Counting Blessings...

I have had an interesting week... in my day job I am the physician and the healer, the one who spends my days listening to the woes and ills of others, and I must say its a job I love. Yes, I have spent a lot of time in the last few weeks to months tell you all what is wrong with medicine and our country in general and I still stand by those assessments, but after a week of being a patient and a participant in the health care system, I have had a chance to see what is right in the health care in this country. I know many patients are jaded and feel that doctors and nurses only come to work for the pay, but in my work and in the care that I have received this week, I would have to disagree. I started my week with emergency surgery for an ovarian cyst, ad while I understood all the technical jargon being discussed by myself and my GYN doctor my husband does not. He faced the day, called in from his work selling bulls, setting up feeders, and checking fences to a phone call from his wife crying in pain saying come and get me. His day ended up watching me get wheeled of to the Operating Room. I signed forms and explained away this test or that and even though I was in pain I still found myself translating what was going on and what was going to happen next to him and therefore to the rest of my family. My ability to translate the many steps in getting from the doctors office to the operating room was very helpful in keeping my family calm and its not that the nurses or my doctor were not trying to explain it. its just there is such a gap between what the average person understands about medicine and what we in medicine actually explain to patients.
We need a test and we order it. How many times do a patient or their families actually understand why we are doing it? I mean think about it, Medical Doctors spend 8 years learning to practice our craft, and we try to explain it to patients who can have very limited education in a matter of minutes sometimes over issues that are important as life and death. This issue is at the very heart of why so much money is spent on patients at the end of their lives. Family's that don't understand wanting to save elderly family members with illnesses that may not be explained very well by doctors that may not be comfortable explaining death and dying anyway, and whammo you get lots of test on an older population. And, no, I disagree with how the President and Congress choose to handle this particular issue of health care reform. I don't feel that a medical board sitting off somewhere can ever decide what is best for my patients. people sitting off somewhere are a big problem from medicine now - no insurance administrator can ever read a chart and know what I know about my patients no matter how good I document. All this medical supervisory board will do is limit how much care elderly patients get. Now we have a stick limiting care for patients, instead of doctors educating patients and families as to why extra testing in a dying patient may not help the patent's care.
But back to my week, after surgery I ended up with a bowel illeus (stopped working - really bad nausea and vomiting) and another 24 hour stay in the hospital. This time was an overnight stay with XRAYs, labs, and the whole nine yards. Anyway, I am home now and feeling better. food still taste a bit off, but I have gained more respect for the fear that my patients must have at facing the unknown I call medicine. What to me is just a day's work is to most of them scary and unknown with lots of long words and painful test that despite our best attempts may never be understood... So I hope that this week has taught me more patience for my patients, more peace for myself, and more time to count all my blessings.