Another rant about Malden’s PAYT Program

That’s “Pay As You Throw”, aka the infamous garbage tax here in Malden, MA.

One good thing they did was to introduce smaller bags that only cost $1.00 each ($10.00 for a box of 10 bags).  Some people, especially elderly folks who live alone, just don’t make that much trash, and the $2.00 a pop bags are just too big.

Anyhoo, on to the rantage.  Apparently, Stop & Shop has been having problems with people trying to steal the overpriced trash bags…why does this not surprise me?  We were in there the other day because we needed to buy the trash bags, but they were not in their usual place on the shelf.  We looked around further, no Malden trash bags in sight.  If you’ve ever shopped at this particular store (Charles Street), you know that asking an employee for help is almost useless.  Most of their staffers are surly teenagers who could seriously use not only the best acne treatment, but a good kick in the pants as an attitude adjuster.

It was too late to go to another store at the time, and we still had a few days before garbage day to get the bags.  A couple of days later, Mike went to the Super 88 market on Commercial Street, they are on a list of stores that was mailed out when the PAYT program first started.  They did not have the bags at all.  I guess he forgot that Lamson & Davis, which is near the Super 88, is supposed to have them, too…but he didn’t go there.  He ended driving further up Commercial Street and got the bags at the Department of Public Works.

We were puzzled as to why two stores on the list we were given no longer had the bags.  I went and checked the city of Malden’s crap website, and it was there that I found that the list of stores had changed.  Super 88 was no longer on the list at all, and Stop & Shop had been edited to say that the bags were now available at both the Charles Street and Broadway stores at the customer service desk.

Uuummm…Stop & Shop?  Perhaps some clearly visible SIGNAGE would have been nice?  Maybe a sign where the bags used to be, saying where they are now?  Ya think?

A lot of old people shop at the Charles Street location, mostly because it’s right on the bus stop.  Many of the elderly people here do not drive, they can’t afford cars.  There are several apartment buildings that are subsidized housing for seniors, so these people have very little money.  If they had any money, trust me, they’d not be spending their golden years in Malden.

So what happens if some little old lady comes into the store looking for the garbage bags that she’d bought there before?  She won’t see them in the usual place, she’ll ask one of the punk kids who work there, that person won’t know, and then she’ll be stuck.  A lot of elderly folks also don’t have computers and don’t go online at all, so they wouldn’t think to go to the library and look at the website.  What are they supposed to do?  Hoof it over to Lamson & Davis?  It’s not a long walk for someone like me, for for an elderly person, it might be too much.

I do understand the need for S&S to put the bags at the customer service desk to prevent theft.  Malden seems to be full of people who will not only steal anything that is not nailed down, but also pry it up and steal it if it IS nailed down.  The store has every right to protect itself from losses.  But for goodness sake, how hard is it to put up some lousy signs?

I’ve never cared for that store, anyway.  Now that we know, we can just plan ahead, buy the bags at Lamson & Davis or the DPW when they are open.  We have a car and can get there easily, and advantage we have over most of the old people in this town.

I am guessing that Super 88 simply chose to stop selling the bags completely for the same reason…theft.  And they probably decided that it was too much trouble to make people have to ask for them at the desk.  I don’t blame them.  I will still shop there when I need Asian ingredients that I can’t find elsewhere, that store is great for that.

Also, there is still the issue of the recycling bins.  Each household gets one for free, additional ones are five bucks a pop.  If you recycle a lot each week and don’t want to spend five bucks for additional bins, you can get free sticker to put on containers you already have (such as garbage cans) to designate them for use as recycling bins.

The problem?  The ONLY place to get these is at the DPW, which is NOT on any bus line.  It’s out in an industrial area, not much else there except for the Rosebud Farms store, which nobody goes to unless they have a car.  So, how are these old people suppsed to get the bins or stickers?  I’d like to hope that perhaps there is some kind of senior transportation service for stuff like this.  But still, what about ANYONE who doesn’t have a car?  Unless they can find someone to give them a ride to the place, they are out of luck.

Would it really kill ‘em to have additional locations, in various neighborhoods, for residents to pick up bins or stickers?  Malden is claiming that they want to be green and encourage people to recycle.  But they really need to think about the demographic here, not everyone is rich like the mayor is, not everyone can afford cars.  If you really want to encourage people to do something, it behooves you to make it as easy as possible for them.

Malden is a joke.

Spirit Journeys

One of the good things about New England is that we are very gay-friendly.  As of now, three of the Six Great States have legalized gay marriage.  Massachusetts was the first, and later, Connecticut and Vermont have granted this right to all, as well.  New Hampshire and Maine are tolerant, it is only Rhode island who seems to be bristling over the idea of equal rights for all, no matter who you choose to love.

So, like everyone else, you get married and want to perhaps take a honeymoon.  Or maybe you are a long-established gay couple who just wants to take a vacation.  The problem is, however, some hotels and resorts are NOT gay-friendly, they can do everything from look at you cross-eyed when you and your same-sex partner check in, sharing the same room, to out and out refuse to accommodate you at all.  That can really ruin a vacation, so what to do?

There’s a website that promotes gay travel, called SpiritJourneys.com.  The retreats are spiritually-oriented, and designed for gay/lesbians to feel comfortable.  Too many people think that gay people are devoid of any religion and spirituality, but this is simply not true.  If you take a Spirit Journey, you can explore your own spirituality in a safe and comfortable environment, where no one will put you down for any reason, including your sexual preference.  You’ll enjoy a retreat at a beautiful place, and workshops to help you learn more about yourself and the world around you.

These are vacations that anyone would enjoy…but designed with the gay/lesbian lifestyle in mind.  If you are so inclined, check them out at SpiritJourneys.com.

They’re cutting back? NOOOOO! Who’da thunk it?

I am being sarcastic, of course.  Yesterday, I read this article on Wicked Local Malden:   Medford’s Hallmark Health making staffing, salary reductions

Well, they seem to be cutting back on much more than that, as I wrote about here.  Apparently stuff like patient care, heating/cooling, and even laundry are being cut back on, if Mike’s last miserable stay is any indication.

I realize that times are tough, we are in a recession…but apparently, Hallmark Health doesn’t know how to make cutbacks in such a way that they are barely noticed by hospital patients.  When you are made to sit in your own waste for days, not being given clean linens and johnnies, that is noticeable.

I’ll tell you something that they COULD cut back on…the parking garage attendant.  WHY are they paying this guy a salary?  I mean, for one thing, the parking garage is free.  But this guy just sits on a piece of patio furniture all day. When a car pulls into the garage and stops (as per the sign that says to stop for the attendant), he gets up off of his lawn chair and tells the driver to park anywhere from the second level on up.  He says that every time, never says anything different.

There is a HUGE sign that says that the first level of the garage is for doctors only.  I think that the hospital issues special stickers for the doctors to put on their cars, in case anybody ever bothers to check.  The parking attendant guy sure doesn’t, he just sits there all day and only hauls himself up to tell people not to park on the first level.  So, don’t you think that having this guy there, paying him whatever they are paying him, a huge waste?

One of the nurses at the Lahey Clinic told us that she heard rumors that Melrose-Wakefield Hospital may be closing.  I haven’t been able to find anything more about this, only the Wicked Local article about the cutbacks.

But if their cutbacks keep pissing off their patients and their families, they won’t have any patients left, and then they will have to close.

Yes, having a hospital in your own community is a good thing.  But if said hospital operates with sub-par standards, we have no choice but to look outside of the community, no matter how far we must travel to get there.

Oh, and I wrote the comment on that article.  Let’s see how long it is before someone complains about it, and the site deletes it.

Hospital Advertisements

Is it just me, or have there really been a LOT more commercials on local Boston TV and radio for hospitals these days?  It seems to me that there are.  I guess that since times are tough, and when people get sick they have to go somewhere, it’s worth the money to run ads to get business.  I suppose that opens up a lot of sales jobs for people, which is a good thing.

I’m currently listening to the Lost 45′s on Oldies 103.3, and they have run ads for several different area hospitals over the course of the program.  And this made me realize that these ads do work, as they influenced my choice of a new hospital for Mike.  Maybe not consciously.  But one of the ads I heard tonight was for Lahey Clinic, where Mike is now.  The tagline of the ad is “Lahey Clinic:  Treating You Right”.  They have ads on TV, too, with the same tagline.

Since the other hospital he was in was treating him wrong, perhaps I subconsciously remembered the “treating you right” ads when I made the choice.  In any case, we’ve found that this claim is true, they really are treating him right.

Anyhoo, I’m not sure if there are more ads for hospitals these days, or I’m just paying more attention to them, given our current situation.

Melrose-Wakefield Hospital – Stay Far, FAR Away!

This is a public safety announcement – if you value your life, and the lives of your loved ones, stay away from Melrose-Wakefield Hospital.

If you read my other blog, The Passionate Ailurophile, the entire saga is there in more detail.  But here’s a more condensed version…

In the middle of March, Mike, my husband, went to the ER at Melrose-Wakefield (that is where his now-former primary care physician practices) because he was dry-heaving and dehydrated.  It turned out that he had something called diabetic ketoacidosis, which is caused by not taking enough insulin.

But they had to mess with his other meds, especially the water pills, which he has to take to treat his congestive heart failure.  Once the diabetic condition was treated, he was released, but they didn’t increase the water pill dosage back up to normal.  A few days after he was released, the swelling started up again.  Congestive heart failure causes fluid to build up in the feet, ankles, lungs, and even in the stomach.  It’s normally treated with medications, including water pills such as Lasix, and up until now, they’d been working just fine.

So he went back to his doctor, who upped the dose of the Lasix.  Didn’t work much.  He called the doctor, and he upped the dose again.  Some days the fluids went down, only to go back up the next day.

He called the doctor again, and was told to go to the ER.  So off we went.  At this time I was convinced that they had screwed something up during the previous stay, to make this necessary.

A bit of past history…a few years ago, Mike had his appendic removed at this place.  The surgeon found cancer in the appendix.  They did a colonoscopy and other tests to see it it had spread to anywhere, they didn’t see any signs of this.  Still, they very heavily pushed to idea of having half his colon lopped out anyway, “just in case”.  He opted not to have this surgery, as it wasn his appendix scar was rather sloppily sewn up and was healing kid of funny.  So he wasn’t about to get cut open again unless there was an immediate need for it, which there wasn’t.

Anyhoo, back to the current saga…one of the first things they did at M-W after admission, was to do an abdominal CATscan.  To prepare for this, Mike had to drink gallons of fruit juice with some nasty dye stuff in it, so they could see what was in there.  Why, you may ask, were they doing this, when the problem is with his heart?  Why, they wanted to see if the cancer had come back, so they could push for that surgery again!  They should have been checking his heart first and foremost, but they weren’t.

The good news is that there is still no sign of any cancer.  The bad news is that they kept sending in some doctor we’d never seen before, to give the sales pitch for colon-loppage surgery, to remove the tumors that are not there.  Meanwhile, Mike was getting even sicker…partly from the fact that the condition he was brought in for had not improved, partly because of all that fruit juice, and partly because this one nurse was forcing him to take his pills with applesauce because it pissed her off that he had to chew them.  The applesauce likely contained sulfites, something Mike is allergic to.

They did one other procedure that was never really explained to us.  However, they were unable to do it for something like four days…the first few days being that they needed to flush out the dye stuff from the CATscan.  It was delayed a further day due to a screw-up by a nurse…he was not supposed to have food, water, ANYTHING before the procedure.  But the nurse came in and made him take his meds anyway, she said it would be okay.  When they wheeled him down to where they were to do the procedure, the doctor said they couldn’t do it because he’d taken his meds.

The next day, he refused his meds and had whatever it was done.  No one told us anything about it.

In addition to all of this, Mike was being sorely neglected.  I had gone out of town for one night, and I came back to find he’d been left to sit in his own diarrhea (which was caused by all of that fruit juice).  He was weak and didn’t make it to the bathroom in time.  He was still wearing the sweat pants he was wearing when I brought him in, no one brought him hospital pants, or even a clean johnny, for days.  He developed a rather nasty rash *down there*, I had to bring Neosporin from home to put on it.  I also brought another pair of sweat pants, because he was cold and needed pants.  The *heater* was blowing out cold air, even though it was set to heat and not air-conditioning.

There was also the issue of a huge, ugly bruise on his lower right side, which was also unexplained.

In any case, it seemed that Mike was getting sicker, and no one was doing anything to figure out why.  The only time a doctor came in to talk to me at all was the one who was doiung the sales pitch for the surgery.  I refused to listen to that, I didn’t want to hear anything except answers to the questions I did have.  The nurses were of no help, they treated me as a nonentity, and had attitudes that ranged from stand-offish to downright hateful.

Finally, I demanded that Mike be released so that I could take him to another hospital, since no one at this dump seemed to be interested in finding out what was wrong with him.  I mean, all they were doing at this point was giving him meds, which could have been nothing more than weight loss pills, for all we knew.

They told me that if he was released against medical orders, our insurance would not pay for this stay.  I tried bluffing them by telling them that I’d already contacted the insurance company (Blue Cross), and they told me otherwise.  The nurses (and the social worker they sent in because it was clear to them that I was the crazy one here) didn’t buy it.  So I called Blue Cross for real, and told them the whole story.  They said that they’d never refuse to pay a claim for this reason, and advised me to take Mike to the ER of another hospital.

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