Doctors -vs- Patients

I had a disagreement against a physician and I wrote to the State Board of Registration for the Healing Arts. My complaint was rejected by them, without ever giving me a reason for doing so.

A routine visit to my doctor was the start to a long drawn out misunderstanding. He prescribe Amox-Clav, and gave me exercises for my round shoulders, which I explained to him I had lived with my round shoulders since I was six years old. I refused to believe that any pharmaceutical could correct this at my age, which at the time I was 80 years of age.

I took the medication as prescribe, only after one dose I experience bleeding, so I stopped taking the drug and called my doctor. He suggested I go to the emergency room because of the bleeding. I was leery about going myself so I called a friend who came immediately to take me to the hospital. I wasn’t hemorrhaging, but having your doctor tell you to go to the emergency room makes you wonder if he knows something you don’t and doesn’t want to scare you by telling you.

I was admitted for observation, and I ended up spending three days in the hospital before this doctor even showed up to see what might be wrong with me. In the end, the medical staff didn’t find any reason for me to be there. On the third day, he arrived too late to issue a discharge order that would have permitted the hospital to discharge me. If I stayed another day, I would have had to pay for it myself as my insurance would not cover it. Because of this I insisted on leaving without his discharge authorization and did.

Now back to my complaint. Not only did I feel neglected by my doctor, but there was no one that seemed to care about my plight. I doubt if this is an only experience of this type. We need a patient listening ear for patients not just for doctors.

One, Two, Three, Four Stricks and You're Out

I had four doctors trying to fix my problem, which ended up being a case of, “Too many blind cooks in the kitchen.”
The first three doctors read from the same script or recipe, “I can’t find anything physically wrong with you. It must be a psychologically induced problem. You will need to get over it and move on with your life.”
One doctor implied he knew the missing ingredient was physical in origin – a brain injury. Only this information came three years too late, the damage had become permanent. The uphill battle for recovery was no less heroic in nature than climbing Mount Everest. Climbing a mountain or walking the path of recovery, both are a choice that will require everything you can give it.
It was a relief to find out that my chronic symptoms were not a figment of my imagination, but were a by-product of a real injury. This was my first step on my path to finding what would be my new “normal.” Because of the delay in addressing these problems, they became permanent, chronic and impossible to reverse. Today, more than thirty years later, they still are a constant reminder preventing me from not thinking about them – my new normal.