Hospitals and Doctors

[Guest guest]

I guess I'll throw this out for the group, even though suspect many

in this group will not be surprised by this, but when my leg clotted 12 years

ago initially, I almost died of a clot to the lung.

It was insane the way they almost killed me and I had to keep myself

alive by the sheer force of my will.

I could feel the heart being squeezed on by my chest muscles and was

only continueing to breath by virtue of the fact that i was Forcing Each

Breath In in-spite of the horrendous physical pain. I was forcing myself to

take each next inbreath and my mantra was " I will not let my daughter be a

motherless child "

`The nurse tried to get me in my hospital gown but the room was

growing white and I pushed her aside with my arm, because the hospital gown

seemed like a ridiculous nuisance considering the amount of pain I was in and

in fact, the pain of breathing in was so great that on each outbreath I

screamed out the pain.

At one point I was going to lie back on the stretcher to " rest " from

the pain even though it had been too painful for me to even sit back in the

car, and out of the field of immense bright light in my head a voice boomed

" if you lay down you'll die " so I shot backup, and kept up breathing and

screaming.

They got irritated with me because I could not lift my arms above my

head for the x-ray and when I did a golf ball size knot lept up in my back

that I could feel when the unbearable pain stunned me and I swung my arm

around and Felt it.

So they shot me up with a muscle relaxant and sent me home.

Later that night as I lay on my bed I could FEEL myself dying. I

could feel that my breath was getting shallower and shallower and I knew I

was dying and had my husband take me back to a different hospital where

finally an intelligent doctor did a different kind of test to look inside my

lung and determined my lung was filling abnormally with fluid, my blood

oxygen level was plumeting dangerously low, and my blood pressure was through

the roof. Hooked me up to oxygen, and saved my life.

Even after all that, they failed to find the clot in my leg when they

looked to see what had thrown a clot to my lung. They sent me home with

antibiotic for pneumonia, but in three days I was back again my leg turning

red, and they finally found the clot a few inches further up in my abdomen

than they had looked the first time (theyonly checked the leg the first time

).

One of the nurses on home care after my month long stay in the

hospital in which my lung was disolving and so grew back into my rib cage,

told me the LAST place she would go if she thought she were dying is the

hospital.

So... that is the beginning of my saga, and how I came to live in

such great distrust of doctors in general. In spite of their body of

knowledge, which is undeniable, I have over theyears corrected doctors

repeatedly about my condition and been right -- about doses primarily --

I think in a couple of years when I have exercised my leg into better

shape yet, I will be brave enough to visit Doc and see if he can help me get

off the coumadin, which I REFUSE to be on for the remainder of my life...

 

Luv & Hugs to All,

Cathie