What is disturbing is that I'm not the only person this happens to. Even if you cut the hearsay accounts in half concerning people who have been released from hospital and then had to be rushed back in again a few days later, the numbers are too high. There are bound to be a few people where unavoidable complications occur after the fact, but there is something wrong with the system for so many people to have to be readmitted.
Doctors have to stop treating people like they are all the same and to not treat anything as routine. Cutting a human body open is never routine, especially when you are inserting a foreign object like a piece of mesh in the body as they do for hernia repair. If they have any doubts about a person's ability to recover, they should automatically be admitted to hospital and err on the side of safety rather then expediency.
The responsibility is also ours. We, as patients, need to ask questions and make sure all our concerns are being addressed. I don't know if it would have helped or made a difference if I had reminded people about my other condition or asked for assurances that it wouldn't make a difference in my recovery, but I should have trusted my own knowledge of my body over that of the doctor's opinion and at least tried to say something.
Until we have the courage to take control of our own bodies and reduce our dependency on someone else's opinion on how we are feeling, we will continue to find ourselves in situations that might have been avoided. This also depends on the willingness of the doctor to listen to you, but if fewer of us were to treat them like gods, perhaps they would stop thinking of themselves that way.
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.