Human Decency and Respect
Monday, Sept 15, 2025
Medical status update.
Steroid epidural injection performed on September 10, 2025 in both my L34 and L45 vertebrae has reduced pain in my left leg during movement by 30%. I am able to stand fully erect without pain for a limited time. Still unable to put full weight on the left leg without posterior pelvic tilt however reduction in pain enables significant more mobility options when transitioning from wheelchair to other activities that remain in seated position such as driving or moving onto bed, etc. Pain is tolerable for limited movement (up to 6 steps) within mechanical straight line bending of the left leg at ankle, knee, and hip. Chiropractic traction begins 17 Sept and I have consultations with orthopedic spinal surgeons on both 17 and 19 September.
Begin Blog about Rehab.
My experience with the Inova medical system has been horrible and I believe the medical care that I received at Inova Fairfax Hospital to be particularly appalling and warrants investigation, which has been started through a complaint to Patient Services. The first week at Fairfax Inova Adult Observation Unit (a.k.a. Attica) was so appalling and the subsequent, ultimately unnecessary and resulted in, through pressure, threats, and coercion, the wasteful time I spent in rehabilitation--due to the dimwitted recommendations of the medical team at Fairfax Inova Hospital. That two week stay resulted in ridiculous expenses and a major waste of medical care, lost wages, and failed recovery time as a result of their recommendation to send me to physical therapy and the time I spent in rehabilitation.
That said, the time I spent at Mt Vernon, was in fact, somewhat pleasant due to the dedicated medical personnel at the facility I previously called Folsom Correctional, who treated me with human decency and respect. In stark contrast to the care I receive at Fairfax Abysmal. I now retract the name calling and correctly call Mount Vernon Rehabilitation Center by its true name. I do not hold Mt Vernon responsible for the improper hospitalization in their facility. Being sent to their facility under unique threats and other improper use of pressure and coercion are strictly on the hands of an incompetent and potentially vindictive medical staff at Inova Fairfax Hospital and hopefully will be uncovered to the full extent of their poor nature and corrections initiated.
This blog today however is to thank Mt Vernon for the time I spent with them and to commend the medical team, led by Dr. P, his administration, the nursing staff, the weekend doctors, the medical techs, the therapists, and the nutrition team, all of them, who were if nothing else, fully dedicated to their jobs, extremely friendly, and humane in their treatment. Many of them have worked decades together at Mt Vernon. They treated me with respect and decency as should any medical care professional.
I've said in other posts that many of their patients in their care were in really bad shape and this team is set up to take care of the worst of them. Patients with new amputations. Patients experiencing recovery from traumatic brain injury. Patients who have not only lost their ability to walk, they have lost the knowledge of their ability to walk. None of those things applied to me. I have my wits about me. I have my balance. I just lost my ability to walk due to the pain in my L45 when standing or attempting to walk. Many of the patients who go through there are not going to ever regain normal function of their bodies. The patients must be trained and the families that care for them must go through this with them. I have complete confidence I will return to full function and will visit those care givers, walking through the front door with the ability to hop, skip, and jump. I should have never been placed in the position to be among those patients, I felt like an imposter, I was an imposter, all due to the incompetence of doctors at Inova Fairfax.
I'll try to thank them all here but I'm going to miss some of them to be sure. Without a doubt every single one of them treated me with the humanity that any one of their patients deserved. They made up for significantly for the in human treatment I received in the Fairfax Inova facility.
Doctor’s:
Dr P, who comes from PR, is a very friendly and knowledgeable man who was very willing to accommodate all of my crazy requests as I struggled to turn his medical unit into my own personal medical performance unit and my primary office space. I fell short of getting all of my performance indicators tested, such a T, but Dr. P. was willing to accommodate the testing I needed to move my actual diagnosis forward…at the recommendation of the external doctors I was consulting, my primary care physician, and my own research I was conducting. I did manage to turn most of the ward, my room, and several common rooms into my personal office space for reading, writing, working, and meeting with many friends and guests who visited during my stay and brought prohibited items such as Twix Bars, Popcorn and Monster. Other doctors such as Dr. C and Dr. W, were in on the weekends. They always talked with me and conveyed my wishes to Dr. P without mistake…despite the fact that the weekend docs have way too many patients. I was told they had to make the rounds to see 57 patients one weekend. That’s too many.
The nurses were my front line of support, and I met them daily first thing in the morning…with shift change happening about 7 am.
My primary nurses were:
Mercy, Karla, Mangesh, Alex.
The nurses changed with every shift and had to respond to all of my whims and outbursts and wild ideas I wanted to present to them Dr. P about my treatment. They were always happy and cheerful and provided my medication accurately and in a timely manner…unlike the nursing staff at Attica…which it was never accurate, never timely, and always under some dubious circumstance…and to me, always seemingly under duress. The nurses at Attica simply didn’t want to be there. At Attica, if I refused a medication it was signaling something bad…if I took want they were offering as “optional” (narcotics) it I was signaling something else…this was the no win scenario I was placed in. At the rehab center I was specifically told I could refuse any of the medications I was being given. The only one I refused…and only on two occasions, was the injection of blood thinner to reduce potential for blood clots in my legs. I was very active in rehab…I wasn’t laying in bed 24/7. I never took a single narcotic at the rehab center although it was prescribed as optional, and could be requested.
The next part of my medical team consisted of the Medical Technicians:
The ones I remember the most were Jane, Harriet, King George, and there were others…
Med techs have the thankless job of taking my vitals every four hours, seeing to my every wish, and unfortunately removing the urinals I had to use repeatedly every night during the early days when I was not permitted to leave bed. I thanked them often. The techs from Ghana were my favorite and I included Jane, Harriet, Mary, and King George. King George was taking care of me at the age of 75 and has worked at the rehab center for 30 years.
There were other techs from Jamaica, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone but alas I have already forgotten their names. But I thank them nonetheless.
Actually rehabilitation fell into the realm of the Physical and Occupational Therapists. Unfortunately, due to the nature of my medical condition it was clear to me and the beginning, and reinforced during they attempts at physical therapy, that range of motion and pushing into the pain was not going to rehabilitate what was fully a mechanical manifestation of a herniated disc impinging on a nerve with the very significant possibility of further impingement on a bony vertebrate during motion. This impingement would be unobserved during a static MRI. Also, further, during an static MRI when there is no pain. Pain occurs during movement. Any diagnosis of reduced strength or pain would have to be observed, diagnosed, imaged, whatever, during the exact period of impingement. The first physical therapist, and primary, was the only medical person to note the reduction in strength at my great toe, during an exact moment of pain when the impingement was occurring. All other times, strength has been observed during the period of correct alignment and no pain.
Principal Physical Therapists were Kaitlyn and Bethany. Both of them, with good nature and good hearts, took me through the extent of pain I could endure attempting to apply the skills they learned as Physical Therapists. I was always willing to work with them, despite my ever increasing knowledge that the root cause of what we were dealing with was not going to disappear without some sort of intervention. If the disc were to shrink through the use of steroids we had a shot. Beyond that a mechanical intervention to move the disc was necessary. This will occur through a surgery or something alternative such as traction. Neither had been offered to me at the time. Both are being evaluated this week. Four weeks after the onset of my condition…and I continue to sit in a wheel chair, even as I write this.
It was clear to me from the earliest days of physical therapy, what was going to happen at the rehab center, is that I was going to be trained to live at home, in a wheelchair, and be discharged. That, of course, was exactly my fate. Now at home, however, I am free to pursue the necessary care, throughout patient intervention, to heal and move forward.
Beyond Physical Therapy, the Occupational Therapists would be evaluating and problem solving for the eventual movement home via a wheel chair to begin my life with a disability.
Elizabeth, would provide most of my Activities for Daily Living, which mostly included showering…Elizabeth provided at least 6 showers during my stay…just saying…and a lot of wheelchair transition work. Other OT provided upper body exercise and a lot of use of the recumbent bike. I spent a lot of time on that bike. I also had an OT who was a stickler for posture…change your posture and she was on you like flies on stink. Elizabeth was the same with brakes on the wheelchair, forget the brakes and you thought you had just kicked her dog she was so disappointed in you.
The Admin Team consisted mostly of Sharon. She would make sure everything was on schedule. Admin was the team that snuck into your room in the middle of the night and updated your white board with your schedule. It always surprised me when I woke up and I had ADL at 7 am…followed by 3 plus hours of PT and OT. We were busy…it filled the days.
The Nutrition team came in every morning. My food service favorites are Nika and Demetria. Eventually they grew tired of me always ordering exactly the same thing for breakfast lunch and dinner. Sugar frosted flakes with an egg and sausage burrito, chicken fingers and chicken soup, grilled chicken with mashed potatoes and carrots… but trust me, I had plenty of Five Guys, Rocklands, and Chipotle on the side. Thanks to everyone who snuck everything in for me.
Recreational therapists provided the music. I already thank them in an entire blog post entitled, “Bring me to Life” if you want to go back an read it.
The normal day would begin at 4:00 a.m. That's the first blood pressure, temperature and oxygen saturation I typically remember. The technician comes in and wakes me up and then does the necessary business of emptying the urinal should the patient have used the bottle during the night. They would also take blood at this time if tests had been ordered the day before by the doctor.
The nurse would make her first rounds a 5:00 a.m. for the first medications of the day.
Breakfast was delivered about 6:00 a.m.
First occupational therapy would occur at 7:00 a.m. activities for daily living and could include eating breakfast but in my case most of the time included taking a shower and getting dressed.
The rehabilitation center requires at least three hours of therapy a day so the first PT could be 8:00 a.m. If I was lucky it was 10:00 a.m. and I had a few hours to write the blog or at least check email and communicate with one or two folks. I was rarely lucky…and would get thrown straight into my morning pain. I would never turn it down. Some patients on the ward turned down their therapy…I never wanted to be that patient. Ironically, I knew the PT would be doing me no good…but…I wasn’t going to say no after the experience at Attica.
I did visit the psychiatrist once. I think this was a requirement for all new patients. I never saw her again. I guess she judged me as sane.
Eventually I ran out of clothes to wear and King George and Harriet showed me how to use the washer and dryer in the common room. I spent most of my time down in the common room where I have my two laptops set up and I would read books, surf puppies on IG, and write this blog. Even though I had access to TVs everywhere, I never turned the TV on once. I think television might be dead.
Tech’s or admins would come find me in the common room for lunch…I would never tell them if someone had already brought me Rockland or Five Guys…But a few times I did have friends showing up for lunch and for dinner and we would go out to the recreational pavilion and ordered Door Dash whatever we wanted…they never came looking for me outside. On one occasion a Chinese Crested visited me…thanks Francine. That was the only dog, I did not have enough dog visits, considering I like dogs more than people.
Days grew much the same, and the only other thing that was unique, as the one patient on the ward who had 24/7 security…For the first week he had one security guard stationed at his door after a morning incident for the second week he had two security guards stationed at his door…was never sure what was going on with him…I never saw him outside of a wheelchair so it's not clear exactly what he could do from inside his wheelchair. I never engage with that cat during my stay and I never make eye contact. I could see his crazy eyes from my peripheral vision and that was enough…that and his continual obscenities he screamed at the staff…most of whom I’ve mentioned above. All of whom do not deserve treatment like that…but all of whom treated him with human decency and respect…just like they treated all of their patients. I hope some of that will eventually rub off on that particular patient.