Before my ankle bones selfishly decided they needed some
time apart from my leg bones, we were talking about doctors and the crazy
things they do. (See “Don’t
Call It A Comeback). Let’s continue.
3. Sometimes
doctors just don’t know, and they actually admit it.
This was perhaps the most shocking revelation I had during
my cancer treatment. There
have been plenty of times in my life when doctors have been wrong. There have
also been times when a doctor has referred me to a specialist because he was
not sure. But what happens when
the specialist doesn’t have an answer? It was not until my adventures with
cancer that I heard a doctor actually say “I dunno.” And it didn’t just happen
the once.
A Trip Down Memory Pain
Let me take you back to last summer. As you may recall, I had the pleasure
of undergoing a double mastectomy.
Don’t believe what you hear, it’s actually quite unpleasant. During that procedure they placed
tissue expanders where I used to keep my breasts. Following the surgery my plastic surgeon would periodically
give me a fill, which is to inject the expanders with saline that would then
expand the aptly named expander, stretching the skin to prepare it for my
forever implants. It also made my
fake boobs look bigger.
I never wrote about this next part because…well I don’t know
why. It’s been a weird time for
me, so back off. For about two
months after the initial surgery everything seemed fine. Then it wasn’t. A lot of women experience some form of
infection following their surgery.
Most women do not go two months before presenting signs of infection. I knew something was wrong so we set
off to see Dr. B.
I could write several posts about my plastic surgeon Dr. B
(not to be confused with the fertility specialist Dr. B or my gynecologist, Dr.
B). I could tell you that in the
beginning, like a true youngest child, I worked very hard to make this stoic
medical professional crack a smile.
I could tell you that despite the fact that they are occasionally
painful and it’s a long drive, I actually look forward to our visits. I could also tell you that Jason and I
have developed both tremendous affection and trust for Dr. B, but that would be
awkward. I’m still in his care and
some folks in his office read this blog, so I’m just going to play it cool or
else it might make our next visit awkward.
As I was saying, I knew something was wrong, so we went to
see Dr. B. He agreed with my
amateur diagnostic skills and sent us to the hospital. I was a bit hungry and Jason needed
some potting soil, so on our way to the emergency room we stopped at the awesome
gardening place and the bagel shop. The good one, with the amazing rugelach. Don’t tell Dr. B.
Putting the Hospitality in Hospital
I don’t remember exactly what happened after that since my
memories of all of my emergency room visits have started to blend together. I assume I checked in, answered a bunch
of questions and got hooked up to an IV or something. I do remember one part of the registration interview that I
found amusing. We discussed my double mastectomy, which probably should have
appeared in the file she was looking at on her monitor, considering it had
taken place just a few floors above where we were sitting. The she asked what I hope is not a
standard intake question
Is there any discharge coming from your nipples?
First of all, that’s disgusting.
Ew.
No.
And thank
God.
More importantly, I don’t have any
nipples. Remember that double mastectomy we were discussing three minutes ago?
I do believe I actually lifted my shirt to demonstrate the
point, which she asked me not to do again because her office had a lot of
windows and no blinds.
What started as a casual stop by the hospital ended up being
a week at the Sibley Memorial Hospital Resort and Spa. Worst vacation ever.
Every night Jason would make the very long drive from his
office in Virginia to the hospital and we’d order room service. Sibley is the
rich people hospital in the DC area, so the food was actually pretty good. Then
we’d go for a walk outside, around one of the gardens. One time we saw a giant dead koi fish
in a pond. I’m sure if my
prognosis was worse I would have found that very depressing. Then we’d go back to my room and watch
TV or do lottery scratchers till it was time for Jason to go. I wasn’t in any discomfort, I just had a
thing that didn’t look right, which made it all the more frustrating that they
were keeping there just to give me antibiotics intravenously.
This was the week I met my first infectious disease
doctor. She would pop by
occasionally and tell me that I had an infection and it was definitely my
plastic surgeon’s fault. He must
have given me something during one of my fills. My plastic surgeon, on the
other hand, insisted there was no explanation for what was happening. He had never before seen a patient
develop an infection two months after surgery. I appreciated his honesty. (See Don’t Call It a Comeback Rule 1) I didn’t really care who was right and
who didn’t know, I just wanted to go home.
This is when I became a difficult patient. I tried to be nice. In fact I was one
of the nurses’ favorite patients.
That may have to do with the fact that I was the only person on my floor
who could use the bathroom on my own, but I like to think it was my sparkling
personality. I couldn’t
sleep so I wandered the floor at night and got to know lots of folks. I was even allowed to go down a few
floors by myself to hit the vending machines on nights when I remembered to ask
Jason for change.
What the hell was I talking about? Oh yeah, after a week of
pumping me full of antibiotics with no sign of change I became a difficult
patient. I’m not sure that they
let me go because of my convincing arguments or if they were tired of my new
unpleasant persona. They agreed so
long as I had a PIC line installed so I could continue my treatment at home. This is basically a travel IV. I could go home and Jason could give me
my injections of antibiotics. As
you can imagine, this was terrific fun for both of us.
Did I mention this was going on while we were doing our
fertility treatments? So almost
every day Jason and I were getting up, driving to Georgetown, having my blood
drawn followed by a vaginal ultrasound chaser, going home and having Jason
inject me with antibiotics twice a day.
Some days he was also injecting me with fertility meds. I think that part wasn’t so bad because
he got to stab me in the stomach, something he probably found quite cathartic
at that point.
I think we lasted less than two weeks with the PIC line
before I knew it wasn’t working.
What tipped me off was that one day, when we got home from the fertility
clinic, I realized I was absolutely freezing and could not find the strength to
get out of the car. The freezing
part was odd because it was in the 90s outside. We took my temperature and it was 103, a personal record. So we thought we’d give Dr. B a call.
He said he’d meet us at the hospital.
He was pretty sure it was time for some surgery, but it was going to
take a while to assemble a team because it was Labor Day.
If you’ve ever had a really high fever you know that it is
incredibly unpleasant. I was on
the verge of delirium and absolutely certain I was about to die. Now I’ve had a lot of people stab me
with needles so I’d gotten pretty good at taking it at this point and was not
expecting any surprises.
This woman took a look at me, writhing in pain, dripping
with sweat, holding hands with my boyfriend who is trying to offer me some
comfort, and she went for the dullest needle in the box. Maybe she stabbed it
into some wood a few times or had used it in a recent darts tournament. Maybe she even spun around a few times
to make herself dizzy. I’m pretty
sure she closed her eyes as she jabbed it into my arm, just for the extra
challenge bonus points in the sick sadistic nurses’ contest for worst ER nurse
ever.
Then, she took that needle in my arm which was nowhere near
a vein and wiggled it around inside me on the off chance she might strike oil. And, for some strange reason, I
screamed. I screamed the scream of
the righteous.
GET IT OUT OF ME!!!!!!
She removed the needle. I told her I thought it would be best if she were to
leave. She told me she needed to
try again and this time she promised “ to really look first.” In my opinion, if you’re about to stick
a sharp, or in this case dull, object into someone’s skin, you should ALWAYS
REALLY LOOK. I again encouraged
her to excuse herself from my room.
By then Dr. B had arrived and was questioning why anyone was
trying to put an IV in my arm when I already had a PIC line. A PIC line is an IV. From behind the curtain I repeatedly
heard him saying to nurses “Stop doing that, she has a PIC line! Why are you
doing that?” They explained they
were worried that the PIC line was the source of my infection. He politely pointed out that the
location of my infection was probably not the PIC line, but instead the giant
red breast giving off lava-like heat. I’m not a doctor, but I don’t think this situation was worthy
of Mystery Diagnosis. Perhaps they thought I was just storing the sun in my
shirt.
I suppose Dr. B lost the IV battle because when I woke up
from the surgery there was an IV in the back of my hand. No matter, because I was asleep when
they did it and when I woke I felt amazing. And not just because of the drugs. Sure, my left breast was completely deflated, but if being
lopsided meant no more fever, I was willing to live with it.
In Conclusion
Rather than putting in a new expander, my left breast was
left empty to heal. It looked a
bit like a very sad chicken cutlet, but I considered it an improvement over its
more recent impersonation of the Red Balloon, from the film The Red Balloon. We
stopped the fills on the expander in the right breast because I already looked
silly and uneven enough. Since I was not going to have radiation treatment, it
was not necessary to stretch the tissue before I began chemotherapy.
Dr. B gave us his best wishes and said he would see us again
when I was reaching the end of my chemo, which would be about three months down
the road. While I would not miss
the frequent schlep to his office, I admit I was going to miss the actual
visits with both him and his staff, who had become my friends at this
point. I also liked the free
chocolate and fancy bottles of water.
Little did I know that I’d be back in that fancy waiting
room sooner than any of us could have expected. Cue dramatic music.
Now the next part of the story is where we really get into
some serious I dunno territory, so stay tuned if that’s why you started reading
this one in the first place. Seriously though, is that really why any of you
started reading this, because you were desperate to hear a story about a doctor
admitting he didn’t know? I really hope not. If you did, I’m really sorry because I got way off
point. I mean there was some
discussion of him not knowing the cause of the infection, but that was a pretty
minor part of this post. Really,
I’m truly sorry for the misleading opening and title. I promise to make it up to you in the next post. I hope we’re still cool. I think with time we’ll be able to move
past this. Call me.
