Bobbi 的个人资料Empty Space照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
|
3月16日 Doctors Frankenstein ContinuedIn 1992 we were sent to Loring AFB, Maine. When I went into the Loring base clinic for my yearly mammogram they found a lump on the right side, so they scheduled me for a surgical biolopsy. They put me on the operating table and started the anesthesia. Next thing I remember the surgeon was calling me, "Mrs. Tate, Mrs. Tate, can you hear me?" I remember saying, "I'm not Mrs. Tate, she's in Florida. I'm Ms. DiBlasi-Tate." Then the surgeon says, "What are we operating on you for today, Mrs. Tate?" "WHAT?" "Well I'm just the on-call surgeon, and I don't know what we're operating on you for." Now can you imagine asking this of a patient who has been anesthetized? I mean where the heck was my chart? What if I was too groggy to get it right? What I said to the surgeon is not printable here.
Then one morning in 1993 in Maine, I awoke with a stiff neck and I couldn't use my right hand, my right arm, and I had a voice tremor. So, I went to sick call at the base clinic and after talking to a Family Practice physician I was told I had a pinched nerve in my neck and he gave me Flexiril. In a week it wasn't any better, so I went back to the clinic and they decided I needed to go to Physical Therapy for stretching exercises. I went to Physical Therapy several times until they decided to hang me by the chin in a harness that screwed into the door frame. I was to hang by my chin for 30 minutes at a time and the weight was suppose to pull the spinal discs apart and un-pinch the nerve. Two of those sessions and I quit. It had pulled the discs apart to the point that I now have to have surgery to stop the pain in my back. When I went to the pain specialist here in Albuquerque last month, he said that in his opinion I had a stroke back in 1993 and it was misdiagnoised, the therapy of hanging caused the disc problem, and at this point the only solution is pain surgeries and injections into the spine every 14-18 months.
Also at Loring AFB, my assigned military physician decided that he would try a different medication to cure the voice tremor from the 1993 incident and the head tremor that I've had since 1984 (military doctors tell me this is caused by stress and an injury to the Adrenal Gland). So instead of Adrenalin inhibitors he decided I should take a pill for seisures, phenobarbitol, starting with 1/4 tablet working up to 1 tablet. After the first night of taking 1/4 tablet, I awoke the next morning with the feeling that my skin, hair, and features were sliding off of my skull. I looked in the mirror and everything looked fine, but it felt like the right side of my head was sliding off. I went into sick call and told the doctor how I felt. He shook his head and said, "You must be allergic to that medicine, don't take it anymore." Years later I found out this incident was also a stroke, misdiagnosed and untreated.
I remembered that back in the 1980s I had gone in to work at Offutt AFB, Nebraska with a headache. I sat down at my computer and started to feel dizzy, light-headed. It was like I was looking down a tunnel with everything around the tunnel blacked out. Everytime someone spoke to me, I could hear them, but it was like they were talking in a foreign language because I couldn't comprehend what they said. I went to my boss' office and told him how I felt and he drove me to the base Emergency Room. After setting there for 1 1/2 hours waiting to be seen, I didn't feel bad anymore. The ER doctor listened to my story and said, "Oh, you had a mild stroke, but ya look fine now, just a little droop in your smile, yeah, you can go back to work. Come back and see us if you feel bad again." Why??? So, you can tell me how fine I look?
Well, now my husband is retired from the military and I'm trying to get some of these problems taken care of by civilian doctors here in Albuquerque. Most civilian doctors are telling me that the military doctors made such a mess, took such bad care of my problems originally that there isn't much they can do. There are partial fixes and pain treatments, but I'll have to live with the results of bad military doctors for what remains of my life. I would like to say to the military doctors, "Dependents are not lab rats, we do not want to be treated as such. If you do not know what the problem is, or you are not capable of treating the problem, send us to civilian doctors who can. Don't ruin the rest of our lives to make yourselves look good." To the military dependents I'd like to say, "Don't take substandard care because you feel you can't afford to go somewhere else for treatment. Insist on your medical rights now that you are paying for your care. Standup for your rights and don't take NO for an answer."
3月13日 Doctors FrankensteinMilitary Doctors and Facilities
I started using military doctors when I was 19 years old at Sheppard AFB, Texas. I learnt the system fast. If I couldn't tell them what was wrong with me and how they should treat me, I was told that they couldn't help me. If I had occasion to use the Emergency Room I had to sit there for hours while they treated dependents with colds, flu, or allergies.
At Norton AFB, California, I ran into the same problem except doctors there would write in your medical records that it was all in your head and then none of the doctors took you serious when you were ill. From California I was sent to Offutt AFB, Nebraska to the only regional plastic surgeon to repair facial damage. My plastic surgeon, Major John Mindell, was one of the five doctors in the military that was competent. He did an extreme rhinoplast (nose job) and replaced my chin with a molded plastic insert. After 5 years in the military, Dr. Mindell left to set up private practice in Beverly Hills.
The day after my plastic surgery, Dr. Mindell entered my hospital room early in the morning to find my "HELP" light on and me a bloody mess. During the night my nose had started bleeding down the back of my throat. I started choking and spiting blood out the hole left in my facial cast for a straw. I had put my light on to alert the staff that I was choking. However, help never came. When Dr. Mindell arrived in the morning, he had a fit. Hospital staff told him that they were playing cards and couldn't be bothered. After getting me cleaned up and making sure the bleeding had stopped, Dr. Mindell told me that I'd have to stay a few more days so he could make sure it wouldn't happen again. I told him that I could bleed to death at home, signed myself out, and left.
My next adventure was with the OBGYN staff at Offutt AFB. My first husband and I had decided no more children after my youngest was born breach. So, I checked into the hospital to have my tubes tied. Well, actually they cut a piece out of each tube and burn the ends shut. The surgery went fine but when I awoke I had an ache in my right side. I was told not to worry it would go away in time.
The ache never went away, in fact it got a little worse each day and finally I went into sick call. In fact I made several trips to the clinic over the next series of months to be told that I just had to give it time. After about 6 months the pain got so bad I couldn't walk up straight. At this point the military physician told me, "It's all in your head. You just didn't want to stop having children and this is your subconscious' way of letting you know that." After a couple more months, I started bleeding, had to walk bent over at the waist, or sit with my knees pulled up to my chest. I went into the military hopsital emergency room early in the morning and by noon I still hadn't been seen by a doctor, because I was imagining it all. So, since at that time I had Blue Cross/Blue Shield through my job, I called a taxi and went to St. Joseph Hospital in Omaha.
St. Joseph got ahold of my medical records from Offutt AFB that showed the surgeon who did my tubal had cut and burnt tissue that the lab report couldn't identify as fallopean tube. They discovered that I had cancer of the cervix and I had to have everything removed except the ovaries. Because of this mess, 8 years later I was runing the Inspector General Team's office when I woke up one morning with a terrible pain in the same right side. During the next few days if I drank or ate anything I threw it up. I went to sick call and talked to a doctor and a physician's assistant (PA) who told me that I had the flu.
On my second visit to sick call they gave me an IV in the ER because I was so dyhydrated. After 3 more days of this, I went to the ER after work because the pain was unbearable and I couldn't keep anything down. I was vomiting green liquid that left a sulfa taste in my mouth. The ER was way overcrowded but the doctor did a blood test and gave me another IV. When he received the results of the tests, the doctor told me that my white cell count was way high but he thought it was a bad case of the flu. The ER technician told me to get off the gurney because he needed it for someone who was really sick.
Since it was quite late, I went home and tried to sleep between the vomiting and pain and went back to sick call the next morning. I was sent back to the same PA who became alarmed when I couldn't stop vomiting this green stuff all over her office. She got a doctor who decided to admit me to the hospital until I was over the flu. This was a Thursday, I do not remember Friday at all, and Saturday I was awaken my someone in a jogging suit standing at the foot of my bed reading my chart. He was telling me that scar tissue from the prior surgery had grown up around my intestine blocking a section completely off. The only way to fix it was to operate, remove the intestines, clean out the intestines, and replace them. I remember thinking, why would a man in a jogging suit be in my hospital room talking about cutting my guts out--he must be a VC or Russian.
So, I jumped up, grabbed him, pushed him against the wall trying to choke him. His screaming for a medic brought two large guys running into the room who pinned me on the bed and shoved a piece of rubber tubing up my nose. Then the pain stopped. The tubing connected to a pump that pumped the green bile out of my stomach and intestines and pumped morphine into my system. I remember the doctor clutching his throat, grumbling about being dragged from his Saturday morning jog to operate on a crazy woman. Then I was awaken long enough to sign a surgery consent form (I think I would have signed anything, even my death certificate at that point) and then I was wheeled into surgery. When it was over, the pain was gone, my plumbing worked again, but my abdomen looked like someone grabbed a fist full of skin, pulled it up, and put some big stitches up and across it. Needless to say, I have some awful scars. Personally I think the surgeon let the janitor sew me up in revenge for the choking.
(To be continued) 3月8日 Rats at Walter Reed?In light of the recent on-going investigation of care and conditions at Walter Reed Medical Center, I would like to offer this blog. I would like to state that I have not been to Walter Reed, but I do know that after the Vietnam War military and VA hospitals were way overcrowded, filthy, infested with rats, and staffed by medical personnel who didn't care about the patients. I'm not going to name any facilities, but I've been through the system and it stunk. Now with that said, I'm going to blog about my experiences with facilities run by military bases, not involving the VA.
The large percent of military physicians are in the military because they can't afford the malpractice insurance on the outside. I have had military physicians admit this to me when I pressed them for better care. Over the 38 years that I have used military medical care, I have met 5 doctors who were competent and actually cared about their patients. However, as soon as they saw the conditions, all but one left the military for private, civilian practice.
So, you probably wonder, why continue to use military dependent medical care if it's so bad? Back when I was 18-19 years old, medical care was a free benefit to all military members and their families. The US Government didn't pay military members enough to afford medical insurance for their families. Over the years Congress has taken more and more benefits away from military members. When my children were small, the military introduced Concordia medical coverage. Premiums were deducted from the military member's pay and Concordia paid the military facilities for treating the military family members.
Then came the idea that if the military spouses were employed through civilian companies that offered medical insurance, then the dependent had to furnish the military with that information and their civilian insurance company was also billed for treatment at medical facilities. Over the years Concordia has changed to TriCare and now it's TriWest. Free dental care for dependents was never available in the states (it was offered in some areas overseas). Delta Dental insurance was offered a few years ago. Premiums were also deducted from the military member's pay.
Retired military members no longer receive free medical care for life. They can use VA facilities or pay (out of their retirement pay) for full medical health insurance premiums for themselves and their dependents. Same goes for Delta Dental coverage; however, the premiums are so high, most retirees can't afford it. If retirees continue their Tri-West insurance after retirement, they and their dependents continue to use military medical facilities unless they are not available in the area they retire or they are referred to civilian physicians by the military doctors. When using civilian physicians we have to pay the co-pay up front unless we can afford the Tri-Care supplement insurance that will pay the co-pay for us.
In my opinion this whole means of medical care sucks. It is just another government (Congressional) way or ripping off military members and military families who are in a lot of instances already below the poverty level. I can guarantee that Congress doesn't vote these hardships on themselves and their families. I've read the insurance benefits offered to Congressional members and there is a large disparity.
|
|
|
