Let us use me as an example. This past Friday morning I went down to the hospital to have a hernia repaired. This procedure used to involve a hospital stay of a couple of days and is now done in Day Surgery under a local anesthetic. You don't even get knocked out anymore. Perhaps for somebody who is in perfect health and has no other complications at all they are able to go home a couple of hours after the surgery and be fine.
The doctors were well aware that I have a pre-existing chronic pain condition in the same vicinity of my body, but they didn't seem to think that warranted any special consideration. I was sent on my merry way an hour after surgery was over. By mid-afternoon I was in so much pain I couldn't move. None of my oral analgesics, 10-mg. morphine pills taken two at a time, were giving any relief at all.
In the province of Ontario, Canada where I live, we have a twenty-four hour health line that we can call to speak to a Registered Nurse for a quick consultation. When I phoned that night at 7:30pm, she told me she would check with a doctor on call and either he would phone me within a half hour or I should get to emergency as quick as possible. Fifteen minutes later they phoned back to tell me to go to emergency at a specific hospital and they would be expecting me.
I was at that hospital until 1:30 am. During that time they pumped as much morphine into my body as they could in an attempt to bring the pain under control. Because they are not an in-patient hospital, they had to ship me by ambulance to another hospital across town. There was a surgical team on call there who needed to examine me in case I was bleeding into my abdominal cavity or my wound.
I ended up staying there until 2:30pm Saturday when they finally managed to get the pain under control enough that I could lay at rest in comfort. The conclusion they came to was that because I suffer from chronic pain already, my tolerance for pain is less than other people's and conversely my tolerance for morphine is higher. If I had spent the night in hospital receiving proper pain management to begin with, there never would have been any of these problems.
I ended up taking up two beds in emergency, one in each hospital, an ambulance ride between the two hospitals, a huge amount of intravenous morphine, and finally a bed they had to book for me in case they needed to admit me to the hospital. When my wife phoned looking for me on the Saturday afternoon, she was told I had been admitted and was passed up to the room I was supposedly in. It took her talking to six people to find out I was already in a cab on my way home.
Article comments
1 - Justene
The last time I disagreed with a doctor on how to handle a problem (I decided to follow the advice of another doctor who had treated the condition more often), I got a certified letter firing me as a patient. Finding a new dr in the US is difficult.
2 - Howard Dratch
Richard. So sorry you had to go through more. The only consolation is that the brain is supposed to be unable to remember pain -- don't believe everything you hear, either.
I have a growing hernia which is waiting for my next visit to Miami where it is ambulatory surgery rather than here where it is operating room and "hospital" stay and probably massive infection. So thanks for making me feel so comfortable about it. I can hardly wait.
As for Justene -- luckily I have good and pleasant doctors in Miami perhaps because they are originally of El Salvador and Paraquay. The idea of a "certified letter firing me as a patient" is obscene. If any such thing happens it is for you to write them the letter -- they are the consultant and you are the employer.