Twenty Percent of You, Me and Everyone We Know and the Doctors Who Try to Take It All Away

Current mood: grateful
Category: Life

Good Morning Kids,

I heard an interesting statistic the other day. Wanna hear it? Alright. Did you know that 20% of all time spent on the internet, across the world, is spent on myspace and blogger. This just proves that I am not the only one with an addiction. Like I have said before, I can stop. Really I can. Put the phone down. I will not hurt you or anyone else.

Yesterday was a little bit on the mellow side for me. Not much to report other than you can tell by the time that this blog was posted, that I haven't had much sleep.

Okay, enough of the melodramatic rambling about nothing.

I wanted to take this opportunity to offer some advice. I know, the best advice is that which is solicited and taken with a grain of wheat germ. But after all I have been through in the previous year or more or maybe through my whole life and as a closet nurse, I have something to say.

Doctors.

They can be very very nice people. As a matter of fact, most of the doctors I have worked with are very nice and helpful people. But there are a few that need to be reckoned with.

As human beings it is certain that we will fail at some point or another. We will stand back up after that failure, dust our britches off and then go about trying the same stupid human trick again until we get it right. But when you are messing with human lives you better be damn well sure about not only yourself, but the life you are tooling around with.

But, there comes a time also when us humans must admit to a certain lack of knowledge and ask others for help. I have to admit that my medical history seemingly becomes more complex with each passing breath, but this does not mean that I am impossible. It just means that I am quite unique.

I am going to share a story with you now and I think, hope...that each one of you will learn from my infallible bad karma. Last summer (2006) I needed a surgery to repair my stomach as it had herniated up through my diaphragm. I was opened up from sternum bone to pelvic area. They were able to repair me in about three hours. Afterwards, I was admitted to the hospital for about 12 days.

I was discharged in stable condition. I had a touch of the hospital acquired colitis, but that was it. Within two weeks I began to have severe back pain and stomach pain. I admit that I wasn't drinking as much as I should have been, but I was exhausted. I went to the surgeon's office and explained the pain etc. He told me that since I didn't have a raging fever and redness around the incision area that I was not infected. Basically he said to walk it out.

The week after this visit the pain was so intense, kind of a searing heat of a pain through my abdomen and back, I went back to the doc. He was very rough with me and told me once again that there was nothing wrong. He insisted that I was depressed and proceeded to prescribe me an anti-depressant. I refused to take it, as he was a surgeon not a psych. Plus there was absolutely nothing going on in my life at that moment to make me depressed. Well, other than a pain in my ass with the initials of MD and the pain in my belly.

Within a week the incision area came open. Only in a small area, but open nonetheless. I went into the ER at the hospital where the surgery was performed and they said that there was nothing wrong. I went back to see him the days following the ER visit and he said that it was just a simple problem. Deal with it.

A week later I had a fever of over 102. I went to the other hospital in town and they performed a CT scan of the abdomen. Sure enough there was a pretty large abcess. They discharged me and told me to see the surgeon the next day. I went back to him like the fool I am and he admitted me. When up on the surgical floor of the hospital he refused any meds, and since I was crying like a baby, curled up in the fetal position, he "allowed" me to have a tylenol. He repeated the CT scan and well, I'll be damned. There was that abcess again. By that night I was in surgery again, on a morphine drip and had a big gaping hole in my abdomen.

This surgery caused more infection and problems with healing. The results: 5 surgeries over a 4 month period of time. One blood clot. 6 episodes of anti-biotic induced colitis and a partridge in a pear tree.

Yep, depression is a bitch. Especially when it causes peritonitis and other infections.

So listen up kids. Just because they have more degrees than you and I could ever imagine getting or spending our money on, doesn't mean that they necessarily know what they are doing.

Unfortunately I have a similar scenario going on at the moment with my present health issues. No, they are not surgical in nature. Thank God. But, the docs are screwing around with the what-if's and not really doing a whole lot by way of figuring out what the problem is. But, hopefully the specialist will start to figure things out. I just hope it is in time. Last time I almost didn't make it due to the infections.

Yes I am young. Yes I am too young to have all of this shit going on. But in reality it is the only body I have and if I am not going to advocate for my health than who will?

Please, please, please...do not take everything your physician says as the absolute truth. If I would have listened to the quack surgeon and taken the anti-depressants instead of persisting about my treatments I would be dead.

Listen to your bodies. I know that this sounds cliche' but it is the most certain truth you have. You know your body better than anyone else.

I hope you all have learned something.

Yours in Bodies, Banter and Becoming Who I Have Always Wanted to Be,

Cicily