Tuesday, February 19, 2008

That old familiar feeling I wish would go away

I went for the Holter Monitor today and it was a nightmare. I'm having an anxiety attack as we speak and only barely calming down.

I walked in the see the tech, and figured I knew what would happen next, since I've had loads of these tests over the years. Literally every single time I've been pregnant and then afterwards I get hooked up and carry around this silly little recording thing.

Only difference is, that this time I had a bitch hooking me up. First thing? She asks me to strip off my top and bra in front of some filmy little window covering that everyone on earth can see through! She claims that it's opaque on the outside but being the reno queen that I am, I know that at the right angle and with the right lights, anyone can see inside. The salesman was probably a perv who just wanted to make a quick sale and get his jollies by sitting outside snapping pictures and jerking off in his car.

Yeah, you heard it here first, my favourite women's hospital has become a peep show galore. Apparently almost all the rooms have these piece of crap window coverings. Yes, even in the rooms with new moms, cause of course, every new mother wants to have sunshine pouring in at FIVE AM?!? RIGHT?!? Very very important to wake the newborns up after they finally get to sleep at 3 a.m. You can just picture my head blowing off at this point. I mean, I expect that kind of crap out of various hospitals run by men, because they don't care as much about being naked, but I do. Like that one hospital in the Northern part of my city, that actually built the birthing rooms so that the beds and therefore the woman's vagina was facing out towards the open doors? Seriously, they actually did that. All your bits hanging out so that every person walking by even a partly open door gets the full view, and the first thing anyone sees when walking in the door is surprise!! Guess what, yep, they didn't even leave room for a curtain and someone to sit at the end and catch the baby. The entire unit had to be scrapped and torn down and rebuilt. I think that the people who build maternity hospitals should all be female and all be women who have already given birth at least once.

So now, to add to me to do list, I have to go fix these blinds! Like I don't have enough to do. Shit....at minimum they need to warn every women coming in that she should prepurchase blackout blinds, the temporary kind from Home Depot, and make sure her husband puts them up. I'm going to go get some window measurements and post them here later in case any of you need them.

But the best was yet to come....I've been doing these monitors for twelve years and I've always done fine with them, but this horrible woman informs me that she doesn't like it when women wear bras with the monitor on, and the rule is that you can't. Except that this rule is new, and no one has ever told me that, in fact, most techs have helped me position my bra around it. Which makes me think she a big fucking liar who is just trying to be a control freak on vulnerable sick women.

Now, I've mentioned that I have larger breasts while pregnant and that I'm pretty, umm, petite otherwise, but seriously, I still have headlights.

Big headlights.

And the last thing I want to do is flash them to everyone while walking around for the next 48 hours. Especially when it's this cold. So I'm freaking out here, and honestly feeling incredibly insecure and having an anxiety attack. You know the PTSD kind. And I have no therapist really just very very bad shrinks I never call.

Anyway, after telling the receptionist that I can't ever see that tech again, I ran out of there and went home and put on another bra and a different shirt that could hide the wires and the stupid crap. I have gotten rid of the paper bag she tried to make me wear to carry it in. Apparently, she was pissed that I didn't have a belt so that she could clip it there.

How many pregnant women do you know have belts?

Am I the only person with a brain left on the planet? Sometimes I wonder...

13 comments:

  1. there should be some sort of personality test that they give health care "professionals."

    if i wasn't so sick i'd go picket for you.

    stupid tech.

    argh.

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  2. Tech. has. issues. Bigtime.

    sometimes it's a stupid situation like that that makes you realize given all the crap that you've gone through, you're still a better person because you don't let it get to you to the point where you treat other people like shit.

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  3. Belts on a prego??
    Total incompetence.

    What a bitch. I seriously have NO tolerance for anyone who makes your life at all more difficult or stressful. Does she not know who she is dealing with?

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  4. What a biatch!! Sorry you had to deal with that... and for real - what pregnant woman has a belt? Most maternity pants don't even have belt loops!!

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  5. Another insensitive idiot in medicine. What a surprise.

    I am impressed that you haven't yet turned homicidal. I would have by now for sure!

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  6. What the heck is wrong with people? I've had my share of insensitive medical professionals and boy do I wish I could do something about it. When I had that MRI biopsy recently looking for breast cancer recurrence...the nurse, as I was laying there bleeding all over the place after the biopsy said to me - yeah, I had a friend that had breast cancer, it came back and spread to her brain and now she's dead. I seriously wanted to tell on her. I mean, WTF??!!

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  7. holy shit!

    what a dumb ass bitch! That is ridiculous, you should file a complaint.

    i am so sorry you had that experience.

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  8. I hope the kids are asleep by now and you are feeling better. Too bad you can't have a drink these days. How about some tea?
    Completely apropos of nothing, I am sure that agitating patients you are strapping to a heart monitor is a good idea and exactly what they teach you to do in tech school. Because it's not like you are trying to get a reading of the heart when the patient is calmly going through their life, right?

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  9. Why do people go into health care if they are so obviously not cut out for it?

    This person should seriously reconsider her choice of profession.

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  10. Having had the rather dubious pleasure of a holter monitor myself - all I can do is shake my head. Maybe they were shorthanded and this particular tech was brought in from somewhere else, say the morgue where you don't have to have decent people or conversational skills?

    And I hear you on the who sets up the floor plans for exam rooms and delivery rooms and such . . .

    My last doc's visit started with the nurse saying "waist down" and me looking out the window at the highway, a major intersection, a university and a number of churches.

    Oh yes, let's all do, let the sunshine in . .. sing it with me now, let the sunshine innnnnnnnnnn . . .

    Sometimes I wonder if they are really selling tickets.

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  11. 3 Major issues:
    1-NO BRA???
    2- A PAPER SACK???
    3- A BELT?
    really? come on. That is mental to me :)

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  12. Man, you should have peed on the tech's foot. (Being pregnant, you have a valid "opps!" excuse ...)

    And I missed your last post, but wanted to say how thrilled I am that you have arrived on the charts when it comes to viability stats. Now THAT is worth celebrating.

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  13. retarded tech.
    Ummmm belt??? Yah don't think I've worn one since I was prego with my first....7 years that'd be.

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