A Problem Patient-Who's Problem is it?

Oh, is that a loaded question.
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I guess it would be a matter of who perceives the problem, who is responding to it, how, with what expectations?  And who is responding and how?


But when I am told that I have no choices in my healthcare, and that I am now required to pay $200 in transportation costs (as the ER is too cheap anymore basically and seem to be of the opinion of their patients that we "plan" for when for example, I got a bit of hypotension, my blood pressure was always of the lower end of normal.

When I am in very severe pain, I typically have an initial spike?  But then it drops and fast.  Body temperature is the same.

I can think of one time that I got an actual temperature over 102.

I was in the intensive care unit.  On a ventilator and septic.  And I found my way off after ten days.  By the end of that, I was on TPN and in for a long haul of a 10 week hospital stay-or give or take.  The bill?  Over $3M.  Over ten years ago.

But someone hung something on my page.  And I guess I had to re-evaluate a bit.

One is I am not ever going to support that medical schoools put doctors through required coursework on "How to Manage and Discharge" the "Problem Patient."

That multiple diagnoses are one factor that is what tabs me a problem before I walk in the door.

When I have seen no healthcare providers basically in nine months, and that clinic, how on earth is one a problem before they walk in the door?

I would say in that case the doctor is the one with the problem for agreeing to complete the course.  Make your own mind up if you elect to cause one.  But in all honesty it's why I hate the McGill Pain Index.

I think it's wrong.

Because mostly I feel that human beings cause more suffering than any physical cause or disorder. And no pain is greater than the loss of a child, in my own opinion.

And that no tragedy is greater than a wasted life.
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But I also hold tremendous value for human life, in the long run, and now that I am focused on my own for the first time, I am not doing so great in the "body" department.  But what read on the photo was what strikes me the most.

I think taking the Hippocratic Oath out of the medical education was the stupidest thing they have yet to do.  Thirty-six hour shifts, is one thing.  So is working almost more hours per week than what is contained in one week-however, I think that in some ways?

It has created truckload of hippocrites.  Not taking the Oath.

And how hard is it?  What happened to road testing a patient, making sure they can have their medicines, that they can hold them down?  We used to admit patients when that last part was even of question.  Diagnosis and treatment, and eventually they were usually discharged quickly.

And did not return three days later again to spend thousands of dollars for what amounts to a fifty dollar at best-bag of IV solution.

Meds?  Like the six people so screwed up they were crashed in the lobby sleeping sounder than a newborn.

Right, scratch that one, but folks, when it comes to them not being willing to give you more than a bus ticket?  Congrats.  It is a Friday night at 2am.  And in outlying areas?

No bus service on weekends, and I am not able to exactly ride a bus now, am I?

So what happens?

But her photo read, more or less:

"Don't look at me for what I can't do/disability.  What is it that I can, is what matters" and that was essentially the long and short of it.

Any person who refuses to see you for simply being a human being, with limits, as much as anyone else has them, and somehow expects you to be 100% on each visit, have every bit as much forgotten your own humanity.

As they have their own.

My food may be different for example.


It makes one no less deserving of being able to get it and it need not be a fight.  And when it becomes one of having it available, and at least a willing doc, and no supper to do TPN, then well, I would always prefer my gut do the actual work.

But for people to see you like you are deserving of being spoken to like you are a small-and perhaps delayed-child, and frankly that they are not even aware of that I hold what is 2 quarters short of a higher degree?  Well, I didn't sign up for this either.  And if life is hard enough and, you take it as an opportunity to accept what challenges God sets in front of you and become a better person for it?

How that would for example, take what my best friend has accomplished in one year-let alone 3, and as both of us have progressed, but together, we each have developed new talents, grown as people, and well-given back to modern medicine labels that well, few overcome.

What they are, remains unimportant, your doctor?  I'm afraid that with the few choices we have, as unattractive as being in a public system, but one at a teaching hospital?

I guess some memories that show some willingness to fade, that you get put throu
gh a couple more paces?

Anonymity and safeguards lie in it as well.  And when it's not going there for something like every day healthcare management for the average individual?

With a disorder as serious, as complex as RSD?

I guess I do feel the protection of my "number" as a bit of a safety-but that my physician, though not experienced, is not exactly a total fool or I would for one, be unlikely to see them again, but required to know what I have.  And documented responses to treatment (nerve blocks mainly) are sitting painfully clearly telling her that in this case, their own pain clinic would likely result in more.


And referred me out, but also to neurology.  Good.  Study the central nervous system.

Not everyone is up for multiple procedures-save a j-tube, perhaps, and well, given that is a poke in the stomach for me, as I understand it, but nevertheless, I also know that there's some oral surgeons on staff, and both myself and another it turns out would benefit from the services of the local teaching hospital.  However many visits it takes?

They aren't going to have their records tainted either-they don't even want the files over the past 2-3 years, and Thank God!