I Really Do Know My Own Body.
I didn’t always feel like I couldn’t trust doctors. In fact, there was a definite turning point in my attitude.
Sometime after the kids were born, the gynecologist said to me: “Your left ovary is just dust. You should have it removed.” This was before the gallbladder incident (when I didn’t actually need surgery) so I got the (outpatient/laser) surgery. It was over quickly, and I slept through the whole thing.
When I woke up afterward, a nurse was standing by my cot saying, “She’s already had six bags of fluid. What should I do?”
“She’s young and healthy,” said a voice. “She can handle it. Just keep giving them to her.” Someone added another bag of fluid to the pole by my bed, attached to the IV in my arm.
I didn’t care; I went back to sleep. Awhile later I woke up and went home.
That night, I woke up gasping for air.
I alerted Bill. “Can’t….” I gasped. “Can’t… Breathe.”
Bill stood up, wide-eyed, and realized quickly that we needed to go to the Emergency Room.
I was in the hospital for three days.
Immediately they discovered fluid in and around my lungs. They gave me pills to remove the fluid. Then they kept me overnight for observation. When I could breathe normally, they wanted to locate the source of the problem.
I repeated the nurses’ conversation about “she can handle it” but no one believed me.
“No one gets seven bags of fluid,” they said. I told them I was sure about what I’d heard, and I had no idea how many bags a person was supposed to get.
Plus – maybe they’d noticed – I had fluid in my lungs immediately afterward.
“Let’s just make sure it’s not something else,” they said. They kept me for another day. After two days, I volunteered to go home.
“You still need to get a scan to rule out congestive heart failure,” they said.
“I don’t have congestive heart failure!” I said. “The nurses gave me too much fluid, so it’s your fault that I’m here in the first place! I just want to go home!”
“You can go home after your scan,” they said.
But no one gave me a scan. I asked every nurse, every hour, why I wasn’t getting a scan but no one could tell me.
“I don’t even need a scan!” I said. I really do know my own body.
Late in the afternoon on Day 3, I got the scan. Finally.
“Sorry,” they said afterward. “All the doctors who can read the scan have gone home for the day. They’ll read it first thing tomorrow morning.”
At that point, I blew a gasket.
After lunch on Day 4 of my hospital stay – after an outpatient surgery that should have lasted three hours – they read my scan, determined that I didn’t have congestive heart failure, and sent me home.
I nearly died, spent four days in the hospital, had all kinds of unnecessary tests, wasn’t allowed to go home when I was feeling fine, and knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that the surgery I’d had – that I didn’t even need – and the mistakes made in my aftercare were the cause of all of it.
I wrote a letter to the administration, not just to complain but to make sure someone trained the nurses not to randomly give seven or eight bags of fluid to anyone else, no matter how “young and healthy.”
The hospital never billed us for any of it.
And that is when I stopped trusting doctors.