As a nurse, my family sought my advice over the years. I never practiced medicine without a license and stuck mainly to my specialty, Cardiovascular Nursing. If people asked me about pregnancy, I used the line “I don’t know nothing ‘bout birthin’ no babies.” I learned more about labor and delivery from Call the Midwives than I did from a clinical rotation forty some years ago.
With time, my advice took second chair to a new pundit, the internet. My mom asked me things, I advised, she argued. She would quote something she “Googled.” When a close relative developed cancer, she prepared for long distance care at a Cancer Treatment Center she read about until I reassured her that for her type of cancer, therapy at home would be more than satisfactory.
I agreed with the doctors at work who disdained Dr. Google or Google, MD. But then I had easy access to talented professionals amenable to “curbside consults.” I felt light-headed at work one day. I mentioned it to a colleague, a cardiologist. I had a stress test within a week.
Now that I have retired, I experience patienthood in an entirely new way. It started with a little light-headedness. No. Not a little. A lot. Bad enough to call 911. The red ambulance rolled up with lights flashing. I never felt so relieved as I did when the gurney rolled into the foyer of the fitness center. By the time they did a blood pressure, a blood sugar, an O2 sat, and looked at my EKG, I felt better, well enough to go to the bathroom and drive myself home.
I did what I would have told anyone. I went to my PCP the next day. He drew labs and did an EKG. My heart rate was, hold it, take it in, thirty-six. My heart had been bradycardic for years, but a rate below forty scared me. I’d been to a cardiologist before, so I called his office to schedule an appointment. When you imagine your heart might slow to a stop, you don’t want to wait around.
This is where the fun began. Despite the fact that I had seen this doctor and had a near “syncopal” episode, I hadn’t seen him often enough, so I was considered a new patient and couldn’t get an appointment for a month. Imagine me going to sleep at night with my index finger palpating my carotid artery to make sure my heart was still beating. Yup. That was me.
Thanks to Facebook and a few good friends and the fact that health care professionals treat each other like family, my appointment got moved up. I only had to wait a few days. My heart had to behave for a little while longer. However, I was warned that the doctor was extremely busy and that sixty patients were scheduled in the office that day. Whether you’re a nurse or a lay person, when it is your heart that is thinking about quitting, retiring from the rat race, going on hiatus, you don’t give a damn about anyone else’s problems whether it’s a cold sore or an office trying to make a buck.
When the doctor with whom I had worked for years walked in, I knew he recognized me, although he wasn’t sure from where. Yeah doc, I was the one who took care of all your very sick, high risk patients who agreed to participate in the trial of the procedure that revolutionized aortic valve repair. I worked hard with the unknowns and celebrated successes that changed the horizon for cardiac interventions. Guess what? I don’t give a damn about all that. I want you to NOT diagnose me in a five-minute office visit and exam. I want you to let me know you know all of my history, my MS, my anti-phospholipid syndrome, my meningioma, my very bad reflux, my hiatal hernia, the fact I have engaged in some sort of physical training since I was six years old. not just my heart history. But he chose the five-minute route. So, I went home and chatted with Google, MD.
Dr. Google mentioned sometimes a hiatal hernia can cause the exact same symptoms I was having, which was a relief, except it made me wonder if I should visit my GI doctor. I wondered if my meningioma was getting bigger and causing increased intracranial pressure and bradycardia. See my neurosurgeon? I wondered if I had thrown a clot to my lung again. Oh, did you not know about that? It’s on the paperwork, initially labeled incorrectly with someone else’s name. Call the pulmonologist. I had already done that.
You get my drift. In a perfect world, maybe all involved in my care could conference call and coordinate a plan. Since all my health care problems reside in one body, mine, maybe it would be helpful to consider them all before proceeding. Thanks to medical specialization and the business model of medicine, that will never happen. To be the best advocate for myself, I will draw from my experience, consult Dr. Google, and hope I make the right decisions.
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