Well so much for being your own advocate (that translates into "bitch")
Just woke up last Tuesday and couldn't walk without a lot of pain on left leg. Called my Internist ..he said call your Oncologist....her nurse said Oncologist said to call the Internist back......!!!!! Well you know how well that would go over. So i'm thinking well maybe its sciatica as it was all the way down my leg so i call the chiropractor......i know..dumb dumb dumb....ended up at the emergency room at a hospital about 5 minutes from me as we had a bad snow storm. ER doc very knowledgeable and measured my legs and pretty much told me i had a clot BUT there was noone there to run the doppler......OOOOOOOOOKKKKK.......Next morning in desperation i call the Nurse Clinician of my breast cancer surgeon who if you were to nominate the most compassionate, caring, Nurse in the entire world you would have to vote for her. This was not her territory but i gave her what i had been through and she said i'll call you back in 20 minutes. She scheduled a doppler for me at University in l/2 hr to which i find out I have a DVT which goes from my thigh to my ankle....Thats one big clot...they admit me to Critical Care. Now the real fun begins..i tell the pharmacist and doctor about Fragmin a low molecular weight heparin that works fast and you inject yourself...MSK has a great paper on it.....he likes the idea so orders it but also puts me on 5mg Warfarin. I ask why...so he can transfer me over to the Warfarin when i reach optimum levels.......ok i'll think about it but can't start out being a pain in the butt. Then several doctors come in who apparently haven't gotten the English language down completely...makes you wonder what they're learning huh?...Then in come the 2 oncologists of gloom and doom who tell me occult cancer may be lurking and causing this so a CT scan is scheduled. OK fabulous nurse comes back that afternoon and informs me my CT is just fine..no cancer. By the way they have not cleaned my room in 3 days but seemed to get the job done when fabulous nurse made mention of it. Forget that i had the same hospital gown on and no arrangements made for an Indian as they pronounced it pouch...I asked them if they would like me to pee in the bed, on the floor or perhaps a chair??? Mind you leg is still very painful but doc says i can walk to bathroom......I'm not at theraputic levels yet....oh well. Then really dumb nurse comes in to give me a shot of Fragmin and goes for the arm.......NONO NONO..thats not where it goes..its goes into fatty tissue sub q at the love handles, stomach (nope not near my pouch) or butt which i can't see or thighs....she says it doesn't matter and hits me smack in the arm into the muscle. I look like i've been hit with a baseball........morons. I'm like 123lbs..not much fat so i ask to do it myself....they send the pharmacist up as they don't know what they're doing. He kind of laughs and says i'm probably the only one who ever read the literature on the drug. I make a direct 45degree angle hit......next day i'm an expert so they send me home on both drugs. I get my blood drawn by a phlebotomist whom i'm sure could not even spell the word and she hit the bone in my hand..ouch...stuck on a bandage and tape and left. I called the nurse to find out my INR before i left and she said the phlebotomist said i refused the draw......huh?....so i said come in here..showed her the missed hit and bandage to make it look like she did something. I hope they check up on her as i'm sure she says the same thing about a lot of patients as how many call for their blood counts. So i get another draw by a competent person. I still don't know my counts and its a 3 day weekend and they don't schedule me for another blood draw until Tuesday.....YEP..i'm 4.9 INR...thats like i could bleed to death...they call tell me to quit all drugs..eat broccoli and salad and go in for a draw the next day...it then dropped to 2.4........this friday i get another draw..they fax it to my oncologist..noone calls me...i call the hospital and i'm not in the system they say. I'm on my own...do i take 2.5mg of warfarin or 5mg of warfarin. Today i find i'm at 1.8........think i'm going to ever get to theraputic levels with these clowns? I don't. My oncologist by the way said she never said what the nurse told me and that she never got the message.......sure. I went in for a follow up doppler today and i now have flow from the knee down but the groin is still completely blocked to the knee. What caused this?? Was i on a long trip overseas...no..was i in a car for a long time without getting up or changing positions......NO...
I think i did it by trying to be healthy...you know Vitamin K is a clotting agent........well K is in things you would never think about and i've been drinking Cranberry juice, Pom Juice every day and recently started drinking green tea which all are loaded with K.......so much for trying healthy stuff. I'm going to stick to chocolate. So thats my story and i so wished i had a paper and pen to write down names while i was there. I see how 93,000 people die in hospitals every year due to medical errors......again you must know i was not voted Miss Popularity.
Thank you for the well wishes and i hope i survive this one. It so sucks.
love you all.........pat
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