Healthcare | Ah, What a day

10 Weeks of Hell - Surgery and more

Sun, 19 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000

I have been thinking about writing about this for over a month. This morning I woke up and decided it was time to get it out in the air. To set the scene for this, imagine you are in severe pain with no way to understand what is happening.

What started it all

November 10, I woke up with severe pain from another intestinal blockage. This was after I went to bed on November 9th with no problems. I felt a little bad, but it was nothing abnormal. When I realized what was happening I called 911 to get transported to the hospital. They were able to get me partially easy, but after a few days, it wasn’t resolving itself. This wasn’t the normal case of these episodes, but a surgeon promised me that he would be able to fix what was happening. He told me that he was going to do it through laparoscopically, but after he got into the surgery, he had to open me up fully with a 5-6 inch vertical cut. The surgeon described my gut was in a bad state, and described the adhesions that he found as a ‘cobb-web of cobb-webs’.

Healing Journey

I woke up in severe pain on November 13th, and the only thing that really helped was Fentanyl. This was the only thing that would mostly get me at ease. While the side- effects of this drug are horrid, it got me somewhat easy. A few days later I was trying to get up and move, and I was able to make some progress with pain medications. They had me on foods within a few days as well, and everything seemed to be working ok. Little did I know that my intestinal tract was traumatized from the surgery, and when the intestinal tract is traumatized, it’s common for it to become ‘stunned’. This lasted until the first part of January, and I was in and out of hospitals from November 10th till January 17th. During this time, I was in Mission Hospital, Advent Health, CMC Main, and Mercy. I want to go into details about each of these experiences, and I will get to that later. Eventually, my intestines started working again, and my body would have changed beyond my own belief. During this time, I lost 80 lbs, and my diet was changed pretty dramatically. I’m now on mostly soft and liquidy foods.

Mission Hospital experience

While this hospital is the biggest hospital in Asheville, we need a better hospital here. The general surgery team was made up of multiple doctors, and it amazes me that some of them are very arrogant. I was on a track to get my body back to a working order, and the doctor on-call changed to the ‘head’ surgeon. This is when things went down hill fast. Soon as he got in charge again, he changed the method of treatment. While the prior surgeon had me on a path of recovery, he threw that out the window and went on his own path. This resulted in me having more issues, and the recovery was prolonged.

Advent Health

After my experiences at Mission hospital, I decided I needed to try another hospital. When I got there, they were able to get me in some sort of less pain state, and I saw the surgeon that did my surgery 16 years ago. He stated that the situation with me was to complicated, and I was needing better medical treatment than they could provide there. That’s when they were looking for another hospital that would accept me. After a few days, they said I was being transported back to Mission. This wasn’t going to happen cause I refused to go, but I had to sign out of the hospital against medical advice (AMA) if I didn’t want to go to Mission. This was a decision forced by the hospital staff at Advent Health. This is when mom was informed, and she drove from Charlotte to Advent Health to take me to Mercy hospital in Charlotte. When I signed out AMA, they rolled me out in a wheel chair without a mask to protect me from COVID into the lobby where there were COVID patients waiting for treatment. I was given 2 hours before they were going to leave me in the lobby waiting for a ride. In my opinion, this was the worst treatment I had during this time.

Mercy Hospital

When I got to Mercy, I was in severe pain, and they were able to get me back pretty quick due to all of the symptoms my body was exhibiting. I was given pain meds to get me somewhat easy, and then they started doing diagnosing of what exactly was happening. They admitted me within a few hours, and I was in a room 8-10 hours after I got to the ER. They done pretty much the same thing that Mission done; NG Tube then they done pain meds to combat the pain. Once I was able to eat again, it was pretty much the same thing that Mission did, clear liquids ramping up to solid foods. This was done a few times, and each time I seemed to handle it ok. When I got to mom’s house, things would go south quickly to where I would end up in the ER again. This happened until I was put on TPN and just a liquid diet. This allowed me to stay at my mom’s for several days. The first cleaning of the PICC line, it got infected. I ended back up in the ER with a high grade fever, and they administered several days of antibiotics. They kept me on TPN for a few days, and started me on a soft bite size diet which seemed to agree with me. They kept me until we made sure I was able to handle a few days of soft bite size meals.

CMC Main

I ended up going to this ER one time. This was an experience which was not pretty or fun. I was put in the ER triage, and ended up vomiting a lot of liquid up. Once again, I was given pain meds for the pain level I was under, and then I went through a series of waiting areas. We (mom and I) both caught COVID from this experience. This ultimately spread through mom’s house hold, my sick grandmother was there, and once they decided I was going to be admitted, I was transported back to Mercy. I ended up having COVID over Christmas, and this was the worst case of COVID I had. Ended up vomiting and diarrhea EVERYWHERE, and I ultimately ended up getting dehydrated due to all of the symptoms. I was then put in a room and wasn’t allowed to leave. Each time someone came into a room, they were covered head to toe with protective gear. This made me feel all sorts of dirty. It was amazing how that feeling spread through my mind and body. I wouldn’t recommend this to anyone.

Final Thoughts

While this experience was horrible and terrifying, it has changed me. When you are faced with what I went through, it makes you appreciate a lot of things differently. I have been told by several people that they didn’t think I was going to make it through this, which is odd to hear. While I understand where they are coming from, it’s still a shock. I have spared a lot of details of this, just to make things a bit easier to be heard. I sincerely hope that no one ever goes through what I have been through.

I will be writing another post soon about what is happening post hospital stays. With some details of what they have identified me of having.

Challenging times

Sun, 18 Sep 2022 00:00:00 +0000

As some of you know, my nephew was in a car wreck a few weeks ago. He was travelling back home from dropping a co-worker off at Ingles on Merrimon Ave. Michael, my nephew, has been through the ringer since this, and I wanted to talk a bit about what has happened and is happening. I will also share somethings that has been bothering me. I have also setup a GoFundMe fundraiser for Michael’s expenses currently and after his discharge. You will see it attached to every page of mine at the bottom.

Michael’s accident

As I said before, he was travelling back home when he came across a hill near Beaver lake on Merrimon Ave, and he remembers that he saw headlights, then nothing else. Turns out he was in a head-on collision, and the driver of the other car was a drunk CNA. He woke up with blood everywhere, and he was in an extreme amount of pain. He had to be cut out of his car, and the first responders were surprised he was still alive and conscious of his surroundings. He was able to tell them to call his dad and his girlfriend. I haven’t been told much more about this, but just thinking about this type of situation that happened to my nephew, breaks my heart.

Michael’s recovery

While Michael has been going through multiple surgeries, and now he’s going through physical therapy. I often wonder how he’s going to be after everything is said and done. While his spirits are normally high, there are low times. I have sat with him a few times for assisting him and keeping him company, but there is a double edge sword to that, I will explain later. Last time I was up there, he was not able to get the pain medication to keep him easy, and this has been an on-going issue. While I understand that they don’t want him hooked on it, it’s still something that would help the over-arching goal of getting him better. I’m not going to say all of the bones, ligaments, and joints that were damaged, but I will say that he has a long road ahead of him. One thing that I keep my mind on, he’s going to be able to walk again, and this is a HUGE blessing.

Double edge sword

When I have stayed with Michael for multiple hours (4-5), my body doesn’t like it. When I say my body doesn’t like it, let me explain. When I get away from the room, and the situation, my body starts doing the whole pins and needles type of sensation. This is due to the amount of stress I’m putting my body through when I’m up there, I think, and then on top of the situational stress, PTSD. You are probably asking, why PTSD in a hospital. I’ve been in and out of the hospital for the last 16 years with my GI issues. A lot of these stays were alone, and I was in a lot of pain.

Hospital Staff and Skill levels

Up until 2019, the stays weren’t horrific, but since the stays are down right scary due to the lack of empathy and skills of the staff. Last I heard, the number of nurses that are travelling nurses is as high as 95% of the nurses in the hospital, and one of the nurses was complaining about how much the travelling nurses are focused on the money aspect instead of the patient aspect. This is what you get when you have a hospital that doesn’t give two shits about the level of care as to the bottom line. The last stay I had, I had to explain to them how to insert an NG Tube. This is something that should be common knowledge with nurses, and then to top it off, she wasn’t able to secure the tube to my nose. It ended up falling out, and then I had to get another one inserted. Keep in mind, the first nurses were travelling nurses, and the second NG tube was done by a regular RN. The second nurse knew how to do it, and it wasn’t nearly as painful as the first.

Conclusion

While I have ranted on about my experiences with this whole thing. I don’t want to diminish the impacts this has had on our whole family. My brother has Covid, and the rest of us has at least been exposed to Covid. This means we will not really be able to go around Michael until we are all cleared. We all haven’t sleep good since the wreck.

HCA/Mission Hospital

HCA has turned a hospital into a nightmare for healthcare. There are on-going legal actions for over-charging and monopolizing the health care of Asheville/Buncombe County. We should have some other fashion of health care that actually cares about our health.

COVID Theory

Sun, 12 Jun 2022 00:00:00 +0000

I will start out by laying down the theory, and then I will move on to supplying some evidence of why I think this way.

Theory:

Through the COVID pandemic, there has an urge of mental health diseases in the US. With the release of COVID, whether it was intentional or unintentional, it has brought on a crushing increase of mental health issues, and this brings me to my theory. I think that COVID triggered a domino effect in the health of people around the world, and with people more worried about several aspects of life than what is happening in the bigger picture of things. This whole thing is to create a smoke screen to hide what is exactly is playing out in the world. Do I know the end goal? No. I don’t even know or have a theory who is pulling the strings. The dominos are just starting to drop.

Evidence:

News outlets:

A few months back I took about 3 hours and watched several news stations. The stations I picked were ABC, CNN, Fox, and Americas Voice. I have to say, I was shocked and disappointed at what I found. I was watching it on a Saturday morning from 11 to about 2pm What I found was varying information of what was happening with COVID from complete and totally left to complete and totally right. 99% of the information was contradictorily, so say this nice. With all of the misinformation, that’s what starts the smoke screen.

COVID Information:

While COVID is a new disease, there seems to be a lot of close mindedness around COVID. Doctors aren’t receptive to any aspect of this disease, and this can be seen if you look at any sort of COVID related forum/information outlet/etc. I have been reading people on Reddit for months, and there seems to be one conclusion, it sucks. Of course, this is an understatement. For people that has been suffering from things that are long term affects of having COVID and it seems to be so random. Makes me wonder, is there something that creates this virus do extreme things to some people, and then others, it does little to nothing. Myself, I suffer from anxiety and probably increased my GI issues.

More about the doctors being closeminded. I speak about doctors in general, and I attest to some doctors are completely the polar opposite to the ’normal' behavior. While these doctors are rare, and if you find one that you can work with, STICK WITH THEM. They are like golden nuggets. I have found one general doctor that has helped me in ways that I could never think her. I won’t name her, to respect her privacy. I do wish I could find a good place to research doctors, and this would be a service/website that is not persuaded by people throwing money at them.

Final Thoughts:

While I started this blog as a part of a type of therapy for me, and it has helped me a lot. I would like to let the people out there know that are suffering from long term effects from COVID. Keep your chin up, hopefully sometime soon that there will be a break through with treatments to help with these things you suffer from. Until then, if you are having thoughts of hurting yourself, please seek help. If you are in Asheville, NC, there are great IOP programs in town to help with some of this. While they are mainly for mental health items, suicidal thoughts and/or thoughts of hurting yourself could be helped as well. When I was in there, I found a new light in many things. I hope they will be able to help you.

Until next time, enjoy this ride which we call life.

State of Healthcare since COVID

Sat, 28 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Over the last few months I have been in and out of the hospital a lot. So, I’m going to be explaining why I wanted to talk about this…

Ambulances

Each hospitalization starts with a trip to the ER via ambulance. Why an ambulance? Well, by the time I admit I need help, I’m not able to drive myself. It’s usually because of the amount of pain I’m in. While sometimes the ambulance ride ends up a positive experience (the best you can have in that situation)… Sometimes has been lackluster, at best. Seems like the care factor has been on a steady decline since the beginning of the COVID pandemic. Most of the times, I have been delivered to the waiting room instead of actually being cared for. During the ride, they refuse to give any assistance, and the reason I have gotten is that they don’t want to make it worse. I usually ask for pain medication and/or something for the nausea. While I understand the pain medication can make a intestinal blockage worse, and I would completely understand if that’s what I have been experiencing. With the # of times I have been through this, I’m pretty sure I know what to do/expect. Trust would go along way with the patients and the paramedics.

Hospitals

Once arriving at the hospital, if I’m able to get into the ER in a timely manner…. The nurses and doctors do the best they can, but with what they see on he CT scans, they think it’s a blockage. I’ll talk about this in a minute. For the # of nurses that they have on hand, there isn’t enough to care for the patients adequately. I heard the ER nurses state that she had 5-6 patients on average. Then on the floors, they are in the ball park of 7-8 patients. Now, this might not seem like a lot, but if you take into consideration that if a 2-3 patients need extra care, the others go uncared for. From what I have seen, it’s VERY rare that other nurses step into help them out. Which is understandable, to a degree. While the nurses do not have the experience with the patients, they can quickly get up to speed to a limited degree. Is this possibly dangerous? Yes, it is to a degree, but if they are following medication orders or something of that nature, it should be relatively safe to administer.

Doctors

While I’m in the ER, I am normally assigned a doctor or two, and it’s pretty amazing how quick they make conclusions. In the last 2 times I was in the hospital; they were VERY insistent on me having surgery. Both times, it’s not to fix a problem, but to go have a look at the problem. From my experience, exploratory doesn’t really help anything, but to allow for the doctors to see what potentially is a problem. I have had this before, and they said it was going to be a small incision. I woke up with a ~6 inch scar which now looks like a question mark around my belly button. Not to mention the damage they did to my bladder. Let me tell you, avoid vertical surgeries on your stomach at all costs, they hurt like hell and are hard to recover from. What is even better about the doctors, when they finally see that I’m not going to allow for surgery, they drop me like a hot potato. This has happened on two occasions, and they were from different lines of doctors and different specialties.

Second Opinions

Through my work, I was able to get a second opinion which might potentially lead to something life altering for myself. This second opinion was with a doctor in Alabama at a university that specializes in Gastro Intestinal Issues. I was finally able to get my GI doctor to look at the opinion, and he took it to heart and tested some of the items. This resulted in finding that my Thyroid is under active, and I also have a VERY low B12 #. Since that test, I have been doing B12 sublingually and started a Thyroid medication. Through researching these two problems, they BOTH can cause a multitude of problems with my mental health and gastro intestinal system.

I know I have said multiple times that I want to block more regularly… Hopefully that will start happening. It’s hard for me to sit down, and talk about these problems when I feel half-way decent. These times have been rough for me, and this is a form of therapy. I also hope this helps someone else.

Positions in Health and Finance

Sun, 10 Apr 2022 00:00:00 +0000

It’s ben a while since I have put a post up, and I would like to talk about the things that have been on my mind.

Health position:

I select this topic first cause I have been going through more health challenges. In short, my gastro intestinal track doesn’t agree with me a lot of the times. I have concluded that I’m not able to figure out what is causing the issues, and I have been seeing several GI offices in the past years. This has been happening for the part 16+ years, and over the years, I have had almost every test executed on me during that time. There was one of the doctors that said I have had more than a million dollars worth of testing on me. Anyways, I have come to have less and less confidence in the health care system. I know they are doing their best, and I’m sure that my case isn’t the run of the mill type of case. I am going to be going under the procedure again this weekend, and my family has super hopeful that the outcome will at least shed more light on the problem.

You are probably thinking, what have I been dealing with? Well, it seems randomly, that my small bowel stops working. This results in a pseudo blockage in the small bowel. With this, I get transported to the hospital, and I go through the emergency room. The steps normally follow the same path:

Pain medication (usually morphine or something in that neighborhood)
X-Rays/CT scans
NG Tube
Complete GI rest

Doesn’t that sound like fun? I will go ahead and answer that, NO. That is a resounding NO. Along with all of the pain and discomfort that comes with all of this. There are the hospital/doctor/procedure bills that continue to pile up. In the first two years, I paid out $20K+. I can confidently say that this has hampered my income for many years, and my personal growth has also been altered, due to this. Imagine if you had something wrong with your body that struck randomly, and there doesn’t seem to be any way you can figure out when it will strike. How do you plan a trip? How about a vacation? How about just to see some friends? It has made me reconsider just about every aspect of my life.

So why do I don’t have a lot of faith in the health care system? Well, there are several family members that have conditions like mine. If you look at them, they seem fine, but what you don’t know about them would shock you. I’m not going to mention names, for the fact I want to respect their privacy. My eldest brother, Chris (no he’s not sick), has probably a lot more stories that would make you think more about the state of the healthcare system. I will be writing a blog post about him very soon.

Financial Position:

While, I have explained some about the healthcare bills, I want to elaborate. There have been several incidents that have BLOWN my mind. Let me tell you about two situations that I was presented with. Forgive me, I do not remember the dates of when these things happened, I will tell you what I remember.

Situation #1: I went into the hospital with the typical vomiting and extreme amounts of pain in my stomach. I was in there a 4-5 days. At the same time, a family friends went into the hospital with blood sugar problems. She was in the hospital for 6-7 days, while they were getting her blood sugar under control. I had a set of X-Rays, CT Scan, and a NG Tube. When I got out and started getting the bills; I calculated it up to close to $3K. When she was released, her bill was less than $500 (splitting the difference from my memory and my pops). I had insurance, and she had no insurance. Why do I bring this up? Well, the most significant reason is the simple fact that I have been told to have insurance or your healthcare bills will bury you(in simplest terms). How does this happen when I had insurance and she didn’t? I’m going to leave that to you to figure out. I would LOVE for an explanation.

Situation #2: I went into the hospital again, with the typical symptoms. I was in there this time for 5-6 days. I don’t remember any of the bills that came in, but I am notorious about not handling my mail in a timely fashion. When I saw a notice from a collection agency come in; I started talking to them to get a payment plan setup. After a year or so passes, I call them back asking why they are pinging my credit every month. The response I got, was that when I make a payment, they ding my credit each time. Even though I was handling the collections payments, and was keeping up with all of my other bills, my credit score was continually dropping. Yes, I did stay below the 20% threshold on my single credit card. I then did an in-depth look at my credit report. Went line by line to look into it further. I found nothing that stood out that would have been making my score drop. At this point, I ask for some advice from friends and family, and they were not understanding how the score was dropping either. Once I deduced that the collections firm was causing my credit score to drop, that’s when I asked them about the ding’ing my credit.

In summary:

There are things that I could have done better with my finances, but who doesn’t look back once in a while and doesn’t think this.

Looking forward:

I hope to be able to keep up with writing blog posts about things that I think about a lot. I’ve been working on crypto trading pretty heavily since I have been watching the markets pretty steadily. I hope to share some good news for everyone to trade by. Of course, this will not be a get rich type of thing; instead, think of it some of the things I have seen that seem to work for me.