Posts
For several years, I threw up first thing every morning. The doctors didn't ask questions, didn't listen to explanations, they just went for the fast answer: either stop binging/purging at 3 AM or don't eat whatever I'm having an allergic reaction to. The subject would be changed before I could argue that the facts did not support their theory -- I wasn't eating anything before throwing up, the nausea started before I even had my eyes open.
I eat a varied diet, the only thing I have every single day is a glass of milk with breakfast. A radical vegan jumped on that, and told me the problem was obviously that I'm lactose intolerant, I was throwing up because I'm allergic to milk, humans shouldn't drink milk. She then stopped listening when I tried to point out it must be a very powerful allergy for me to throw up 2 hours before I was going to ingest what I'm supposedly allergic to. I have several known food allergies, and when someone slips one of those past my radar, it only takes 20 minutes to react, therefore, I wasn't going to buy the explanation that it took 22 hours to react to yesterday's glass of milk. Actually, some days, I would consume 1/2 gallon of milk between plain milk, hot chocolate, instant breakfast, cream soups, sour cream, pudding, etc., and didn't have any problem from it, so I wasn't convinced that I was allergic to milk.
Eventually, I found a doctor who was more interested in finding the right answer rather than the fast answer. He asked questions. And concluded that the problem wasn't what I was eating, but what I was not eating: I'd be exhausted and collapse into bed in the afternoon before eating dinner, and not be able to get to the kitchen after I'd collapsed, so it was often 12-18 hours since I'd last eaten when I threw up. Which meant that for 12-18 hours, my stomach acid had nothing to work on but my stomach. Saltines and antacids at bedside solved the problem. It was a simple solution, but it required asking the right questions to determine the cause rather than blaming the patient for bringing it on herself.
Like any teenage bulimic who throws up intentionally, I now have a mouthful of teeth rotted from years of daily baths in stomach acid.
The past few months, I've slowly been having the unsalvageable ones pulled. My dentist doesn't like to pull more than two at a time, so it has been slow going. And since we're moving slowly at getting them out, it'll be a while before that project is complete and we can get the partial denture made to put back in. Eating's been "interesting" -- not only because my jaw hurts but because I don't have enough teeth in the front to bite into something. Burgers and sandwiches and pizza are off the menu for the time being because I can't take a bite out of them; I can only eat them with a knife and fork, and most places that serve those things don't have forks on hand. If I want a cookie, I have to use my hands to break it into small pieces, because I can't bite into that, either. So, the diet's very limited: soup, yogurt, pudding, ice cream, mashed potatoes, Cream of Wheat, did I mention soup? The other day, I cooked some pasta down to a gelatinous mess to make a casserole just for something different that didn't need to be chewed.
I'm not sure whether it's the anesthesia or a short-burst infection, but every time I have teeth pulled, I wind up sleeping most of the next 2-3 days. Fortunately, I've stopped feeling guilty about sleeping when my body demands I spend the day in bed; it's not laziness, it's healing. But still, it's time that could be spent more productively, like working.
What's all this going to cost me? We're in the multiple-thousands, and haven't even talked about the price of the false teeth yet. Yet one more price that I have to pay while the malpracticing doctors get off scot-free for the physical damage they caused by not listening. And I'm sure they'd somehow manage to put the blame on me for their missing the diagnosis, despite my repeated attempts to get them to listen to the reasons their theory was wrong -- I wasn't standing in front of the fridge at 3 AM stuffing my face, I was too weak to get out of bed and walk that far, and I've never been an emotional eater. (In fact, any of my former roommates could've told them that when I get upset, I clean maniacally and insist that I'm too upset to eat. When I had a depressing experience, one of them had to actually force-feed me a hot fudge sundae ... as in "open the hangar, here comes the airplane", putting the spoon in my mouth, because I wasn't eating it when it was put in front of me.) "Don't confuse me with facts, my mind is already made up"; they wanted to see a depressed divorcee eating her way to a size 100, and they were going to twist the patient's words to see what they wanted to see, and fill in the blanks with their imaginations rather than asking questions.
Doctors nowadays like to practice what Dr. Bell calls Game Show Medicine -- the first one to buzz in with an answer wins. They don't want to take the extra few seconds to listen to ALL the information the patient is providing, and a patient who says "no, you're wrong, I don't do that" gets tuned out; busy-busy-busy, too busy to listen to the patient to be sure the diagnosis is correct. If even one person had listened to me, heard me out instead of leaping to a conclusion, the problem could've been solved soon enough to save my teeth. If a doctor had prescribed an anti-emetic instead of brusquely saying "don't eat what you're allergic to", I wouldn't be spending all this money on dentistry; it wouldn't have been the correct treatment, but it would've been better than the misogynistic assumption that because I'm a woman I'm too stupid to avoid foods that make me sick and can solve my own problem simply by changing what I eat.
Doctors don't like me. I have enough spunk to stand up to them and tell them when they're wrong. The only way for them to win is to interrupt, change the subject, leave the room, so that they don't hear the actual facts that contradict what they've imagined up to support their wrong theory. But, I'm not in the doctor's office to massage his ego; I'm there to get the necessary treatment to get me back to work ... another fact they conveniently ignore while accusing me of not wanting to get well because I don't want to go back to work.
If the doctors had given me the right pills the first time I asked for them, I probably wouldn't still be in relapse 9 years later; I probably would have gone back to work a month or so after I got the correct treatment. Instead, I was allowed to deteriorate so far without proper medical care that I may never return to work.
Dr. Bruno writes "In this new millennium medicine must not be about doctors' egos". Patients can ensure a better result for themselves by finding ways to make doctors listen to them. Shout them down when they try to change the subject. Give them written memos (just let one try to deny he was given the facts when they're right there in his file in writing). If you have to, get a lawyer to write them a letter explaining "experts recommend <describe treatment> and if you don't intend to provide the expert-recommended treatment to this patient, please contact me to explain why not."
My doctors played "someone else's responsibility to sign that" with my disability forms for YEARS until my cousin, a medical professional in another state, told me to threaten them with a lawyer -- he assured me the last thing any doctor wanted was a judge telling them he doesn't care if the PCP thinks it's the specialist's responsibility and the specialist thinks it's the PCP's responsibility, someone's going to sign it or he'll hold the whole medical group in contempt. The disability application is just that, an application; someone other than the doctor makes the final decision on whether you qualify for benefits, but you need the doctor's signature to get you into the system to be assessed. (One of my stonewalling doctors was particularly peeved when he found out that while he had successfully run out the clock on my State Disability, I could, and did, apply for SSDI without his signature. How dare I do an end run around him!)
