Dear Docs,
I become increasingly weary of people in your profession of late. It seems that even the simplest of tasks becomes a giant mountain that people must scale, using nothing but duct tape and bailing wire, hoping not to fall into a great yawning precipice.
For 7 years, my son has been epileptic. For 21 years, he has been severely autistic. Due to the latter, he is very violent when around doctors. He doesn’t like them touching him and with good reason. He spent the better part of the first 8 years of his life in a hospital, constantly being poked at and hurt by doctors.
Zen has been on medications for the entire last 7 years. The medications he’s on really do sort of demand that he had regular bloodwork done. However, in the last 7 years he’s had absolutely ZERO blood work done. Not because we don’t want him to have it done, but because doctors like you all have decided that the issue really is monumental and you just can’t figure out how to get it done.
I’m fully well aware that my son is violent and combative, believe me, I live with that every day and have been on the receiving end of this more than one time in the last 21 years. I’m also well aware that the situation of having blood work done does become mildly complicated when your patient is violent. But, what I can not understand is how something so simple as admitting someone like my son to the hospital for the day, sedating him BY MOUTH, monitoring his heart and breathing because of complications that he’s had before, taking his blood while he’s asleep so that we don’t have to fight him, then observing him for a couple hours after he wakes up is so difficult that absolutely none of you can manage to figure it out.
The hospital in my area won’t even TOUCH this situation. That’s right all you fabulously book educated professionals, a hospital won’t even touch my scenario here.
“Why?”, you ask? Because the hospital in my area doesn’t do “conscious sedation” that way. They do it by IV. Which would defeat the entire purpose since we wouldn’t be able to get the IV in him to begin with…….unless he was……..say it with me, guys……..sedated . Yes.
So, now I’m stuck going back to the establishments 65 miles north of me because none of you jerks down here will touch it. But, that’s not all, it gets better from here.
I get a call today from the neurologist’s office. They want to send us to a SURGEON now. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me why a surgeon would be required for something as elementary as sedating someone, observing them and taking blood, but I found out very quickly.
They want to put a PORT in my son’s chest. You know, a port, like chemo patients get. They want to put a port in Zen’s chest not because he’s going to have chemo (because he ISN’T), but because they want it there in case he needs more blood work done someday.
Now, think about that one a second please. Let it really sink in a minute. You guys all know what ports are for and what needs to go on to maintain them. Do any of you really, honestly think that my son, the one who’s violent and won’t allow docs to even place a stethoscope on his chest for 1 minute, would tolerate a port in his chest?!
First of all, he would rip the dermatape off that incision within minutes, taking with his any staples or stitches I assure you. And, he would very likely dig that port right out of his FLESH! That’s just for starters. Then there’s the issue of flushing that stupid port every couple of months.
What makes you geniuses think that if he won’t allow us to put needles in him for shots and blood work he WOULD allow us to put needles in him to flush out a gddamned port?!
What the hell is wrong with you people?!
Nevermind, I know what’s wrong with you. None of you listen to a damned thing people tell you. It goes in one ear and out the other. Then you guys all spew useless nonsense to us, talking just to hear your own teeth rattle in your skulls, none of it having anything remotely to do with the task at hand!
For 7 years, I’ve been going back and forth with you idiots trying to get the best possible care for my Zen. And, for 7 years, I’ve gotten no where. Because none of you jackoffs can stop all that medical mumbo jumbo from scrolling along in your noodles long enough to realize that it really IS as simple as putting someone in a chair, giving him a spoonful of Mary Poppin’s Bottle of Night-night Time Tonic, making sure he doesn’t have a heart attack or quit breathing, and have someone draw some damned LABS!
But, no. You all would like to turn this into some elaborate procedure, from the minds of people educated beyond their intelligence.
I really wish that I could just extend my middle finger to every single one of you right now. I wish I could tell all of you to keep your fancy medical jargon and kiss my rear end. But, I can’t do that. I have to put up with you people because my son needs you so he can live.
Although, I really have to tell you, I don’t really trust any of you. I have no faith in your profession anymore. I’m not sure how safe he is under your care.
Sad state of affairs when you no longer trust your medical doctors. Won’t ANYONE just use the simplest way to take some blood from my son?!!?!?!
Don’t get me started with doctors… I need to get a new primary provider this week–I’m already upset (and half terrified). My hip and shoulders and stomach and asthma and blood… have been messed up for a long time. They are under control. I know what to do to survive. BUT… every time I visit a new doctor they want to put me on steroids, recommend more surgery, put me on meds I already know don’t work… “But they are different now.” No, they freaking aren’t! It hurts, and at least I can yell back. I feel bad Zen doesn’t get to do his own yelling ;-(
I have the very same issues as you do with them. It took me 7 years to just convince one of these bozos that I was STILL hypothyroid and STILL had Hashimoto’s disease! That was after one of them decided there was no way that a small dose of Synthroid could have been helping me.
They also always want to put me on steroids for my asthma, too. “Oh, but you should be taking Advair, Flovnent, Serevent!” Nice, Doc, but those damned things don’t work and are too expensive. I’ll continue with albuterol, at least I know it works. Hell, I can barely afford THAT.
I’ll never forget the one that just left last year telling me that for my celiac disease related IBS, all I needed was an ANTI DEPRESSANT. To make my intestines “happy!”.
They’re all freaks I tell you.