Off The Cuff

I Have Had It With Medical Help

Posted by: From Arkansas in Are You Kidding Me?, Family stuff, Health Topics on Dec 01 2008

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The frustration is getting hotter and hotter. In August, I had a DVT (blood clot) in my left leg. At that time, I was taken to the hospital in an ambulance, diagnosed with the DVT, put into the hospital over the weekend. I wrote it up here in late August because I felt like the hospital did some things that were detrimental to me. In fact, I felt that a lawsuit would work well. I have just never gotten there. And now I have cellulitis in my left leg from a fall I took in a grocery store parking lot where, even though the store employees knew I had fallen, they took no action whatsoever. Two very nice people from cars around me helped me back up.

Since then, I did not feel that the fall was that bad for me until the swelling and the pain did not go away. The fall was on a Saturday. On the next Tuesday, my husband called an ambulance for me to go to the hospital because I could hardly walk to the bathroom, nearly passing out each time. The pain was awful. The light head as bad if not worse. At the hospital (a different one from August), the doctor diagnosed the problem, gave me IV antibiotics, gave a heavy pain killer which made me out of it, took xrays to determine that I did not have a broken leg or DVT, two people tried to start an IV in my arm while a third one was getting blood from the other arm. And all this so that the doctor could tell me that despite the fact that I was hurting horrifically, because I was allergic to the one IV antibiotic he wanted me to have, he could not admit me to the hospital and sent me home in agony and scared with a couple of prescriptions we had a hard time even getting since it was so late in the evening already.

My husband spent over 45 minutes in a pharmacy unknown to us while they tried to track down the doctor. He had prescribed antibiotics that the insurance was not about to cover and would cost well over a hundred dollars to us. All that going on while I sat in a car in 40 degree weather in a tshirt, shorts and shoes because I could not stand to have anything on that leg and I had no coat with me. Remember, it was agony to walk. They told us that it was not necessary to get the prescriptions filled that night though the one thing that was clearly necessary was the painkiller.

When we got home, I had no idea how I was going to navigate the few steps to the door, the two actual steps into the house and to get to the couch before I fainted. My husband, who is the most wonderful human on the face of the earth helped me. We made it. Since then, I have had three nurse visits. That was the one thing that was really good about this. It got my nurse visits again. They really help a lot with checking me. I now also have a physical therapist coming out. The one thing that really does bug me though is that I have no instructions on what to do about this cellulitis. Having never had it myself, I have no idea what to do with it. Do I get up in agony and walk on the thing often? Do I keep my leg up and only walk when absolutely necessary? The doctor did not say. I was pretty out of it and my husband was so worried about me that he did not think to ask those questions. The nurses can help only so much.

Now, my own doctor has not seen me. Yes, I know. I should go see him except that I am still in horrific agony every time I walk. I can hardly get to and from the bathroom let alone go into a doctor’s waiting room, sit in agony for up to possibly an hour, walk into the place where they take vitals, walk into an exam room and wait some more. All the while, hurting so much that all I want is to go back home and lie down. See, the light head thing is still here too. It has been 10 days since the fall. It has been 10 days in agony with very little help. I am getting very leery of being sick or having accidents.

We live in essentially a retirement area. According to the local chat, the reason we do not have a hospital right here is because there are too many people on Medicare and not enough on private insurance providers. Seems the hospitals do not want to go into a place, even if it desperately needs a hospital, because it will disturb the bottom line. And there you have it. Once again, we who need the care are not getting it due to MONEY!!! I so hate that this is yet again all about money. I suspect that my not getting into the hospital is also all about money. In fact, the doctor said that he could not justify keeping me to the Medicare people. HELLO!!!!! I have a skin infection that is agonizing, it is not easily cured and takes a whopping amount of time. If I were to get the IV antibiotics to start the healing process, this would not take nearly as long as it is going to. And he said he could not justify my being in his puny little hospital. And so we struggle at home without much help. After all, my own doctor can only do so much before he has to see me in person. Oh yeah, the ambulance people will NOT take me to the doctor’s office. Not allowed.

Where do we go from here? Well, I am not certain though I may be starting a big campaign to have that hospital put here. There are a whole lot of people my age and old here who are dealing with medical problems with little to no help. The medical help is so good here that one lady found her husband lying on the ground in her front yard. He had a heart attack. She called the ambulance which took over an hour. By the time they got there, he had died. Is there a shot he would have anyway? Yes. Is there a shot they could have saved him had they responded sooner. Oh yeah. Where do we live? Is this really the United States of America where the technology is high? I am beginning to think that we are not in the land of the free anymore.

If you enjoyed this post, make sure you subscribe to my RSS feed!