Doctors and IVs and stuff

Yesterday I went to my PCP here locally and I was quite dismayed. I started to explain my problems and told him I had a list of questions (I've never asked much of him before) and he said, "You have an appointment for 15 minutes so you might not have time for that."

I've NEVER had a doctor tell me this before. I should have called him on it, but instead, I got myself wound up trying to explain my swallowing issues and other concerns to him. Telling him I need this test or some help urgently. I was rapid0firing thru my questions and forgetting some of them. I made a comment about, "maybe I need to make another appointment," and he said, "Maybe you should!" but in a way that sounded a bit sarcastic to me.

I thought I'd learned enough about doctors and how to handle them and deal with them that I wouldn't allow a doctor to do this to me anymore. I thought I'd have his respect, and maybe, just maybe, his compassion. Even today as I write this, I still have a feeling of rejection about it.

So, he said he's going to see when the specialist next comes all the way here from Spokane to help stroke victims in the hospital learn to swallow...so I have to wait, and also wait for the assistant to type up a letter and send it to work comp and of course, work comp will take "at least five business days." Meanwhile, I am in a situation that could be pretty dire. Aspiration of food into the lungs causes pneumonia and death. I have no gag reflex and I'm winging it on my own.

Today, I went to the cancer ctr to have my IV drip of pamidronate. It was nice to see the nurses there again. I filled them in on my situation since I'd last seen them in December. The treatment made me feel sick, it caused stabbing pains here and there and made me fall asleep "painfully" in my brain. When you get fast but long IV drips like that, you feel like you have to go to the bathroom often, as if you were standing at a bar drinking beer after beer. I get up and pull the IV pole along with me and it works.

Coming home, the service van driver told me that his late wife, who bore the same first name as me, had died 3 years earlier of cancer, and what had started her progression toward death was aspiration of food into her lungs. I had not told him about my swallowing issues! And then to hear she had the same name as I, not THAT common of a name, it kind of felt like a warning sign being sent to me.

Tonight, I'm feeling a bit down. It will pass.