Upon examining my MRI, Dr. Harold Stokes said my hand now looked normal and that he saw no problems. He said he doesn't know why I lost bone density to begin with, nor did he seem to particularly care. "Looks like you fixed the problem!" he said.But I have not. The problem remains: I have a chronic pain in my hand that's been steadily growing worse for the past two years. Out of habitual passivity, I guess, I accepted his undiagnosis with little more than dazed stares and a whimper of "but...but it's been hurting for years...hurts a lot..." I asked him a string of passive and desperate questions, trying to get some hint of what to do next about this problem but all he would say was, "call me if it gets worse" in a friendly, grandfatherly voice that made it clear he wanted me to leave and made me yearn to smack him in the face and call for a Centurion to drag him away. The three attractive residents that were accompanying him today began to wander out of the examination room, bored. Case closed, considering my insurance is going to lapse again in another month. This is why I've never liked medical dramas.
What do you do if a doctor tells you you're well and you're not?
boy, that's irritating and worse. the second it starts hurting again call him for another appointment.
ReplyDeletei've going through this same kind of situation with doctors right now about something that i would like to be resolved on thursday, but i'm not hopeful. my insurance also runs out in a few weeks.
That sucks. Does Ibuprofen help at all? Any chance it's the beginning of arthritis?
ReplyDeleteIn response to your question at the end...
When I lived in JiuJiang (relatively rural), I woke up vomiting bright red blood. A quick google (the extent of my medical training) told me it was either an ulcer (of which there are a few varieties) or stomach cancer.
So, I went to the hospital where, with the help of a translator, I described to the doctor that I was vomiting blood. He put me in the line to get a chest x-ray. I verified, reverified, mimed, consulted my dictionary and did everything possible to make sure that he understood that I was vomiting blood and not coughing blood. "No," he said, "it's your lungs." So, I waited another hour to get the x-ray (by a shirtless technician who gave the x-ray while standing directly beside the machine and smoking in the same room where I he was giving people chest x-rays for presumably tuberculosis ridden patients), got it and sure enough it was clean as could be.
So my translator and I returned to the doctor with my clean x-ray. Thinking, ha! I was totally right-- now he'd have to treat me for the obvious bleeding ulcer I had...
Nope, he got the x-ray, after seeing how pristine my lungs were said, "Ah! Very clean lungs! You are healthy, you can go!"
Despite all my protestations that I wasn't healthy, but possibly bleeding internally as we spoke, he insisted that I was healthy and the x-ray proved it and that if I felt ill I should drink hot water.
I still have no idea why this guy had seemingly never heard of, or even conceived of a stomach ulcer. I ended up consulting with an American doctor over the phone, and he told me to find Omeprazole (prilosec) and recommended me a course, which ended up settling the problem after a couple of weeks.
More mysteriously was that pharmacies readily had omeprazole. It wasn't weird or hard to find. So it's not like one of those things that's totally cultural like "Chinese people don't get stomach ulcers," or anything like that. This guy just couldn't get past that the only reason blood would come out of my mouth was if it was from my lungs.
Wow! Chris, that's a crazy story. Man alive, I can't even imagine.
ReplyDeleteBenji, can you see another doctor, perhaps at a low-cost clinic (if your insurance has run out)? Gosh, what a prick. Sorry to hear the outcome of this. :(
Have you perchance been sleeping with your hand in a vice, or under a pile of sharp rubble? Check on that.
ReplyDeleteOH GREAT, RAISE MY "INTERMITTENT CHRONIC FINGER PAIN" COMPLAINT WITH A "VOMITING BLOOD" COMPLAINT, SURE CHRIS. What a prima donna. Hell, next thing you know some loon passing through is going to claim they had their colon removed or something totally nutso like that.
ReplyDeleteAlex, what is your medical problem? Is it...a hernia?
Chris, your story reminds me of this one part in Catch-22 where a man named Orr likes to wander around with crab apples stuffed in his cheeks. People keep asking him why he holds crab apples in his cheeks, but he simply denies that they are there at all, although nobody can understand what he's saying because of the crab apples in his cheeks. He also carries rubber balls around in his hands, for the sole purpose that if anyone presses the point about the crab apples he can show them the rubber balls to illustrate that clearly he has rubber balls rather than crab apples, and they are obviously in his hands rather than in his cheeks.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it's not much like that at all. But it's a good story, and a reminder of why you should write again.
ab, I will tell you what I told Dr. Stokes -- the eighty pounds of reinforced concrete rubble I pile on top of my hand every night is my business and my business only. I'm tired of being judged for my lifestyle choices.
ReplyDeletestoriesforhumans -- I tried a clinic awhile back, but they couldn't help. I thought a hand doctor would be just the thing! But oh well, it's not nearly as big a deal as I'm making out. I'm mostly just worried that it's symptomatic of something else, since there's not a clear cause of the problem.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if you know this is Emma.
ReplyDeleteI do, but I couldn't remember if you'd prefer to not have your name splashed around online, especially Adult sites such as these.
ReplyDeleteOkay, good. I thought so but really wanted to make sure you knew it just ol' me and not some creep.
ReplyDelete*i'm (to me up top)
ReplyDeletei think it's a hernia, yeah. after meeting with the doctor this morning, he put me in for a barium-swallowing x-ray thing on monday. So we'll see. Though, he did mention that even if it is a hernia, then he wouldn't want to operate on it probably. He also said that there is no way that I can meet with him again since I'm moving in three weeks. But at least I'll have gotten that x-ray.
i know that my three years of constant burping condition isn't as sexy as vomiting blood or finger pain (or at all, really), but it is a real drag.
I'm sorry to hear that. I think that it is sexier than finger pain but probably not as sexy as the vomiting blood
ReplyDeleteWill you have insurance as a grad student?
ReplyDeleteI TOLD you, Emma. I said, "Don't worry. If Benji is one thing, he is considerate."
ReplyDeleteI have had an active and debilitating flare of autoimmune disease for the past five years. Tell your friends to fuck me.
Alex: Is it eggy burps? I've never been so self-conscious as when I have the eggy burps. Maybe we've already talked about this.
ReplyDeleteDIRECTED BY M. NIGHT SHYAMALAN
ReplyDeleteDownvoted.
ReplyDeleteSamtron - yes, but there's going to be a gap for a few weeks so I don't know what that'll mean for pre-existing condition stuff. Or is that already gone?
ReplyDeleteBarry - no, i had to look that term up, and they're not. sorry, those sound much worse than mine.
I'm not sure what the deal is, but you should look into it. My current insurance told me that if I had a lapse in coverage that exceeded a certain amount of time (more than 90 days, they told me) between my old insurance and my new insurance, they could deny payment for a preexisting condition. They also told me that that would change once I'd been on the plan for a certain amount of time (about five months for me). HOWEVER, because I never actually received treatment for my hand, I think it was not classified as preexisting. That's what I finally decided from talking to them, and I hope it wasn't wishful thinking. Either way, you might check and see if you can figure out if that gap needs to be limited to a certain amount of time and if there's anything you can do about it.
ReplyDeleteM. Night Shyamalan's movies would be a lot better if they ended like that. A main character abruptly announces, "Well, it looks like things are getting a lot less spooky at the moment, so let's all go home. Give me a call if things get spooky again, but otherwise just take some ibuprofen."
ReplyDeleteThey go home, but one of them is real pissed about it.