I called my doctor’s office, he still hasn’t looked at my ultrasound.
I asked if I could talk to him, but apparently he’s out this afternoon.
The receptionist said she would leave a message for him to get back to me tomorrow.
C’mon man, I have to leave a message reminding you to do your job?
As William Gibson pointed out:
“The future is already here.
It’s just not very evenly distributed.”
Case in point: the EKG and EEG.
These technologies have been around for a while, and with the advent of printed circuits and microchips, should now be extremely cheap to produce. However, since they are considered niche technology – specifically they are only sold to doctors and hospitals who have deep pockets – they are prohibitively expensive to the average consumer, or even for healthcare providers in poorer countries!
In this day and age, it would be possible to sell an EKG for $50 and an EEG for $100, if they were computer accessories that used software to do some of the heavy lifting. If they were stand-alone, tack on another $100-$200 for computer-on-a-chip components.
But since they are “niche” products, this will never happen, creating a technology divide between rich and poor.
Now in my case, I am merely annoyed by not being able to play with what looks like fun tech. In the case of poorer countries, or even poorer regions in the US, it may mean not having access to technology important for medical care.
Today’s word is:
A girl with mischievous or boyish charm.
(or, in the past, a word for a female street urchin)
My new word of the day:
also known as alcoholism.
Dipsomania sounds so much more fun, though.
“His tipsy nature means ipso-facto, it’s dipsomania!”
Fun!
Oh, also, earlier today I asked my bag of Newman’s Own Alphabet Cookies, “I’m not really sick, am I?”
I then reached in and pulled out some cookie-letters.
In my hand were four cookies:
ARE U
Hmm. Even the cookies won’t give me a straight answer.
Brent had a bag of mystery Doritos at lunch, and I tried one.
The mystery flavor?
It seemed to be… Lemon Cookie.
Weird.
Called my doctor’s office, he still hasn’t gotten around to looking at my ultrasound results.
The receptionist did say that it listed
* thickened gallbladder wall
* gall stones
Which is pretty much what I already knew. The thickened wall is probably a sign of infection, which is why I’ve had a fever for the last few weeks, and soreness in that area. Maybe there was more on the results, but that’s all the receptionist mentioned.
Interestingly, I found this on IntelliHealth (http://www.intelihealth.com/IH/ihtIH/WS/9339/9709.html):
Acute cholecystitis usually requires hospitalization. You need antibiotics given intravenously (into a vein) to treat infection and medications to control symptoms of nausea and abdominal pain. Once your pain lessens or goes away, there are no signs of infection, and you are able to drink and eat, you will be able to go home to continue your recovery. Alternatively, your doctor may wish you to stay in the hospital until you have surgery to remove your gallbladder.
Which suggests to me that if I don’t have a gall stone blocking the duct, all I need is some antibiotics. Which is pretty much a no-brainer, since I’ve had a fever for a week. It sounds like doctors will try to push for removal, since it’s the easy way for them to be sure of no recurrence, but I may not actually *need* surgery – it could be all I need is antibiotics and recovery time.
Too bad I don’t have any antibiotics left, a while back I was prescribed some for something… maybe when I had my wisdom teeth out? But I used em all up…
Kind of annoying, if they’d given me antibiotics when I was in the ER, or if my doctor had prescribed some, I could potentially have been all better by now. Instead, the ER just pointed out that my white count was up, and my doctor just noted that I had a fever.
So I’m feeling sort of optimistic… except anytime I’m feeling good, I can just think about trying to get medical records to bring me down…
When I called, I requested my medical records. The receptionist said I needed to sign a release, which I did in the past, but they only applied it to the one report they sent me at the time. I asked if there was a way I could sign a generic release, so I wouldn’t have to sign one every time, but she was sort of vague about it.
Sounds like *maybe* I can, but I will still have to call and request each report, since they have no way of automatically sending me a copy of test results. Which gives them the upper hand, since I have to *know* about a report to ask for it – they might draw blood for two labs, but if I only know about one of them, I only know to request that one… or if I don’t know the name of the lab, only that blood was drawn, how can I request what I don’t know the name of?
Plus I asked them to request the ultrasound images from radiology, since when I asked the radiologist, she said they wouldn’t give them to me, I needed to have my doctor request them… well, guess what? The receptionist told me they couldn’t request them from radiology, that I have to request them from radiology myself. Which I already tried to do… arrrgh! They make this as hard as they can. It really makes me feel like I need a lawyer or a gun with me to get a copy of my own records.
I mean, come on! I have to sign a document saying that I allow them to release a document to myself???
The whole system reminds me strongly of Brazil. Which of course it should, because Brazil is about just that sort of system, run amuck…
Shock Trooper, after storming the house and arresting a woman’s husband: “This is your receipt for your husband… and this is my receipt for your receipt.”
Later when she tries to get her husband back, Sam helpfully tells her: “I assure you, Mrs. Buttle, the Ministry is very scrupulous about following up and eradicating any error. If you have any complaints which you’d like to make, I’d be more than happy to send you the appropriate forms. ”
So the receptionist was more than happy to send me the appropriate forms. I just have to wait for those, and also go to radiology to get the forms from them too. Except they are only open during normal business hours, during which time I’m at work, so I’d have to take time off work to go in. Except I’ve used up my sick days by having this trouble in the first place….
Yesterday I was munching on some Newman’s Own Arrowroot Alphabet Cookies (mmm).
I looked at the cookies in my hand, I had the letters B C I I T U.
“Hmm,” I thought, “if I had an ‘S’, I could spell ‘biscuit’, which is a synonym for ‘cookie’.”
I reached in and pulled out a random cookie.
It was an S!
I triumphantly spelled BISCUIT, and then ate ’em.
All food should be this much fun.
I called again to see if there was any info – there wasn’t. From her tone, the receptionist seemed annoyed that I called twice today, so I chickened out and didn’t ask for the data to be mailed to me. Next time, hopefully I won’t forget or chicken out.
I wish there was a way to have them ALWAYS send me a copy of my records, but of course they don’t have a way to do this.
I think the prevailing attitudes around medical records are:
Basically they seem to think that although a patient CAN ask for records, they shouldn’t WANT to, and if they do, there’s something wrong with them. That’s me: Mr. Wrong.
I called my doctor’s office… I guess he hasn’t looked at the ultrasound results yet, but according to the receptionist, he did look at the blood lab and said my results looked better… which is kinda vague. He wants me to have another blood lab done in a month.
He seems concerned about me being slightly anemic. Having kept my own copies of my hemoglobin levels for the past year, I would say my levels are just naturally low, since it is usually around 13 (the normal range is 14-18… or 13.5-16.5… depending on who you ask). Worst case, I should take an iron supplement (I do take a multivitamin which has iron, but generally don’t eat red meat).
This is one reason I like to always get copies of my medical records, medicine isn’t a centralized body, so hospitals don’t necessarily talk to one other. I’ve given blood with the Red Cross and with MetroWest Medical, and had labs done by the ER and my doctor. Each time I’ve gotten a copy of the data, so I have several data points, while each medical institution only has one or two.
The mild anemia isn’t really concerning to me, what I want to know is what’s going on with my gall bladder, but of course that’s the data he hasn’t gotten to yet. Hopefully I’ll hear back soon, and next time I talk to them I’ll have them mail me a copy of the blood lab results, which I forgot to do just now. Oh, and see if I can get the a copy of both the ultrasound results AND the images as well. Hopefully I can get the image data in standard DICOM format. I want to see what my insides look like. =)
So Sarah and I went to Maine to visit my mom this weekend, when I got back, the shower curtain was down.
Ok, kinda weird, but it’s only held in by pressure, and maybe somehow a change in temp or humidity cause the shower walls to bow or something, and the rod fell.
I shrugged it off and put the rod back up.
This morning, the drain was completely clogged, and a shower resulted in a full tub of water.
Now usually, the drain is a little slow sometimes, but this is full-on clogged. Water not moving *at all*.
I tried a plunger, it did nothing.
So I poured in a bottle of drain cleaner, we’ll see if that has any effect at all. I’m not sure if it will just become diluted in the full tub of water.
