there! You better believe this will not be the last you hear about this topic from me.