22nd January 2013

Now it's not often I grumble about the Aydan's care, particularly considering how wonderful his staff have been on ICU. But today is a grumble day.

Last night one of the nurses was a bit rude towards me.

First off she started having an argument with me over the cooling mattress. Now normally he is on something called normothermia, which basically helps to keep his temperature around a normal range. Once his temp hits 37.9 the mattress will pump cooled water into it to help bring his temperature down, but once his temp hits a certain level it will change the water to either room temperature or warm depending on how cool he went.

Now this nurse insisted that it was on 'cooling'.

I don't like the cooling setting, it makes the mattress feel like a sheet of ice and doesn't switch off when he reaches a normal temp, it just keeps cooling until it hits the temp you set it at.

The nurse unfortunately didn't speak English very well, and although I tried explaining it to her that normothermia was OK, argued back with me and obviously waited until I had retired for the night and switched it onto cooling.

Aydan's poor hands and feet were like blocks of ice when I came in this morning and despite having a temperature around 37.5 all yesterday his temperature was now around 38.5....

cooling setting FAIL.

ALSO she was very rude to me and told me to move my chair around the other side (where I couldn't see Aydan) when I wasn't in the way.