Don't Lose Your Head

Last Saturday I spent all day in emergency departments. I woke up feeling extremely nauseous and was in such terrible pain around my diaphragm and back I fronted up at 6.30 am. They and I thought it might be gallstones and referred me to a hospital 50 kms away for scans and an ultrasound. But those indicated I had a healthy gallbladder and they couldn't find anything else wrong with me either. 

In the end they figured it might have been a peptic ulcer and that I had had 'gastritis'. Wouldn't surprise me. I have been very stressed lately because of work. We have been put under pressure because of funding cuts and I was so angry I probably internalised my emotions and imploded. 

Both hospitals treated me very well. I have absolutely no complaints at all. Despite the draconian right-wing neo-liberals we currently have in power our government funded health system is justifiably the envy of many other countries. But it is under stress. It is costly and inefficient and my episode on Saturday partly demonstrates why.

When I went to my small local hospital they thought they had done what they could with the 'equipment' they had. When they referred me to the larger hospital they offered me an ambulance. My reply: 'no, don't waste an ambulance - I'll get my partner to drive me there'. Seriously?......I didn't need an ambulance and if I used it someone else who really did need it may have missed out. It is also very expensive. I'm not sure who would have paid the bill but my guess is it would have been covered by Medicare because I was in one hospital being transferred to another.

When I got to the larger hospital I occupied an emergency bed for hours while I waited for the ultrasound and scan. The doctor was fantastic, said I should call her 'Steph' and had the best bedside manner I have ever encountered. She was so friendly and casual I thought she was a nurse at first. Scans and ultrasounds aren't cheap. Being an ultrasound technician is specialised and requires a double degree, so I'm guessing the pay rate for my scanner to be there on a Saturday would have been pretty high.

Anyway, long story short - after waiting around all day for blood and scan results I finally got out of there about 4.30 pm. I was starving because they had fasted me in case I needed surgery. They gave me the best tasting cheese and salad sandwich a little while before I left. Before I left they also booked me in for an endoscopy and stress tests for my heart - even though my blood pressure is low and the blood results didn't reveal anything nasty.

I signed up for the after care tests at the time but have since changed my mind. The heartburn medication they told me to take for 2 weeks did the job. Which seems to indicate the diagnosis is an ulcer and I need to manage it. I gave up the medication after 2 days because one of the side effects is gastritis! FFS - this is what I mean by inefficient - medication to treat an ailment that has side effects that brings on the same condition? I haven't had any of that medication for a couple of days now - so far so good. I've been very careful with my diet (which is usually very good anyway) and I'll take the medication again if I have to.

The most astounding thing to me though - not one person asked me if I was under stress!! 

This feeds into a blog post I read recently by Kylie about specialisation. An encounter with the health system is like stepping onto a conveyor belt - the destination of which is unknown. And it's very difficult to get off. I remember escorting my ex-husband to a specialist in one of the big city hospitals once. As we walked up the corridor, arrows pointed to either side - this department for that part of the body, that door for another. I wondered how someone would negotiate the corridor if they had several related issues, because of course they always do. The body is a whole system with parts that function in unison with other parts. Medicine seems to have forgotten that.

Medicine has become so smart it has forgotten the basics. Instead of whisking me off to a hospital for expensive tests and booking me in for even more expensive surgical day procedures like endoscopies, someone might have saved the taxpayers a bit of money by simply talking to me. They would have discovered that I had had a similar episode a couple of years ago, had all the heart and blood tests and got a clean bill of health, that I have always had a touchy stomach, that I used to vomit as a kid when I was upset (like stressful times during the breakup of my parents), that I was on anti-inflammatory drugs for 33 years for endometriosis - which is known to 'erode' the stomach lining, that I had only the week before received some very stressful news about my job, was absolutely furious and felt disempowered in that anger. 

I'm not saying this thing is over - I may not be able to manage it myself and it may well be something else that's making me feel like this. But if you were a GP or an emergency doctor wouldn't you start with the most simple explanation?

And just to add weight to my argument - many years ago when doctors were going around in circles trying to diagnose my then husband, one doctor who had taken up medicine late in life, saved my ex-husband's life. I rang this doctor from 30 kms out of town on a gravel road in desperation to give him my ex's symptoms. When I described them he paused and said: 'get him to emergency straight away'. Not long after that my ex had a double bypass. At the time he was probably having a heart attack. Every other doctor had missed it because my ex was thin and fit. But what they didn't take into consideration was the fact that he had worked with  pesticides for years. The doctor who saved his life had been a farmer. I think he still was at the time. I believe it was that grassroots common sense approach, out in nature observing the paddocks and his animals, that gave him that insight. Plain old common sense, and listening to what people are telling you.

Image: Author. Hand drawn in pen, digitally tweaked and coloured.