Post by underwaterrhymes on May 20, 2023 12:41:32 GMT -5
I’m so sorry for the traumatic experiences people have had.
I’ve personally been very lucky. Aside from the time the nurse who recorded my weight prior to my first colonoscopy accidentally added 30 pounds and the anesthesiologist gave me more drugs than I needed (fortunately resulting in comedy rather tragedy), I’ve not personally been through anything horrible that could be attributed to poor care. (I have seen some doctors who were real pricks, but have been able to change providers successfully because I live in an area where it’s easy to do this and have widely accepted insurance, a flexible job, and a supportive partner.)
I have often felt that having a dedicated patient advocate would help a lot with coordinating complicated care or navigating how to handle things when the care provided has been less than ideal or outright negligent. I hate that our medical system is so challenging to maneuver and that professionals who consistently provide poor care are able to continue to actively harm.
I was in the hospital when my 7 year old hip replacement got infected from a pimple. I had no problem getting diagnosed, my problems came when the orthopedic residents were trying to bulldoze me into having my hip prosthesis removed. I knew it had to be done, told them that. But I lived alone, in a second floor apartment and my family and bf were in other states. I was trying to get it set up to move to an area where I could get treated, and have local support.
The bulldozing included delaying my pain meds. They were ordered for every 3 hours on my call. When I called depending who was on, they’d show up in 15 min or 3 hours. At the 3 hour point, they’d be ineffective, and I’d need rescue morphine. Then I got told I was drug seeking (an infected prosthesis was waaay more painful than the surgery to put it in). The residents came into my room, and lied flat out to me that I had MRSA. They thought my hearing I had an MRSA infection, I’d roll over and consent to surgery. Only problem was that I’m a microbiologist and I knew I did not have MRSA. I delineated the reasons to the gaggle of residents telling them that they were f$&*ing liars, and gave the long laundry list of why I knew that they were lying to me. In short, I made them all look like idiots. My final statement to them was telling them that I had forgotten more microbiology than they had ever learned, so it was phenomenally stupid to lie to someone who knew more about what I was infected with than they did. They avoided me after this.
Anyway, I got a plan in action and my bf was going to fly in and take me home with him in WA. We had it set up to me going to a Seattle hospital. He came in, and I was waiting for my last dose of IV antibiotics. They would not release me, so I signed out against medical advice, PICC line still in place. The nurse tried telling me that my insurance wouldn’t pay, and I’d be stuck with a huge hospital bill that would get sent to collections, which would ruin me financially. I asked her how she knew what my finances were, and who I was insured by? LOL! Insurance paid, but I could have covered the bill out of my checking account if it hadn’t.
There is no doubt that if I had remained in this hospital, I would have wound up with a nosocomial infection on top of what I was already infected with (which was very treatable). Their infection control measures scared the shit out of me. I was seriously afraid they’d kill me.
When I finally got all my problems dealt with, I really wished I had kept a journal for those 11 days as to who said what to me. I never got my pain meds on schedule, my antibiotics were always late. A phlebotomist stuck me 4 times trying to get blood, when she could have gotten it from my PICC had she asked a nurse. It wasn’t until I balked at a 5th stick that she finally did. So many things like this happened, and as I was alone I had no one to advocate for me. It’s really hard to advocate for yourself when you feel like crap.
The ironic thing about all of this was I worked at this medical center. Thank god, on the research side. The clinical side sucked. I had heard rumors, but never realized it was that bad.
I had a very traumatic HIPPA violation during a pregnancy when an acquaintance who worked as a massage therapist upstairs from the medical office somehow knew I was pregnant with multiples (like 2 seconds pregnant) and thought it was cool to message me on FB about it and then congratulate me AGAIN when I ran into her in the office. I was absolutely devastated at this point in my pregnancy for a bunch of reasons, and then went through some other traumatic stuff during the pregnancy (edited out details), and I just felt so violated.
After delivering my first baby they discovered I had a very large blood clot in my uterus and it needed to be broken/popped. I never got any warning as to what was going to happen but immediately after telling me the issue the nurse took her fist and pounded it downward into my stomach. The clot popped and it was like a murder scene. I was told by another nurse later on that they could have done massage and pressure first to try to pop it, but this nurse went to the extreme first thing.