Thinking about the Virtually Connecting question “Why We Blog”… As a medical patient with major heart problems along with less threatening skin and colorectal cancers the sense that I exist as a person is simply not supported by the medical system. There is first, no continuity of care, no affirmation of how my life continues between appointments, none of the markers of “being here” that a living person normally accumulates and an apparent need by medical people for me to be polite, understanding of their stresses, and to never complain, act sick, or display the obvious lack of discipline the unappreciative patient is known for. And for God Sakes leave off the talk of death, you didn’t die, (for very long anyway and that was at another hospital with different doctors and nurses and you came to to us almost gone, and really we saved you even though it wasn’t actually us and you know? Just shut-up).
Truth is, everything is mixed up and what I remember is not what they remember because “they” are always different (but of course also ALWAYS right:
Same family doctor and same clinic but because she, my doctor, (two individuals over eight years) is “my” doctor, other doctors in the clinic (who also exclusively staff the local hospital) will not contact her(s) if I turn up tragic and needy. What she knows about me is almost proprietary and that’s how the dying thing and the months of misery and two heart attacks came to be.
Continuity as in vacation and maternity leaves mean my file goes into limbo. Follow-ups, exams, tests, monitoring and even receptionists simply STOP. Chronic but unknown, the channels are closed, the care is away, gone. The patient abandoned, without history needs a crisis to get attention and then in-crisis must clearly represent themselves or endure the entire process of diagnosis again. Or miss-diagnosis again and again.
Time to stop. I blog to keep from disappearing.