There’s a couple of things about my current healthcare misadventure really bothering me. One I understand, the other I do not. I understand how the healthcare system is not set up to care for patients like me. It is dealing with a big population of crybabies who cannot stop complaining after they stub their toe. No biggie. I get that. What I do not understand is how torture became an acceptable course of diagnostics.
I’ve been left to rot, suffering with a painful, debilitating, un-treated back injury all year – forced through hip replacement rehab, where the biggest obstacle was not a freshly installed prosthesis. Let them go until something happens or they scream loud enough to get someone’s attention? Has it really gotten that bad? Have the diags ballooned to such expense doctors are being discouraged from ordering them? Must be, because I have this uncanny ability to know when I am hurt. It’s called being a conscious human being. That part is getting real old.
These things typically take a long time to heal – if they do at all. The bad ones don’t. This is a bad one. Read the goddamn MRI report. Still no medical attention as called out in said report, 9 months on – after seeing what, 7 doctors now? I’m losing count. Oh wait – not entirely true – I got a bottle of muscle relaxant pills from my new PC. They do help a little. But they are TOXIC, like most pharmaceuticals, and are only to be used for a max of 3 weeks. It’s something, I suppose.
Read the goddamn Annular Tear lesson. Dr. Mork is telling my story better than I can. So, without enough time to read and just do your fucking jobs, the un-written policy appears to be, at least in part: “Ensure diagnostic torture protocol and procedures are strictly adhered to whenever it starts looking like we screwed up.”
(Late Update: as expected, after the new referral from last week didn’t show up, a call to the Loveland community desk or whatever they are calling it this year, found it in “status unknown” state. I repeated all my information to the nice lady for the eleventy-seventh time while she set the wheels in motion. Again. And again, and again…)