More poo posts

Edited to add: this published with half missing and the date messed up--just adding it on and republishing.

So again, if you are reading me on twitter, you will know that I survived, but just barely.

First I'd like to say that Versed works for a lot of people. Kaz had it for dental surgery and for a few other stitches in the ER and never had a problem. Same for Mac. And for 89% of people, supposedly, it's just fine. But for me---oh no, nothing is ever simple for me.

I really am cursed.

The GI Doctor gave me versed, after I expressly told her not too. You see, she read the records I had sent to her showing that I woke up incoherent and hysterical after I had it before and she completely misinterpreted them. She thinks I was upset about the extra morphine I was given, and how dopey it left me. I tried to explain that the issue was that I freaked out after having Versed, not morphine and the record clearly shows that the first reation I had was then, but she just kept saying that I was going to be fine and that it was the combo of morphine, and don't worry she'd take care of it.

And I'm there, naked except for some stupid gown and she hands me the form to sign and I get up on the table thinking she's going to give me something completely different we discussed--because she said, "she'd take care of it"--and she gives me Versed.

I felt everything, and was half-awake and half-out of it and crying the whole time, begging for pain relief. Begging them to stop. They rolled me over, doing some strange thing to my stomach, which in my midazolamed state felt like the were pinning me down and beating me to death. No, of course they weren't actually beating me to death. But with that drug, for me, that's what I perceived.

I finally get into the recovery room, and I am surrounded by chirpy, perky patients who all act like they had just woken up from naps and some rather unfeeling nurses telling me to sit up and have some juice and gee, that wasn't bad, and what on earth is wrong with me, I just need to snap out of it. Meanwhile, I couldn't even sit up unassissted. This one nurse was incredibly cold, almost angry, you'd think that my inability to stand or walk or get dressed was done on purpose just to screw up her life. My poor husband, as we all know, trusts all doctors completely, and was justifiably confused that things were not going perfectly as planned. The nurses kept trying to make me get out of bed and told me to go to the bathroom, but every time I sat up, I fell over. Mr.Cotta finally lowered the head of the bed and told me to sleep and tried to find the Doctor, but she was busy with her next patients. After about an hour the nurses were on me again, trying to get me to sit up and take a walk. One of them got angry and told me I needed to get dressed and why was I doing this, and I should go get my clothes out of locker, but I just kept looking at her and blankly asking where I was and crying. She wasn't happy.

God forbid a patient not do what they are told.

Finally one nurse agrees to get the Doctor, and my husband tries to help me sit up and swing my legs over the side of the bed. He and the nurse literally had to carry me to the washroom, supporting my weight on each side. My feet didn't work. I looked like a non-cooperating prisoner being dragged down a hall. I had to have my husband with me, or I would have fallen off the seat. Somehow he gets me back to the bed, and the Doctor finally shows up. She tells me there was nothing inflamed on my colon or bowel and no polyps, nothing. There was one narrowing area that she was concerned about because it might cause a blockage someday, but it might have been due to adhesions from endometriosis.

And of course, she insisted that she told me that she was using midazolam. And I insisted she didn't. It was a senseless conversation that my husband cut off because he knew she'd never admit it was a problem. I popped a propranolol, went home and slept for a day.

I don't think she intentionally meant to cause a problem. Because really I don't think she believes that midazolam cause issues. What she doesn't understand, is that when people have problems with Doctors or hospitals or drugs or procedures, they tell their friends and business associates, even if they don't have blogs, and reputations and stories spread, virally, at dinner parties and over backyard fences and in casual conversations and the people who have bad reactions--don't come back. For example, she doesn't see many bad emotional reactions because people with PTSD are unlikely to voluntarily sign up for a procedure that involves sticking a tube up their ass.

They don't go to her, or her hospital, they go to other clinics, or arrange for other drugs, or they just never get screening checks done. One bad story can ensure that hundreds of people never get a lump or a bump or a screen done. And people die.

Which is why I want to find a way to make this story end better. I'm not sure who I am going to call yet, but I will complain. I can't just let y'all never get screened because my outcome gave me the willies.

Worst problem, people assume it's because of the health care system involved. But start googling--I know lots of people who have been treated in a patronizing patriarchal demeaning manner in every country. People with insurance, people without insurance, rich, poor, connected, and nobodies. It's the worst part about the healthcare debate. People hear a bad story about Canadian health care and wrongly assume it's because the government pays. Or Canadians assume the US is some sort of nirvana of perfection for health care. Meanwhile, in the US, just search a legal database for a litany of stories of jerk doctors and cruel hospitals. Really, there is a reason the U.S. Family Centred Care Institute spends so much time and money training hospital staff on how to treat patients.

Every country will continue to have poor health care outcomes as long as they refuse to listen to patients needs. We aren't robots to be experimented on. And standardized one size fits all answers really don't work.

Anyway, I'll keep you up to speed on what I do. Right now, I have to go out to a family event. One that deserves a post unto it's own.

Later....