Thursday, August 6, 2009

Medicine is a Scary Thing

Dear Lucy,
I just finished reading a friend's blog. She has type 2 diabetes and stage 2 kidney disease. She just found out by doing her own investigating, that she has went into stage 3 in May! And her doctor didn't tell her about it! She had shoulder surgery and has been taking high doses of Ibuprofen which is the worst thing for kidney problems.

Most people don't think about how inept our medical system is until they go through this or know of someone who has gone through this.

I have been my father's advocate with his doctors for years. Every time we go to a visit, his blood pressure is a bit high and the doctor wants to increase his meds. The problem is, his BP also drops for no reason and at one point we were having him falling all the time. I told the doc to let his BP be a little high that we were going for quality of life now, not quantity.

Suzie took him last week for his check-up and his BP was high again and they wanted to change his meds!! She had to tell them that I said no changes or they would have done it and it would have destabilized him for God knows how long.

The bottom line is, be your own health advocate. Ask questions. Do your own research. My friend is already in stage 3 and it's too late to change that. And any "sorry" she gets from the doctor or the courts doesn't mean a thing when your life is at stake.

--Kathy

2 comments:

  1. Yes - Funny thing is - there was no apology. In fact, my Dr. was so affronted by my calling attention to this situation that she quit and told me "good luck finding another doctor." Just like that - touchy little thing, eh? Good news is that I have been granted an appt. with a kidney specialist (what she had twice denied me) and I had retests done on my kidney functions this morning. There is a chance that the first tests done in May were not accurate due to illness (remember that horrible virus I had?). I shall know more in a couple days. Thanks for staying tuned and tell your Dad I said "Hi."

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  2. The very next day ... Aunt Sally having gone for a tramp in the woods was found laying in a ditch ...

    Lab tests are back and the Universe has seen fit to show me mercy in that my Kidney Disease has not advanced to stage 3; The May 22 tests were an aberration caused by my illness at the time. I can not here express my gratitude nor how many lessons I have learned going through this awful experience. I can, however, say thank you to those people and blog readers who shared this dreadful experience with me - it made me feel less alone. So - Thank You.

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