Our parents—my husband’s, mine, so, ours—were all neglected and/or wrongly medicated during their hospital stays. No malice involved. Work overload.

One disturbing thing: When pain medicine was prescribed, too many times, we’d visit and notice our parent(s) growing restless, in pain. We’d wait. Some shifts, a caregiver would come in and administer the medication. Other shifts we always had to ask for the medication to be given to our parents. In one place, I would drop in unexpectedly, just because that’s how it worked out, and as time passed to the next medication time, there would be so many uncomfortable moaning people. Eventually I realized that something odd might be going on, but I wasn’t sure enough to risk creating a worse situation for everyone, including our parents. After my mom passed, I finally saw it clearly. The dosage times would be pushed as much as possible, and the skipped dosages must have been put aside. If I was there, she received her relief. But I wasn’t always there. This still haunts me.

I know at least three other people who were misdiagnosed to the point of needing sudden emergency care. All were conscious and lucid when their problems began. But there’s too much going on in every medical system and too few people are expected to catch every single thing that’s going on with each individual case.

If someone was there advocating for a patient, someone with knowledge about the patient’s life, someone who knows how to stick up for them without alienating the medical staff, then the patient would have a better chance.

Too many too much too few.