Yes, doctors are human...however

    Hello everyone!! Sorry I haven’t been producing any blogs lately. I will get better soon I promise. I have a few ideas floating around. Today, however, I wanted to see how you all are doing. Are you taking caring of yourself? Getting the rest and care you need? We all need to take care of ourselves and our bodies and often need to be our own advocates when we have health issues. Why? Because doctors are human too and they don’t always know when something is wrong with YOUR body. We have to be our own advocates sometimes or things can go very wrong.
    Examples? You want examples? Okay, I have examples for you. In my thirties I used to get the occasional pleurisy attack when I was sick (an inflammation of the lung that causes it to rub against the ribcage and causes a sharp pain when breathing). And occasionally I would get “walking” pneumonia that would not be found until an x-ray was done since my lungs always sounded clear. One day I had been suffering for hours from an attack and went to urgent care, not for pain pills, but because I knew there was a possibility of “walking” pneumonia. The doctor listened to my lungs and heard nothing so diagnosed that I was sore from coughing. I had not been coughing and I said it was not that kind of pain. The doctor gave me that attitude and look like “great another hypochondriac!”. Yes, I am familiar with that look. However, she agreed to have a chest x-ray done. When she came back with the results she actually apologized since the x-ray clearly showed some type of issue with my lungs.
    Yes, I have more examples. In my teens and in my 40’s I had issues with my ears that presented differently. In my teens I kept getting a lot of headaches and after several tests nothing could be found wrong. Since I had known ear issues my Mother took me to the ear doctor and had him look. He said that my ears wouldn’t cause a headache. However, since I had already had several ear infections and they needed to be taken care of via surgical cleaning my Mother insisted it be done like, now, since by then the left side of my face had started twitching as well. The doctor did the procedure and ended up having to remove the mastoid and other ear bones that had been disintegrated by a cholesteatoma (a benign growth of the ear). The infection and growth had started eating into my facial nerve which explained the twitching and the headaches. And yes, the headaches left after the surgery. In my 40’s I started having balance issues and my right ear felt full. I went to my ear doctor (a different one by now) several times over the course of six months and he kept insisting nothing was wrong; even saying at one point that he could practically see into my brain! I switched doctors because even hubby could tell I was having issues walking a straight line at this point. The new doctor tried to give me the same song and dance and I insisted there was something wrong and that I would go to another doctor if I had to. He agreed to do an MRI. Guess what? He apologized as well since there was a cholesteatoma in my right ear now. I had the surgery and again the mastoid bones and other ear bones were destroyed and had to be cleaned out. He estimated that it had been growing for over six months. About how long it took me to get someone to listen. Advocacy is important people!! And did I learn my lesson? No.
    A couple of years ago I kept getting sick with sinus infections that doctors kept saying they couldn’t see. Well, finally my ear doctor took a CT scan of my sinuses (again after saying nothing was wrong but this time he trusted my judgment). He came back to say the back sinuses were BAD and I ended up with surgery again. Now I do not allow anything to go on in my body for a few days without doing a check on why.
    However, by far the scariest episode happened with hubby. Two days before Thanksgiving in 2002 hubby calls me at work saying he thinks he needs to go to the emergency room can I come home. Now, my hubby would NEVER go to the doctor preferring to tough things out. So hubby saying he needed to go to the hospital said this was serious. We get to the hospital and they do their normal run of tests and come back saying everything looks good and I am thinking hmm, but I had to get our daughter from school so I left under the assumption they were going to send him home. I went to get her and I am praying the whole way don’t let them send hubby home if he isn’t okay. We get back to the hospital and the nurse says he is having a test done. A little later she comes out to tell us that he had a heart attack but he is okay. Our daughter is crying and I am in a state of shock but glad hubby is okay.
    I found out later that the cardiologist had looked at his EKG and found an extra heart beat which is an indicator you are either pregnant, which obviously hubby wasn’t, or the possibility of a possible heart attack. Turns out the doctor gave hubby the option of having an angiogram right away since the doctor was there and available or of scheduling it another day. Hubby was already in pain and wanted the test out of the way now so they did the angiogram, which led to an angioplasty and stent. If hubby had opted to wait he would not be with us today because the artery that was clogged is aptly named “the widow maker”. He would have gone home and had another heart attack that would have killed him, no lie. God was with us that day and answered my prayers. If hubby had not listened to his own body he would have died and luckily he did not wait to have the needed test done. And yes they had intended to send him home, however, anything heart related has to be checked out by a cardiologist thank goodness!!
    So, what I am trying to say is, I love you guys so if you are feeling off get it checked out. Yes, we have to be careful about over analyzing ourselves but sometimes you do know better then the doctor especially when it comes to your own body. Some things like colds can take time to recover from; but, if it has been weeks get thee to a doctor post haste! Remember, you are loved! I love you (all 20 of my fans and any new readers out there) and pray for you daily. Until next time be your own advocate if need be!