A Visit with Randy

I visited Randy this afternoon under security again. I still can't believe how stupid this is but then who am I to question Vancouver Coastal Health.

For the most part Randy was very sad. It has been eleven months since his accident and he hasn't even been outside once except for the transport from VGH to GPC. I am so proud of him for still being alive.

His nurse left Randy with me and ran out of the room. Liz wasn't going to allow me to ask her one question. No staff came by: no Marion, no Sam the social worker, nor the respiratory therapist or the speech therapist. No one. I am suppose to be getting training on how to suction Randy so that I can take him out of the building outside to the gardens. The nursing staff is not allowed to take patients out on outings. So if an immobile patient doesn't have a visitor he never sees the sun.

I was given written instructions from the speech therapist on how to assist Randy in learning how to speak with a voice enhancer. Randy has had a voice enhancer for the past two weeks and he tries very hard to talk. Today, no voice enhancer and Randy did try to talk to me but I could not understand what he was trying to say. He got very frustrated. The cruelty of GPC only gets worse with each day.

I bribed Randy with a $5.00 bill to use his wheel chair. He coveted the $5.00 as he hide it under his lap blanket. I also showed him a photocopy of my blog of yesterday and he seemed pleased. I told him he was helping all the other people who have been treated badly by the system. He understands that I have no money for lawyers so the blog is the only thing we can do. I apologized to him for not blogging everything but then for the past months I have been so emotionally upset I didn't have the energy and there was a fear that it would make matters worse.

I showed him pictures of what I was doing this weekend and I asked him to take a picture of me. It took a long time for him to coordinate his fingers so that he could push so the flash would work.

I told Randy that I had seen a touch cell phone which he might be able to use and he was very keen on that.
.