It's been awhile since I've updated. I know you're crushed, so here is my latest installment.
I work as an Admissions Counselor for a small-private college in West Virginia. The majority of my job is to help students interested in the Humanities and Music decide if my college is right for them, and then guide them through the Admissions process. Now, within that "Humanities" category is a sub-category of the "Undecided" students. I actually get to use the "counselor" part of my job title with these students, as I help them figure out exactly what they want to do with the rest of their life.
I really like that part of my job for a few reasons: I not only get to help them figure out their strengths and weaknesses, but I get to kind of "pump them up" for their future. That's kind of cool. However, next time I get an Undecided student that wants to change to Pre-Med, I have a few words of advice for them:
Medicine is not a guessing game. When you spend $100k on medical schooling, please learn something so your patients, i.e. ME, aren't used as guinea pigs.
Here's a bit of a back story for those of you who don't know what has been going on. Last year, I started noticing that I couldn't eat pepperoni because of adverse reactions. "No big deal," I thought. "I can live without it." So I went about my business. Then, one hot day, Jessica and I went for ice cream. Bad idea. "Ok," I thought again, "I can't have ice cream." That was a little tougher to live without than pepperoni.
From then on, it's been a downward spiral of food after food after drink after food that I can't eat because I would get so sick. I won't explain all the reactions I had; I'll leave that up to your imagination.
So in June, I go to my family doctor and explain that I think my gallbladder hates me and asked them to check it. He, instead, orders blood work and a CT Scan because he thinks I have Diverticulosis, which is basically little finger-like sacs (I know, I hate that word, too) off the intestine that gets irritated when particles of fatty foods get stuck in them. Well, the CT Scan shows nothing on my intestine, so the nurse says, "Change your diet," to which the doctor replied, "Medicine is basically a guessing game."
Um, I'm sorry, what? Medicine is a guessing game? How about test my gallbladder like I asked you to?
So, I change my diet. I start self-testing for food allergies: glutton, acids, etc. no avail. It didn't matter what I ate; I always got sick.
So, I then went to my check-up for another doctor, and I explained to her how I was having abdominal and pelvic pain, so she ordered both an abdominal and pelvic ultrasound, as well as yet ANOTHER round of blood work. Oh good, because I love needles. It is my greatest pleasure in life to look like Swiss cheese.
So the day before my ultrasounds, the second doctor calls and says she needs me to do blood work AGAIN because my SED Rates were high (which basically means there is an infection somewhere in my body). So, after I go through the pain and horror of these two ultrasounds, I go BACK to the second doctor and get needled again. TWO WEEKS later, I get a call saying she is referring me to a General Surgeon because she can't read my abdominal ultrasound. THEN WHY DID YOU ORDER IT?! (Ok, I know why she ordered it, but seriously.)
So now, as the "guessing game" continues, no one knows what is wrong with me, they put me on this medicine that is making me feel even more terrible than before, and no one has checked my gallbladder yet.
The worst part about this is that my appointment with the surgeon is scheduled for two days before I start traveling for this job that I love so much. Tell me, Doc, what can you do between Friday at 10:30am and Sunday at 2pm for me?
