Hospital of Saint Raphael (COE) Hospital


The rooms were filthy. I never saw anyone, in three days, clean or empty the garbage, or remove dirty old dressings from God knows whose wound they came from. The nurses were scarce and had very little time to answer questions. I have lost 200 pounds since Feb.2002, but I cannot forget what a hole I stayed in for those 3 days.

The bariatric wing is extremely busy so the nurses are not always available and you have to ring for them more than three times and sometimes yell to get their attention but overall my 2 day stay was good. When I left there was a 30 minute wait for a wheelchair so I decided to walk to the parking lot instead of waiting.

Let me first say that I understand that nurses are underpaid and units are understaffed so this is in no way PERSONAL against any nurse (except a few - lol) - my two day stay was like a torture chamber - I roomed with a woman who was dying of cancer and had MAJOR diahrea (sp?) ALL NIGHT - housekeeping came to our room 3 times a night to wash the floors in the bathroom - thank god I had a cathetar - she talked all day long - moaned and whined and when I rang for a nurse before I could speak she demmanded something from them - the bed was uncomfortable - the room was set to 75 degrees - I requested a fan and due to lack of outlets I had to unplug the bed to plug in the fan - so if I needed to go up or down to rest or sleep - I had to crawl under my bed to plug it in and unplug the fan (without which I couldnt breath) - remember this is one day post-op - hooked to ivs and a cathater under my bed so I can get a few mins sleep before you hear those dreaded words - VITALS!! I am convinced this is all payback for eating too much junk in my life - if so ok, I can accept that. The hospital stay was like a weekend of hell for me though....I felt better as soon as I left those halls - not to mention the floor we were on - Verdi 5 west - was also a spill over for ER patients that were dying - so needless to say the nurses were rarely available they were tending to the people that were dying - which was about 3 in those two days - I think.