Speaking of medical blogs, here’s a good one
. I can surely empathize with Karma Girl as well.
I recently had my intro to the American medical profession (being the “furriner” that I is
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Back in January of 2k, I wound up in the emergency room with severe abdominal pain. They poked and prodded and x-rayed and all that good stuff, and when they couldn’t figure it out, they sent me home.
This January, the exact same kind of abdominal pain decided to come and hang out again, so back to the emergency room I went. More poking, prodding and x-rays and good stuff later, and as they couldn’t figure it out again, they decided to admit me.
I saw a general surgeon the very next day (yep, a whole 24 hours later), who wanted to cut me open and take a look-see what was going on, but he couldn’t do this, he said as the Urologist wanted to do some more tests.
More tests later, they put a stint in my kidney, under general anesthetic, because they said that it was enlarged and was not functioning properly (this was on day two).
On day three, the pain was worse and the morphine, while giving a nice floating feeling, was not helping for the pain at all, so the first doc got his wish and cut me open. He found that my appendix was perforated, and gangrenous, probably due to the fact that he had so wait three days for his shot at taking a look inside me, so out it came.
Got released from hospital on day 11. I might add at this point, that they didn’t let me eat anything at all until day 11 just before discharge.
Three days later, guess what? Kidney pain. Yep… kidney pain this time. Hadn’t had that before!
Back to the emergency room. Turns out that the stint was draining back into the kidney. Out it came, and a new and improved larger one went in, again under general anesthetic.
A couple of weeks later, the second stint was taken out, and that night, more kidney pain. Back to the emergency room again!!! This time, I was transferred to a different hospital on the Urologist’s orders. Next day, more surgery for yet a third stint. This time, he couldn’t get the stint into the kidney.
I saw him the next day, and he wanted to go in through my back to scope the kidney out. I’d be awake for this procedure. Then he wanted to stick a pipe in my back to drain the kidney into an external bag, and once the kidney had stabilized he wanted to schedule major reconstructive surgery. So…. I looks at wifey… wifey looks at me… we both looks at the good doctor and yell SECOND OPINION!!!!
I discharged myself from the hospital, then we went and got copies of all the medical records, x-rays, cat scans, etc, and go see another doctor.
The new Urologist takes one look at the stuff from two years ago, and all the new stuff, and shakes his head in shame at being in the same profession as the other quack. According to the new doc, none of the stuff (and we did have all the stuff), shows any sign of blockage in my kidney. So he sends me for a lasic renal scan. This turns out to be perfectly normal, and shows absolutely nothing wrong with either of my kidneys.
Go figure.
This is my first brush with the American medical profession. It will most definitely be my last!
So yeah, I surely do empathize with you Karma Girl. I have no idea how you managed to deal with all your life. I sincerely wish you only good things and good doctors in your future. It's about time for your luck to change for the better
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