LTAC

After my initial hospital stay in mid-summer I was too weak from antibiotics, MRSA, and other issues, to go straight home - so the plan was to go to rehab. My case worker decided the best place for me would be an LTAC (long term acute care) facility. I ended up in Select Specialty, or as it shall hence forth be known, the place where dreams (and people as it were) go to die ';'.  Really, lucky to be alive after spending a month at this horrendous shit hole. My family would look around nervously and smile weakly when they came to visit, wanting to be comforting but confused themselves about I had managed to not yet contract the ebola virus or something.

It was dirty, loud, unorganized, shady, and complete with people screaming unintelligibly all night. Just a few examples of their general ineptitude: on several occasions I was given medication meant for other people, I often had to ask staff to clean the injection site before pushing something into my IV, from my room I noticed people pushing the help light in the shower room and it taking up to 30 minutes for a response, nurses rarely came to check on me but one day I had an especially attentive nurse - turns out my phone charger matched her phone and she asked me to answer and take messages while it charged, she stopped by periodically to see if anyone had called! I heard more than one staff member say that they didn't like the facility and they felt like their ultimate goal was to get people to stay longer and run unnecessary tests to bill insurance. Most nurses didn't do my skin treatment so all the progress I had made at the first hospital was negated there. There was a giant blood stain on the wall in one room I was in for a night. It was, in short, a horrible place. They were supposed to rehab me but instead kept me hopped up on morphine, ambien, benadryl, and vicodin (all at once) - and I left four weeks later essentially worse than when I was admitted. I have a lot of other horror stories about this place - but for now I will just say - be careful where you or your loved ones go to receive care, talk to people you know and go somewhere you really trust not somewhere a case worker tells you is best. There was nothing best about this place.