They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This one, shocking though it is, doesn’t begin to tell half the story.
As I mentioned in this post, my 10 inch incision sprang a leak. Unfortunately that wasn’t the end of the fluid accumulation. Not long after having my drains removed, my abdomen began to swell. Alarmingly. Painfully.
I called my surgeon’s nurse several times, but since there were no signs of infection, they couldn’t fit me in before my next scheduled post-op appointment. I tried to grin and bear it, but as you can imagine, that kind of weight bouncing up and down in newly incised flesh was… less than comfortable. In fact, it could more accurately be described as excruciating.
Finally in desperation, I decided to brave the long waits and hostile environs of the Kaiser ER.
I’m settled into a room, and wait, wait, wait a few hours for a doctor. 3 hours later, a bleary eyed resident makes his way down to the ER. He asks a few questions, orders a few blood tests, and leaves.
A few hours later he returns to tell me the blood tests showed nothing remarkable, and that he didn’t see any evidence of swelling.
I said, “but I…”
He replied “I said there’s no swelling”.
I said, “but, my….”
He said: “I SAID, there’s no swelling”.
I said, “but, but….”
His eyes roll back, he grabs my abdomen by the “not swollen” part, shakes it violently, and bellows in my face:
“I SAID, THERE’S NO SWELLING!”.
The nurse on my other side jumps back and looks around as if affirming her escape route, but remains silent. The doctor slams around for a few minutes, writes some notes, mutters something about he supposes I want pain meds.
Knowing where that question is likely to lead, I say no, in spite of the fact that I’m now in worse pain than when I arrived. He looks surprised, looks at me, and says “no?”. I squeak out a repeat no, just desperate to get him the hell out of the room, get my discharge papers, and be out of this place. Home might not bring healing, but it doesn’t bring additional injury either.
A while later the nurse comes in again with my discharge papers and the boilerplate suggestion to follow up with my surgeon. The next business day, I call his nurse. I get an incredibly snarky response, and no chance of a sooner appointment. I mention I was told by the ER to follow up, and the nurse replies “yes, I see the ER notes here. They didn’t find anything. We have lots of new cancer patients, so we don’t have any appointments available. We’ll see you at your post-op.”.
Still weeks away from that date, I muddle through as best I can, my abdomen becoming larger and larger. Beginning to fear I’m losing my mind, I ask my husband to take a picture. It sure looks swollen to me, but maybe it’s just the angle, or maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about.
The picture sure looks swollen. Desperate for any kind of second opinion, I attach it to an email to friends from a parenting group. One of whom happens to be a nurse at a wound care clinic. She immediately fires back: honey, that’s a seroma. It’s the largest one I’ve ever seen. Get to the surgeon.
At this point I don’t have much hope of getting an appointment. We finally decide to send the pictures to my surgeon, his nurse, and my oncologist.
Hours later I get a call, asking if I can come in, they’ve made an appointment for me.
I wait in the procedure room, and the doctors enter. The oncologist is so livid he’s purple, peppering me with rapid-fire questions: “Who was the doctor? What did he say? There’s no swelling? What was his explanation for, for… this? Nothing?”
It takes two surgeons an hour and a half, a syringe and needle that look better suited to a horse and one large basin to drain this monster, one leaning on me and forcing the fluid into the appropriate place where it can be evacuated with the syringe. An hour and a half to drain this non-existent swelling, this figment of my imagination.
No swelling indeed.
I’m assuming you have all your paper work and the emergency doctors name. You are building a good case for malpractice. When doctors act in a way that threatens peoples lives it has to be brought to the attention of the medical board the the news media. If it is not pointed out it will continue. My ex-doctor missed miss treated me and my apendix burst nearly killing me. 7 days later I was able to get out of the hospital. A year later of rehab I was 89% back to normal. Never been 100% since but at least close to before the apendix burst. Keep fighting for good medical service if not they’ll let you die.
I had the records (though OHSU lost them). I had to laugh at the irony, the paltry notes from the doctor said something to the effect of “no evidence of swelling. Pt. needs eval. for anxiety”.
Looking at the picture, that’s one MOTHER of a case of anxiety.
Statute of limitations in CA for malpractice is 2 years. We spent those 2 years fighting Harrington Benefit Services and Kaiser Foundation for surgery to repair the damage from the aforementioned “anxiety”, leaving me disabled that entire time.
But that’s another blog post for another day. With MORE pictures! Wheeeeee!!!!
I’m glad you’re still here. Let me not meet your ex-doctor in a dark alley. I might have to…. bite him. Or just glare at him, REALLY HARD.
Thanks for the support.
[...] he is flatly insulting, and I’m trying to keep my husband (there for moral support, since I no longer go to Kaiser alone) from knocking his block off (figuratively [...]