Toad in the Hole

Western toad painting by Carl Dennis Buell

Birding and other pleasures and aggravations, in Berkeley and beyond, by Ron Sullivan.

Desperate Medicine

I did finally get to see my physician a couple weeks ago, and things have improved since then. It’s amazing how much better things get when one has a sense of control and the right allies.

(Click on that and enlarge to read it.)

I suppose I might have got as desperate as this poor woman and started looking for a plumber, or I guess in my case a carpenter or a nice street-drug pusher. What happened to me was not my doc’s fault—Joe and I have paid for Blue Cross/Shield all these year because we had contacts who could recommend the kind of physicians we wanted to deal with. It was the centralized front desk she shares with a bunch of other docs; I went into that in the reply string on that post. Nevertheless, basic medical care has become such a goddamned inaccessible prize for so many people—you’d think we weren’t one of the richest nations on earth.

Or maybe you’d start wondering just who “we” might mean, in that context.

Posted by: Ron Sullivan

Responses

1 | By: kathy a on August 31, 2008 at 07:06 PM

hear you.

2 | By: Ron Sullivan on August 31, 2008 at 07:15 PM

Thought you might.

And where the hell’s Sara?

3 | By: kathy a on August 31, 2008 at 09:05 PM

i don’t know, but been worried about sara’s lack of posting. hope she is OK, but i’m kind of fearful.

ron, i’ve really been ranting about medical things of late. not quite done with the drama of mom yet, i guess. there is one doctor i will hate until my dying day, because it turns out dr. wonderful—who is great in person—does not read messages or faxes or return calls, and his staff won’t tell you that. and once someone is in the rest home, he doesn’t visit. and when he goes on vacation, his sub doesn’t show up when a patient is re-hospitalized. mom didn’t have insurance problems, but we all sure ended up with a problem. asshole. the only up side is that we ended up with a good attending for the last couple weeks of the horror story—strictly by accident, he was called in by the rest home because dr. wonderful’s sub was AWOL.

4 | By: Ron Sullivan on September 1, 2008 at 08:07 AM

Rant away, Kathy; this is a good place for it because I and my family members who read here have had a dose-and-a-half ourselves.

I hereby declare this hole a designated free-rant space about medicine as it’s practiced in the early 21st Century.

5 | By: VS on September 1, 2008 at 10:47 AM

Careful - once I get started about mammograms, the rant just keeps going! And don’t get me started on pharmacists who hand a patient two scrips that shouldn’t be used at the same time *without warning the patient*! Damn good thing I read everything they give me…

6 | By: kathy a on September 1, 2008 at 01:56 PM

VS, yikes about the pharmacist! i personally would appreciate a good mammogram rant, if you are inclined.

part of my medical angst is that it was just very hard sometimes to get medical information we needed to make medical decisions over the weeks between mom’s stroke and her death. dr. wonderful was one culprit. when we flew down to see what was going on the day after the stroke, the neurosurgeon did not even want to tell me the part of the brain affected, what we could expect in terms of impairments and recovery, etc. [we found out later, from the *orthopedic* surgeon, that she had been in a coma and expected to die that first day.] the dude did not think a commoner like me needed to know “left parietal”; he also opined that her cognitive impairments were only putting her thoughts into words, which time confirmed was far from true. there was not a single moment when mom was oriented to time or place after her stroke. she could not ever remember or understand that she had broken her hip, so all her therapy was pure torture.

on one visit to the nursing home, the charge nurse did not want to tell me *anything* even though i held the medical power of attorney, and had personally filled out all of the paperwork at the home. when there were complications, sometimes we would just be told that some invasive procedure had to be done—we had to push and talk to all the doctors to find out that there were ethical alternatives. [for example, to putting our severely disabled mother on a feeding tube.]

the other angsty thing about bad communications with medical doctors was practical—mom was incompetent, her husband has alzheimer’s, and we needed to get access to bank accounts to, like, pay for stuff. they actually had financial powers of attorney, so we would not have to go to court. but the trouble getting the doctor letters of incompetence [2 for each parent] was huge. the first ones took weeks and didn’t have teh right legal language. dr. wonderful crapped out on signing another for each parent with the right language—solely because he will not read faxes—but then when i finally got him on the phone, the jerk wanted to argue with me that this was unnecessary, his first letter was fine, and we should “go to the judge” because “that lawyer is jerking you around.” [seriously! he was lecturing me about law, and expecting me to go to court and/or fire the estate lawyer because he is a lazy jerk who cannot take 2 minutes to read his faxes!] also, he was going on vacation.

we went looking for another couple of doctors. if it sounds like i was hounding doctors for weeks, that is true—but there was no controversy at all about the incompetence of my mother or my stepfather. zero. the “special legal language” for the letters was: [1] i’m not related to this person; [2] i am licensed to practice medicine; [3] i have examined this person and he/she is mentally or physically unable to handle his/her financial affairs at this time. that’s it. even the good doctors, it took effort to get them to follow through on signing. i just don’t get it.

when all 4 correctly worded letters were finally obtained, mom died and then we had to wait for the official death certificate. the appointed siblings finally got interim certification to work on the financial stuff 11 weeks after mom’s stroke, and nearly 4 weeks after she died.

7 | By: kathy a on September 1, 2008 at 03:25 PM

oh, god. i cannot shut up.

i can’t imagine how much worse it could have been if mom didn’t have assets and insurance, and if they hadn’t made legal arrangements.

8 | By: Ron Sullivan on September 2, 2008 at 07:36 AM

DON’T shut up! When I’ve delivered for today’s deadline, I have a story or two about that from when Joe’s mother died—and if Julie turns up here, she might want to rag on Drs. Death and Doom.

9 | By: kathy a on September 6, 2008 at 06:30 PM

ok. here’s to dad, the parent who loved me, who died 5 years ago today.

dad figured he was not going without a fight. 3 years, he fought. the other doctor i will hate until the day i die was his second oncologist, who kept suggesting yet another round of chemo, long after there was any chance of making dad’s life any better. dad ended up in ICU after the last round. the doctor was to come see us the next morning, talk to us some and check dad out. and the asshole didn’t show for the appointment. probably because dad slipped into a coma over the night—but you know, i might have forgiven him some if he had possessed the common human decency to show up and say something to us.

my dad’s GP, on the other hand, traveled across town with his wife just to be with us at the hospital, to tell us he was sorry, and how much he admired our dad. that just meant worlds to us, at the time. still does.

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