Doctors and questions
May. 17th, 2007 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
amanda_loddenWhy the hell does everyone insist that I must know every single detail about every single medication that my mother was taking prior to her stroke and heart attack?
Newsflash for all the idiot doctors out there: I haven't lived with my mother in over a dozen years, and even when I did live with her she didn't tell me every teensy detail about every doctor's trip she ever had. Hell, I didn't even realize she'd been being treated for high blood pressure until they finally got her vital signs stabilized in the ICU and her blood pressure stayed high.
So when you ask me a question, and I answer "I don't know", it means I don't fucking know. It does NOT mean "have someone else ask me again in a few hours", nor does it mean "call me tomorrow and ask me again."
In fact, what it really means is "I've already given you the name and address of her doctor, who is the one who prescribed her medications, so call him and ask HIM."
What makes this particularly irritating is that they got a list of medications she was supposedly taking at home, and they're trying to figure out why one of them was prescribed (it can be given either as a pain killer or to prevent seizures, and if it's a seizure preventative it's a Really Bad idea to stop giving it to her). Yesterday, the first time they asked me, I had no idea, but they explained why they were concerned, so I asked Mom. Why they don't bother to do this, I have no clue, but apparently no one believes she can give an answer (which is bullshit; when she doesn't know or doesn't remember, she gives no answer rather than a wrong answer). Mom claims it was to prevent seizures, but that she'd never had one. I passed that information along to the person who asked me. Problem solved, as far as I'm concerned.
Today, her doctor called me to ask me the same damned question. And I told him exactly the same thing I told the nurse last night, which is that I had no idea but Mom said it was to prevent seizures. And then he proceeded to grill me about the drug and why it was given to her if she hadn't had any seizures, to which I kept telling him I had no idea, and he should either ask Mom directly or ask her doctor. Because they're working off of a LIST. They had to have gotten that list from somewhere, and given the big hard-to-pronounce-even-when-you're-well chemical names on it, I'm guessing it wasn't from Mom. So instead of calling and bothering me when I'm trying to keep up with my own life PLUS my mother's PLUS visit her and make sure that she's still trying and hasn't given up, maybe they should call the person who gave them the fucking list in the first place. You know, the person who is supposed to keep those sorts of records. But instead, they feel that the best way to get this information is to nag me for it until I either snap and refuse to speak to them ever again or make up information to get them to go away. I'm not willing to do the latter, but the former is looking more and more tempting.
Newsflash for all the idiot doctors out there: I haven't lived with my mother in over a dozen years, and even when I did live with her she didn't tell me every teensy detail about every doctor's trip she ever had. Hell, I didn't even realize she'd been being treated for high blood pressure until they finally got her vital signs stabilized in the ICU and her blood pressure stayed high.
So when you ask me a question, and I answer "I don't know", it means I don't fucking know. It does NOT mean "have someone else ask me again in a few hours", nor does it mean "call me tomorrow and ask me again."
In fact, what it really means is "I've already given you the name and address of her doctor, who is the one who prescribed her medications, so call him and ask HIM."
What makes this particularly irritating is that they got a list of medications she was supposedly taking at home, and they're trying to figure out why one of them was prescribed (it can be given either as a pain killer or to prevent seizures, and if it's a seizure preventative it's a Really Bad idea to stop giving it to her). Yesterday, the first time they asked me, I had no idea, but they explained why they were concerned, so I asked Mom. Why they don't bother to do this, I have no clue, but apparently no one believes she can give an answer (which is bullshit; when she doesn't know or doesn't remember, she gives no answer rather than a wrong answer). Mom claims it was to prevent seizures, but that she'd never had one. I passed that information along to the person who asked me. Problem solved, as far as I'm concerned.
Today, her doctor called me to ask me the same damned question. And I told him exactly the same thing I told the nurse last night, which is that I had no idea but Mom said it was to prevent seizures. And then he proceeded to grill me about the drug and why it was given to her if she hadn't had any seizures, to which I kept telling him I had no idea, and he should either ask Mom directly or ask her doctor. Because they're working off of a LIST. They had to have gotten that list from somewhere, and given the big hard-to-pronounce-even-when-you're-well chemical names on it, I'm guessing it wasn't from Mom. So instead of calling and bothering me when I'm trying to keep up with my own life PLUS my mother's PLUS visit her and make sure that she's still trying and hasn't given up, maybe they should call the person who gave them the fucking list in the first place. You know, the person who is supposed to keep those sorts of records. But instead, they feel that the best way to get this information is to nag me for it until I either snap and refuse to speak to them ever again or make up information to get them to go away. I'm not willing to do the latter, but the former is looking more and more tempting.
