Before I start saying anything, I'll apologize in advance to anyone here who happens to be a doctor -- Especially if you're a competent doctor. 
Something nobody here knows about me is that I live with my dad. Or I suppose you can say he lives with me, because he can't support himself right now. Over the last 8 years or so, he's become progressively sicker with varying diseases and ailments. he is currently 54 years old, so these issues are starting at a very young age.
It started with him having hip pain one day. He went in to see a doctor and was told he'd need a procedure called an IT Band Release. It's a procedure where they go into a person's hip and cut small slits in the tendon that covers the joint, to make it more flexible. It took almost 1 year to get him scheduled for the surgery. All the time, he couldn't work because it quickly deteriorated from "mild hip pain" to "if I walk the pain is so bad, I almost pass out."
So, fast forward about 1 year. He has the surgery they said everything went as planned during the procedure. He has to use a walker to get around, but the doctors say he should be able to transition to a cane within 4 weeks and be walking on his own within 6 weeks. The day after the surgery I went to work, but my aunt stayed with him because he wasn't support to be alone for more than a few hours for the first few days after surgery. Before I got home, my aunt left to go to her job. But he was only going to be alone for about an hour, so nobody thought anything of it. I got home, walked in his room to check on him and found him passed out, shaking a bit and not responding to me trying to wake him up. I called 911 and shortly after that, he came to a bit, but still really out of it. Didn't know who I was, where he was, anything. So that resulted in a 2 week hospital stay, with doctors trying to figure out what's wrong with him. Two weeks later he was diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation. They put him on some meds and send him home.
Four weeks later, when he's supposed to be transitioning from a walker to a cane, he can still barely walk even with a walker. The answer we get from the doctor is "well, everyone heals differently." Which is true, I totally get it. Lets move forward SIX months now. Still on the walker, having issues walking with that. Long story short, it took a full year before he was able to transition to the cane and another year before he was off of that and walking on his own. To this day he still has mild hip pain all day, every day and walks with a limp. But he doesn't need a cane anymore.
Pretty much right after he gets off of the cane, there was an event where he passed out and fell down in the hallway (again hurting his hip in the process). I was home, so I was able to get him help immediately. He came to right away, but was a bit disoriented. He hit his head pretty hard, so I thought it best to take him to the emergency room to get him checked out. They determined that his medication dosage needed to be increased and they gave him some pain killers for his hip. They made an appointment to do a stress test on his heart and look at it with a scope, for 6 weeks later.
The procedure where they look at the heart (can't remember the name of it right now) was a semi-major procedure and required him to be in the hospital overnight. They take a small camera and insert it into the artery in the wrist and fish it up to the heart to look at things. Turns out that, other than the A-Fib, everything looks great. During this procedure, since they have to literally cut a whole in an artery, they put a pressure bandage on his wrist for 2 hours to keep it from bleeding. Well, the nurse left the bandage on too long and it completely crushed the artery going to his hand.
A few weeks after this he was having extremely severe pain in his arm. Bad enough that he couldn't wait for just another doctor appointment and we went to the emergency room, once again. He was then diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrom -- A side effect of the crushed artery. He now has constant pain in his left arm that will be there for the rest of his life. Most days it can be managed with over the counter meds, though.
Things go with these conditions, for about 4 years without too much trouble. A person gets tired of being in pain all the time. But for the most part he's learned to live with it. He was even able to get everything under control long enough to get a job and hold that for awhile. Things were looking good, I was getting ready to move out because he could support himself and all that.
Then about a week before last Christmas, I found him laying in the yard. He was trying to stand up, but couldn't get up. He would lose his balance and fall again. I called an ambulance, they picked him up and took him to the hospital. After being in the hospital for a few days, he was diagnosed with Postural Hypotension. This is happening because his heart medication is no longer effective. Because it's not effective, when he stands up his blood pressure drops to the point where he gets dizzy and loses consciousness. This time they gave him some "pressure socks" and sent him home. But since then, it has gone down hill fast. He lost his job, because there were literally days where he couldn't get out of bed without passing out. He gets noticeably sicker each day and you can tell it's wearing on him emotionally as well.
As a result of all this, he has been in the emergency room 22 times in the last 4 months and he's had a nearly equal amount of appointments with doctors. We've heard everything from doctors ranging from "you're just dehydrated, drink more water" to "get a job as a door greeter at Walmart so you can pay your bills." So, as you can probably imagine, right now I'm very mad at doctors in general. They've been passing him from one to another, wracking up bills that I have to pay out of pocket and doing nothing more than making him feel bad about himself.
Right now, as I write this, my dad has been in the hospital since Monday evening. This time there's a bit of hope though. A new doctor that we haven't seen before got involved. A doctor that actually seems to care. This is actually the first doctor we've seen in all this time that walked into the room and had actually read my dad's history file. Previous doctors walked in clueless or acted as if my dad was faking. This doctor actually knows what he's going through, believes him and shows him compassion when helping him with his problems. This doctor took the time to sit down with us and learn what this is doing to his life (and mine) and help make a decision to get things back on the right path. He's going to have a consultation to get a cardiac ablation done on his heart and then if that doesn't work, a pacemaker. After all of this, there's finally light at the end of the tunnel and maybe we can get my dad at least semi-healthy again.
But my opinion of doctors, nurses and just the medical field in general has taken a real beating over the last few years. We've seen more doctors than I care to count over the last 8 years or so. So many specialists, nurses and nurses aides. It took 8 years of going through all of this to find ONE doctor who cared enough to take the time to get things right. Is this what our medical industry has come to now?
Something nobody here knows about me is that I live with my dad. Or I suppose you can say he lives with me, because he can't support himself right now. Over the last 8 years or so, he's become progressively sicker with varying diseases and ailments. he is currently 54 years old, so these issues are starting at a very young age.
It started with him having hip pain one day. He went in to see a doctor and was told he'd need a procedure called an IT Band Release. It's a procedure where they go into a person's hip and cut small slits in the tendon that covers the joint, to make it more flexible. It took almost 1 year to get him scheduled for the surgery. All the time, he couldn't work because it quickly deteriorated from "mild hip pain" to "if I walk the pain is so bad, I almost pass out."
So, fast forward about 1 year. He has the surgery they said everything went as planned during the procedure. He has to use a walker to get around, but the doctors say he should be able to transition to a cane within 4 weeks and be walking on his own within 6 weeks. The day after the surgery I went to work, but my aunt stayed with him because he wasn't support to be alone for more than a few hours for the first few days after surgery. Before I got home, my aunt left to go to her job. But he was only going to be alone for about an hour, so nobody thought anything of it. I got home, walked in his room to check on him and found him passed out, shaking a bit and not responding to me trying to wake him up. I called 911 and shortly after that, he came to a bit, but still really out of it. Didn't know who I was, where he was, anything. So that resulted in a 2 week hospital stay, with doctors trying to figure out what's wrong with him. Two weeks later he was diagnosed with Atrial Fibrillation. They put him on some meds and send him home.
Four weeks later, when he's supposed to be transitioning from a walker to a cane, he can still barely walk even with a walker. The answer we get from the doctor is "well, everyone heals differently." Which is true, I totally get it. Lets move forward SIX months now. Still on the walker, having issues walking with that. Long story short, it took a full year before he was able to transition to the cane and another year before he was off of that and walking on his own. To this day he still has mild hip pain all day, every day and walks with a limp. But he doesn't need a cane anymore.
Pretty much right after he gets off of the cane, there was an event where he passed out and fell down in the hallway (again hurting his hip in the process). I was home, so I was able to get him help immediately. He came to right away, but was a bit disoriented. He hit his head pretty hard, so I thought it best to take him to the emergency room to get him checked out. They determined that his medication dosage needed to be increased and they gave him some pain killers for his hip. They made an appointment to do a stress test on his heart and look at it with a scope, for 6 weeks later.
The procedure where they look at the heart (can't remember the name of it right now) was a semi-major procedure and required him to be in the hospital overnight. They take a small camera and insert it into the artery in the wrist and fish it up to the heart to look at things. Turns out that, other than the A-Fib, everything looks great. During this procedure, since they have to literally cut a whole in an artery, they put a pressure bandage on his wrist for 2 hours to keep it from bleeding. Well, the nurse left the bandage on too long and it completely crushed the artery going to his hand.
A few weeks after this he was having extremely severe pain in his arm. Bad enough that he couldn't wait for just another doctor appointment and we went to the emergency room, once again. He was then diagnosed with Complex Regional Pain Syndrom -- A side effect of the crushed artery. He now has constant pain in his left arm that will be there for the rest of his life. Most days it can be managed with over the counter meds, though.
Things go with these conditions, for about 4 years without too much trouble. A person gets tired of being in pain all the time. But for the most part he's learned to live with it. He was even able to get everything under control long enough to get a job and hold that for awhile. Things were looking good, I was getting ready to move out because he could support himself and all that.
Then about a week before last Christmas, I found him laying in the yard. He was trying to stand up, but couldn't get up. He would lose his balance and fall again. I called an ambulance, they picked him up and took him to the hospital. After being in the hospital for a few days, he was diagnosed with Postural Hypotension. This is happening because his heart medication is no longer effective. Because it's not effective, when he stands up his blood pressure drops to the point where he gets dizzy and loses consciousness. This time they gave him some "pressure socks" and sent him home. But since then, it has gone down hill fast. He lost his job, because there were literally days where he couldn't get out of bed without passing out. He gets noticeably sicker each day and you can tell it's wearing on him emotionally as well.
As a result of all this, he has been in the emergency room 22 times in the last 4 months and he's had a nearly equal amount of appointments with doctors. We've heard everything from doctors ranging from "you're just dehydrated, drink more water" to "get a job as a door greeter at Walmart so you can pay your bills." So, as you can probably imagine, right now I'm very mad at doctors in general. They've been passing him from one to another, wracking up bills that I have to pay out of pocket and doing nothing more than making him feel bad about himself.
Right now, as I write this, my dad has been in the hospital since Monday evening. This time there's a bit of hope though. A new doctor that we haven't seen before got involved. A doctor that actually seems to care. This is actually the first doctor we've seen in all this time that walked into the room and had actually read my dad's history file. Previous doctors walked in clueless or acted as if my dad was faking. This doctor actually knows what he's going through, believes him and shows him compassion when helping him with his problems. This doctor took the time to sit down with us and learn what this is doing to his life (and mine) and help make a decision to get things back on the right path. He's going to have a consultation to get a cardiac ablation done on his heart and then if that doesn't work, a pacemaker. After all of this, there's finally light at the end of the tunnel and maybe we can get my dad at least semi-healthy again.
But my opinion of doctors, nurses and just the medical field in general has taken a real beating over the last few years. We've seen more doctors than I care to count over the last 8 years or so. So many specialists, nurses and nurses aides. It took 8 years of going through all of this to find ONE doctor who cared enough to take the time to get things right. Is this what our medical industry has come to now?