I made my Twitter trend contribution but you know what? Fuck that, because after so many years of being gaslighted by the medical/healthcare system then even FURTHER so by the Gov (that’s a WHOOOLE ‘nother can of worms I’ve yet to figure out how to write up, still processing), I’ve got myself a goddamned laundry list of complaints.
My original trend contribution was the story of when I went to Cambridge Medical Center in Cambridge, Minnesota in October of 2015. There is actually another one that occured at the same hospital ER just weeks later, but I’ll get to that visit after I tell you about this one. I went in for severe chest pain that afternoon. I have had circulatory and vascular issues that came with my personal brand of the genetic nightmare –Ehlers Danlos Syndrome– all my life. Only problem was, I wasn’t diagnosed until 2017. So this pain was concerning and I was a single mom of five young kids at the time. Made sense to go to get things checked out, right?
I go in and after being largely ignored and the typical many hours of hurry-up-and-wait I had this young, perplexed appearing physician enter and ask what brought me there. I explained the situation and how my blood pressure in the last many years has been super sporadic: having even being medicated for severe hypertension late in my marriage. She ignored all this by only seeming to listen while she scanned my chart. She was so offputting that I said, well– what tests can we do? She replied that since the EKG was clear that I would be going home.
I was feeling the annoyance and frustration build up. I started to explain to her the last many years worth of health issues I’d been experiencing and she cut me short. “Have you tried cleansing your aura?” She asked abruptly. My mouth fell open. Was she even serious? I remember looking at my then boyfriend T and he literally had the same open mouthed WTF look that I was displaying.
Something in me snapped and I lost it. “Did you pull your doctorate out of a Cracker Jack box, lady?” I couldn’t think of anything but VERBALLY BRING THIS BITCH PAIN and, to be honest and I don’t even recall what was said after that. I left enraged after taking out my own IV. Taking out my own IV and rage leaving became my forte in dealing with the healthcare system, who, I could mentally at this point only think of as “those people.” When you are told you are essentially a malingerer and you feel like your body is on a steep downward slope to death, well– that shit gets super sticky, and super deep. You feel crushed, and like you are a nobody. That no one is and ever will listen to, much less believe you. It’s a supremely dark place. I should probably also mention I have a willful, rebellious nature and I refuse to be abused. By anyone.
The next ER trip was even more eventful. I will preface it by saying I DID attempt to make reports on this nurse through their system as well as through law enforcement but was told I could not. My other roommate at the time, G, was with for this one. Something in my spine had tweaked and I was getting numb in my legs and it was hard to walk. It should be noted that they had by this point, at least seen some of the major fuckery EDS & birthing 10 childen had accomplished on my lumber-sacral-pelvic region (I had by this point been diagnosed with degenerative disc disease- diagnosed at 19 which is early in life to attain this disease that everyone gets in middle age, SI joint degeneration and degradation, SI joint dysfunction, and symphysis pubis dysfunction) through MRI and x-ray.
I got in relatively quickly and was given the token exam-and-brush-off. I told them they were terrible and had no place in this world trying to help fellow humans. The doc ordered me Ativan injection, and when the male nurse took off my chest leads he GROPED MY BREASTS. G is actually who noted this before I did because the injection made me completely out of it. This triggered PTSD associated bullshit and made me insta-dissociate. I ended up doing my typical-by-that-point walkout, but before I left I went to the bathroom to get dressed, slipped, and fell ass-first on the tile floor. I heard a crack. Fuck, there goes my tailbone again, I thought. I would end up in the ER, in a DIFFERENT hospital, a few days after this for said tailbone– but yeah, the whole experience was a traumatic shitshow. Not only did it cause MORE, FRESH trauma but brought up some of da ole shit. Bah.
Some of my other ER experiences are pretty typical of most I’ve seen or heard, they all involve the doctors or nurses not listening to me or simply failing to perform the proper diagnostic procedures. If I listed them all here as I intended to do when I began this article, well— we’d be here all day. I fail to understand how laughing at patients who are determined by some substandard set of preconceived judgements to be “faking,” can be construed by any sane, non-sociopathic mind as being funny. Even if a patient is portraying falsely their symptoms… that, at the very least is a sad (albeit very expensive these days!) cry for attention or a mental illness along the lines of munchausen’s syndrome. It reeks of unprofessionalism and poor taste.
I’m not saying every person employed in the healthcare industry is this type of evil as the second instance especially indicates, but I wanted to briefly outline two of my worst ER trips. 99% of them however, did think I was malingering, or, at best– a hypochondriac.
eds ninja 