Doctors, Employers...and a cat.

May 19, 2010 13:54

Mostly this is me bitching. In a place where most ppl will never bother to read, and therefore never be aware that I'm bitching.

I'm ticked off.

I have an IV line in my arm. It's irritating as hell. It delivers antibiotics 24 hours a day, for 6 weeks. The 6 weeks are up may 28th. I have to plan my schedule around this stupid IV. The meds have to be refrigerated, and the bag has to be changed every 24 hours. Unless I screw something up, in which case the schedule changes. This makes overnight trips all sorts of fun.

There's a 'dressing' over where it enters my arm. This thing can't get wet. Hello showers? Showers require assistance. I have to put a fucking ziploc bag on my arm and then tape it down at both ends with masking tape. Have I mentioned that we've discovered I'm allergic to tape? The hospital had this neat stuff they put on my arm between it and the tape to help. It gave me chemical burns. So apparently I get to deal with the tape. Fucking tape.

The dressing has to be changed every week. Someone comes to my house to do it. On her schedule, not mine. Bloody annoying, working around that. She's a sweetheart, but it's a pain.

If I screw up and the dressing gets wet, it comes off. Someone then has to come replace the bloody thing. more tape. takes about an hour. plus waiting time. the rest of my life? on hold now. I can't go TOO far from home. Especially if it's raining. Fuck that.

I have to have a dr's visit every week. So they can discuss my iron levels and poke my neck and crap. It doesn't take long, but the parking lot is at st vincent's, so it's super difficult. and they have the god awfullest available hours ever. who ever heard of a dr's office only seeing patients m-f, 10a-3p?

The antibiotics make me sick. Nausea. sometimes bad, sometimes mild. I've learned i get carsick WAY easier too. So I have meds for the nausea.

Meds that, if I don't get up and take in the middle of the night, take TWO HOURS to kick in in the morning. While I'm trying to get ready for work.

Meds that cause constipation. I won't go into details, lets just say it's the first time in my life it's ever been so bad I literally cannot sit up.

I have other meds. I don't HURT, mind you. I get a little sore, a little tired, faster than I used to, but that's to be expected. But I'm on narcotics. Because I used to be on them, and now my body doesn't know how to function without them. It apparently thinks it's job is to make me even sicker than the antibiotics do and give me a fever. So I lie there and shake, and sweat, and feel god-awful. Or I take drugs I don't need. I'm being weened off of them. Slowly. But if I don't get up in the middle of the night and take them, I wake up with fever. So far, sleep's winning, but the mornings are pretty fucking piss-poor. Once, the fever got so bad I pulled my iv line out 2 inches. That, btw, involves going to the hospital, having the iv line taken out, put into the other arm, chest xrays to ensure it's setup properly, then coming back 24 hours later for a checkup. and more tape.

Oh, and the narcotics cause constipation.

So I have meds for constipation. They obviously work....right? stupid-ass meds. Pun intended.

AND my heart rate is fucked up. It seems to think it needs to be over 100. Why, I have no idea. The dr seems to think that it's related to my iron count. Post-surgery, I'm anemic. So I take iron pills. They also cause...you guessed it...constipation.

I call all of this out to show why it's the fucking dr's fault that i feel like shit. Pun again intended. And why I'm missing work for dr's visits. And dressing changes. And, heaven forbid, IV lines being moved.

This is why, when I called my doctor today, I asked them to fill out the paperwork giving me 2-3 days a week where I could take time off to take care of miscellaneous CRAP they're responsible for.

They said no. They'll fill out the paperwork for the doctor's visits. That's it. Because the rest 'isn't really their purview.'

Fascinating. You can visit a doctor so they can see how their care is going and that's them. but all that care isn't. Fucking doctors.

So I called the doctor who did the surgery. The doctor who's real 'purview' is finding, locating, and correcting neurological problems via surgery. He's a neurosurgeon. He found the problem in my neck. THIS Dr, I understood completely when he said 'that's really not my purview'. You know what? He's right. But then he followed it up with 'but you're a patient and you need to be cared for, if they can't handle it, I will. I'd be happy to fill out that paperwork for you. Will Friday be soon enough?" Damn skippy it will.

Because, you know, when you go to work with an IV line stuck in your arm, and a scar on your neck, and you've been out for 4 1/2 months on medical leave, you'd think it'd be kinda obvious that you are gonna need to get some time to handle stuff. You'd think that it would be expected that you're going to have days where you're simply NOT functional. But no, you have to have paperwork. We can't just use logic.

Doctors: get your shit together.
Employers: use your brains.
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I've spent the majority of today just lying down, feeling awful, wishing I had something furry and fuzzy and comforting to snuggle with. I miss my cat so much.
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