Why do hospitals let themsielvesdown?

Well, on Monday my son had his operation to remove an 11cm tumour from his left side. Up until then, him, and myself had had the most efficient, fantastic treatment from Endocrine team, and then pre-admission, the surgical team. We sat waiting in the ITU waiting room, and after 3 and half hours we suddenly saw him being wheeled past in a bed. I don't think that image will ever leave my mind. Anyway, once in ITU, the surgeon's assistant (who had wheeled him up there) disappeared, so eventually, when we were allowed in to see him, I asked the nurse how the op had gone, 'did he lose his kidney, or his spleen, was it attached to the bowel?' She glanced at the notes and said he'd had a node removed from around his heart. I nearly fainted. 'Why?' I croaked, 'She shrugged and said 'There must've been a growth in it'. When I finally got to speak to the ITU doctor, he said that wasn't the case at all, he'd had some nodes removed from around the tumour, which the aortic nerve ran near to. Stupid nurse. Then the doctor said he couldn't read the surgical team's writing, so didn't know what he'd had done. How can a patient be wheeled into ITU and they don't know what procedure he'd had? After a few hours, (and because we'd said we wanted information from SOMEONE, the surgeon rang us and said tumour wasn't attached to kidney or spleen, so he hadn't lost either, but it shared a couple of blood vessels with bowel, so a bit of reconstructive work there, and he'd removed a couple of nearby nodes as a preventative measure. This conversation took all of 30 seconds. So why couldn't they have popped their head round waiting room door and told us that in the first place? Then, about midnight monday, I got call from ITU to say they were moving him to a surgical ward as they needed his bed in ITU. I said not happy about this as he'd only been in there for 6 hours or so, but they moved him anyway. Then yesterday was really awful. He has the PCA morphine drip, but was in terrible pain all day saying it wasn't helping - we asked if he could have more and one of the underling doctors said no, no more because of the risk of nausea, when he hadn't felt nauseous at all. It was so awful seeing him in so much pain, I had to walk out of the ward at one point to try and get myself together. So last night I rang the ward at 10pm and spoke to the nurse looking after him, she said he was more comfortable and sleeping, because she'd increased his morphine pump to 2mg per 5 minutes, as it'd only been set at 1mg, which was very low. I told her the doctor had said 'no' to increasing it and she said it was written in his notes 1 - 3 grams of morphine depending on his pain. So she had taken the initiative to increase it, as he'd had no sickness so far. We were so angry that our boy had had 20 or so hours in pain when he didn't need to be, so my hubby went to hospital this morning before work, to catch the doctors on their rounds and tell them we felt disappointed with their pain management abilities. The surgeon's registrar breezed in apparently, and said' Oh yes, we'll start to take him off morphine now!' So my husband said 'now hang on a minute, they've only just got his pain under control, and it's only 36 hours after major abdominal surgery, so forget about 'stopping' morphine unless you can give him something else. My son is doing ok, all obs are fine, but I feel it's so frustrating - different teams don't seem to communicate properly with each other, and I feel so bad that he was in so much pain when he didn't need to be. I feel as if we didn't fight his corner enough. I know that you simplay have to be 'on the case' all the time, as nurses are so busy, and doctors, that communicaation gets lost, silly mistakes are made. And I know I must have a reputation amongst the nurses and doctors as being a pain in the arse, but so what, I don't give a toss - I want to know what he's having, when, why, and how much, and I won't put up with doctors breezing in like the second coming and talking off-handley to my son when he's in so much pain he can't even take in what they're saying. At this rate I'll be barred from the hospital! BUT the good news, at least he kept all his organs, now we have awful wait to find out benign/maligant. Professor seems to think it's maliganant because it was so big. So dreading that result. Going up hos later today, hope he's a bit better today.