A bit more good news today, he’s been told he can now use public transport on his own and has been given an open pass so he can come home for dinner some evenings and return to the hospital to sleep and do his daily therapies. He’s had permission to go to snooker the past 3 or 4 Wednesdays, a friend collects him and takes him back on the tram.
This was approved by the chief doctor on the team who are treating him on Monday morning but he wasn’t told about it until this morning. He’s told his other doctor there is little or no communication between him and the nurses and she was very angry about that.
On the previous ward he was given his timetable for the week on a Monday, this ward give him a timetable for each day the evening before and he has to take a pic with his phone as they claim he’s not allowed to touch it and give it back to them because of the bacterial thing going on. There’s a number of magnetic boards in his room where they put info up, he was told a few weeks ago not to use that wall for get well cards so I had to take in Blutack and put them on another wall. I honestly think they’re just making things up as they go along, it’s like a game.
He was taken to University Hospital earlier in the week to have his ears and hearing checked, the consultant there thought it was ridiculous.
Thankfully he’s also now on the waiting list to move up to the independent living part of the hospital when a place is available. Hopefully it might be soon but they’re not testing for the bacterial thing again until end May. The ear doctor said they could actually do it every couple of weeks, but it seems this is their protocol.
OH got new glasses last Saturday and the eyesight issues caused by the accident are now improving. He has another pair to collect this Saturday, tinted for sunlight as he can no longer wear his prescription sunglasses (a shame as he looked really cool in them for a bloke in his 60s). He now wants to go ahead and get new computer glasses made up.
They took him off the epilepsy meds last week and his sleepiness and behaviour has improved. He now has an open pass in and out of hospital, is allowed to use public transport unchaperoned and is allowed to use the Café Bistro as long as he stays at a distance of 1.5m from the other patients (there’s loads of seating so this is easy),
As well as the overnight home stays on the weekend he is allowed to come home for dinner a couple of evenings a week. Tomorrow they’ve cancelled his rehab programme so he can spend the day at home as it’s my 65th birthday (he’s 66 next Tuesday).
There’s to be a discussion on whether he can be discharged and treated as an outpatient, there is still some way to go with the movement to his left arm. However, should this happen it would still be the case he’d have to go back into hospital to finish his rehab in the assisted living part so they can assess him for a phased return to work.
I feel we’re seeing light at the end of the tunnel now, I wasn’t looking forward to my 65th after having our 40th anniversary in the hospital, but feel better about it despite it meaning I’m officially entering Old Lady Land!
OH was discharged as as an inpatient on May 21st, he has to do 2 months recuperation at home (he has a physio timetable and is going back to the medical gym that was treating his torn miniscus). He then returns as an outpatient in August as his eyesight has made it difficult to complete the cognitive tests they were doing. He has a brain scan at Basel University Hospital next week.
It’s not easy as his behaviour has been a bit up and down and we’ve unfortunately had a few rows which has upset me. The day before his discharge he asked the psychologist if she would accompany him to the site of where this happened, I met them there. He had a total emotional meltdown and was hysterically crying, but he still has no memory of what happened (the doctors now suspect he may have been hit over the head as this does not have the hallmarks of a routine bike accident).
He’s been back twice on his own since and was fine which is a good sign.
I’m not that happy with the doctor who ran the second ward he was on, we had to really assert ourselves to get him a referral to an eye clinic. She just kept shrugging and saying to me “I’m not an eye person” so I had to be quite forthright and say to her then get us referred to someone who is. He’s had 4 new pairs of glasses made up by Fielmann for different purposes but his eyes are still not functioning properly and he has difficulty doing things like watching TV. He had to make all of the appointments himself as the ward manager wasn’t happy about them handling it - for the record he hated this guy and referred to him as The Fat Controller
Hopefully things will get better as the next 2 months progress, early days yet. He’s lost nearly 3 stones and is determined to keep it off as he hasn’t been his current weight since his mid 40s.
One bit of good luck - I won £1000 on a lottery I do back in the UK, keeping it for a rainy day and a nice trip somewhere when things get better
At 6am this morning my wife heard a crash and found me lying on the kitchen floor.
Turned into a lump on the back of my head, I have no memory of what happened, why I was in the kitchen or why I fell.
After four hours in Winterthur hospitalI I was sent home with some Paracetemol and a pamphlet, they found no reason for my accident and no serious aftereffects.
One of the tests was a large Xray machine that looked like an MRI and slid me into a tunnel lying on a mobile bed.
One doctor had a theory that as my normal blood pressure is under 120/70 then maybe drinking alcohol had pushed it too low temporarily, but just a theory.
30 years ago I was able to drink very much, I can’t now. Sometimes I miss it a little. But I think you are a bit older (I’m 64). My father is 88 and I have to carry him home after like 4 beers. Alcohol is a shitty drug!
Having read this a couple of times - are you suggesting someone may have hit in over the head, before, during, or after the accident or that he hit his head during the fall off the bike?
The suggestion was he was hit over the back of the head whilst on his bike causing him to fall over. A while back there were a number of incidents in Basel where a man was going round hitting people with a hammer. He was caught after he hit an executive from The Bank For International Settlements over the back of the head by the tram stops at SBB railway station. There have also been a fair number of street robberies in Basel city lately, we had one near our local tramstop about a fortnight ago in broad daylight so anything is possible (the victim managed to follow the muggers on to a tram and the police were alerted but only caught one of the two).
For the first few weeks of visiting OH in hospital I kept noticing he had quite a depression to the back of his head where it was stitched which made me wonder. When he was discharged from hospital 13 days ago he wanted to check the clothes he’d been wearing, I’d washed them and put them in a bag for textile recycling. There are no visible scuffs, marks or rips on them you’d associate with a pretty serious bike accident. Aside of the blood stains that didn’t wash out the only damage is to his t-shirt as they had to cut that off in A and E.
As I say it’s a very strange situation, especially with regard to the police saying no witnesses, no CCTV etc., despite it taking place in an extremely busy part of Basel city centre where there are loads of huge office buildings and it was rush hour. Even if there were no witnesses someone must have got the ambulance that blue lighted him to A and E, it doesn’t make any sense. Basel city was mega busy as Fasnacht was taking place and the police did report to the press they caught a number of muggers.
I suspect we’ll never know as he still has no recollection, but if it was a bash over the head perhaps it’s better not to remember.
He’s told me a few times he vaguely remembers a young woman passing him on an
e-bike and he thought she was travelling way too fast, but this was before he got to the stretch of road where his bike was locked up by the police.
Coincidentally, a couple who are neighbours of ours had a dreadful accident near the same spot where he saw the woman on the e-bike. They’d gone out on their bikes during the Christmas holidays and a woman driver who was drunk hit both of them with her car when she came flying out of a side street. They’ve both been off work ever since due to their injuries, the wife is having her knee completely rebuilt this month. Relatives have been coming intermittently to help them with everyday life as their leg injuries were really serious.
I asked OH about the theory of being struck by a wing mirror but he said it’s not possible as the street he was on was not accessible to anything other that bikes that week as Fasnacht was on.
Latest issue is a letter that needed to be signed for came from the Justice Department when both of us were out today, it’s not available for collection from the PO until tomorrow.
In his current mindset he’s convinced it’s to inform him he’s going to be taken to court over all this then it’ll lead to a criminal conviction and possible deportation (the thoughts in his head are hugely magnified at the moment as he’s not always able to think clearly, he’s told me he was worried about the Justice Department and police the entire time he was in hospital because the doctors said he wasn’t fit to be questioned).
I’ve told him to try to calm down as we won’t know what’s in the letter until we get it. The concern for me is watching a man who was always so confident, strong and optimistic going down this route as he’s saying everything is his own fault.
He’s also convinced the doctor who was in charge of his care on the second ward he was in just wants rid of him as she doesn’t want to deal with him any further. He’s had to email her a couple of times in the past 2 weeks to get something clarified about blood tests he needs and her replies were pretty rude, she pretty much just said nothing to do with her or the hospital and to see a GP. She was also really annoyed when he asked for a referral to a specialist eye clinic (the appointment he had last week showed up there is something wrong that relates to the blow to the head and the brain bleed).
I feel terrible saying this as he’s had such good care over the past 3 months, but having spoken to this particular doctor she has a very difficult manner (even the English psychologist said she’s not an easy doctor to deal with and she tends to get a bit stressed if she has to deal with family members who have any questions). She didn’t want to make eye contact when I spoke with her regarding OHs eyesight and was trying to avoid answering my questions.
" To lodge a formal complaint against a doctor in a Swiss hospital, start by contacting the hospital’s patient management or mediation service (Ombudsstelle). If unresolved, escalate the issue to your canton’s medical officer (Kantonsarzt), the Swiss Patient Organization (SPO), or the doctor’s liability insurer."
Although probably not malpractice as such in your case, a good bedside manner is in the interest of all concerned and i think this deserves to be addressed, particularly as a patient with hopefully temporary mental health issues is involved.
you have enough on your plate already without having to “tiptoe” around an awkard doctor and basically you should not accept such behaviour - I would suggest you have one last discussion with that doctor but be very clear with her that her behaviour is problematic - best wishes
