About a month ago my mother received a call from someone in Florida (a social worker? a nurse? I can't remember, maybe Mom can) telling her that her sister, Cathy, was under Hospice care for congestive heart failure. At that point in time, Cathy was in a facility called Terra Vista Rehab and Health Care.
http://www.ucomparehealthcare.com/nhs/florida/terra_vista_rehab_and_health_c.html
(If the facility itself has a website, my quick google search didn't list it in the top results.)

Something happened--I'm not sure exactly what--at this facility, and they managed to get Cathy involuntarily committed to the psychiatric unit of Florida Hospital. That was Dec. 4th. It's now Dec. 20th and Cathy is still in the hospital, only the hospital is hellbent on getting her placed somewhere else (despite a court deeming Cathy incompetent just last Monday, if I were to arrive in Orlando today to pick her up she would suddenly no longer be considered as such, a fact which is extraordinarily interesting to me).

My mother and I both have been working on getting Cathy up here since the 4th. But it wasn't until today that I was able to work on it in earnest (because I'm on vacation from now until the end of the year). I wish, though, that I had begun documenting this entire ordeal from the beginning, because it has certainly been a test of my persistence and patience.

Last week I had to threaten the Nurse Manager, Carol, with legal action and/or media exposure to get Cathy's quality of care increased to what I consider to be a humane level. Here are some of the problems I encountered that I was advocating to have changed, as well as Carol's responses (she asked that I give her an opportunity to respond before I escalated the situation, which I happily agreed to do):

• Cathy had told me, on a Tuesday, that she was to appear in court on the following Wednesday in order for a judge to decide whether or not to rescind the Baker Act (the legal process behind Cathy's admittance in the hospital). My mother had a nurse corroborate Cathy's story. Only when I spoke to the social worker, Tina, I was told that Cathy's court date had been the previous Monday and that Cathy had been asked if she wanted to attend and she'd refused. I'm still not clear on whether or not Cathy refused or if she wasn't allowed to go because of the isolation requirement (see below). Cathy says it was the latter. Carol said she would discuss the situation with everyone involved and ensure that valid information get back to me, and to Cathy, from now on.
  

• Cathy had been put into an isolation room while they waited for her prophylactically-given antibiotics for the potential presence of MRSA to run their course. Only after Cathy's TV broke (Cathy maintains it wasn't broken, it was taken away by Joanne [aka Nurse Ratched, according to Cathy]), they left her in isolation with nothing to do. No books, no puzzles, nothing to pass the time. I asked that her TV be repaired and Carol assured me that she'd find some books for Cathy to read. She (Carol) also gave me the mailing address for the hospital so I could send Cathy some items from Amazon.

• When I was on the phone with Cathy on a previous occasion, I heard Cathy tell someone that she wasn't finished with her breakfast yet. Then Cathy began to get very upset (i.e. yelling that she wanted more breakfast and that she was on the phone and they shouldn't have taken her breakfast) and got off the phone so she could get them to give her her food back. The next time I called, at 8 a.m. (this was on that same Tuesday, a week ago), Joanne told me that Cathy was eating and that from now on they wouldn't let patients talk while they were eating because of the ruckus that Cathy caused about her cereal last time. OK, this was somewhat reasonable, so I called back at 8:30 a.m. and asked again to speak with Cathy. Joanne told me that Cathy had just now gotten her tray and was eating. I asked Joanne why when I called earlier was I told I couldn't speak to Cathy while she was eating if, in fact, she wasn't yet eating? Joanne told me that she didn't say that. I immediately asked to speak with her supervisor (Carol). I suggested to Carol, and she agreed, that perhaps a better course of action would be not to take a patient's breakfast without first seeing if the patient is finished with it, and again she assured me that she would talk with Joanne and even explore changing nurses so Cathy and Joanne didn't have to interact.

I would type more, but I need to make more phone calls. Right now I'm waiting to get a "Level of Care" form from Florida; to get Cathy to sign a release of medical records request so I can get her records from both Florida Hospital and Terra Vista; to get the two Hospice places in touch with each other to iron out whether or not we can get her into the Johnston co. Hospice facility; the Internal Med. doc to call me back and discuss Cathy's complete diagnosis; the Health Care Guardian to call and explain to me why she chose not to put Cathy on any mood stabilizing drugs (How in the hell can you be Baker Acted and declared incompetent and not be given mood stabilizing drugs is what I'd like to know!); my mother to cough up at least half of the out-of-pocket expense of placing Cathy at the Hospice facility.

Whew.

Can I get this all done before Krismas?

Oh, and before I sign off I just wanted to note that I was also recording (with my video camera, unfortunately, because I can't seem to find a good app to record outgoing calls with [google voice records, but only incoming calls made to your google voice number]) each and every conversation I have had today. Well, each conversation I've had since I decided I really needed to capture this whole ordeal somehow.

Now...off for more calls, red tape, frustration, and anger.