Out from Under

Since my family are probably sick of hearing about me complain, this blog post will mark an end. Just recently, I switched primary care physicians. It is very hard for me to feel comfortable and trust doctors since an old PCP ignored my stroke warning signs for years and I had a stroke. This same PCP was also unable to get my Coumadin levels correct so I didn’t have a second stroke through sheer luck.

The straw that broke my back with my recent doctor is that I have been struggling for months with exhaustion. He suspected sleep apnea so he put in the paperwork for a referral to a sleep lab. Three weeks later, I hadn’t heard anything so I call the lab, who had never gotten any paperwork, then I called my health plan, who hadn’t received anything, now I called my doctor’s office. They hadn’t submitted the referral. After my call, they submitted the wrong paperwork. So, over a month after I was made aware of the fact I might be not breathing in my sleep, I had my sleep test ( I had 27 apneas and 45 hypopneas BTW).

This isn’t the first time I had to go through a round robin of phone calls to figure out what was wrong with my medical care. When I was bedridden after my car accident, the office never called in anti-inflammatory medication. My dad was helping me out running errands and could only pick up half my prescriptions. So, I had to stay off pain medication for a good day, drag myself out of bed to pick up my medication.

My medical file was a complete wreck. Wrong birthdate, wrong height, wrong medications. Also, my doctor did not believe my allergies. I had the same goddamn conversation about how I get hives on Relafen but am fine on Advil.

I knew my old doctor was bad but once I started the wheels of switching doctors, my goodness it got much worse! The way they sent my medical files to my new doctor was cramming stacks of paper into a FedEx envelope with no rhyme or reason. I did not find out I had sleep apnea for a month even though my old doctor’s office had the report. They were outright rude to specialists I am seeing. Yes, your office doesn’t do X-rays but you do have a facility elsewhere that does them. Why can’t you say that instead of “We don’t do X-rays – CLICK.”???

On the up side, I was supposedly pre-hypertensive with old doctor guy. New doc lady – 124/72 baby! I guess my blood pressure doesn’t handle annoyance/frustration well.