Going Against Conventional Medical Treatment

On March 7th, I saw a new doctor at a different wound center for my wound. I was switched to another antibiotic – Cubicin. The previous doctor put me on Rocephin after I had an allergic reaction to Vancomycin. The bug I have, Enterococcus, is resistant to Rocephin and my wound went downhill very rapidly. The doctor at Ohio Valley General Hospital Wound Care Center did not consult with an infectious disease doctor. I learned a very important wound care lesson – if you have an infection, make sure you have an infectious disease doctor involved. I now have an infectious disease doctor and am on the right antibiotic.

The bad news was that the wound is now down to the bone and I was told that without surgery, it would not heal. I am again faced with having surgery that I do not want to have. Regardless of whether I choose to have surgery or pass on surgery, it is not going to be an easy path.

I don’t expect anyone to understand my decision – in fact, most people who I have talked to really don’t understand, but I am not going to do surgery. Some people seem to think that because I am not going to do surgery that I am choosing death. That is far from the case. I am choosing life and I intend to put up one h*ll of a fight to keep mine!

No one else has walked in my shoes and have been thru the things that I have been thru to be able to understand my reasons. Although there are a bunch of things that have gone into that decision, the path I am going to choose to go down really boils down to two things: 1) I am going to pick the path that I believe that I have the best chance of surviving and 2) my quality of life both long-term and going down that road.

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Fact Versus Fiction in Medical Records

As a lot of you know, I have been dealing with a foot wound that keeps getting progressively worse. The most frustrating part of this for me is dealing with doctors and trying to get medical records straightened out. I have started to write a couple times about the things that have happened since I last wrote on March 5th – every time I start to write, I start to cry. I am going to save that stuff for another day!

I sent for my last set of records from the Ohio Valley General Hospital Wound Care Center. Even though they are the ones that changed my appointment in December, they closed my file and started me as a new patient, yet again. The envelope came the other day and I was afraid to open it. I opened it this morning and let’s just say, there is a reason some of us should not own guns! I am apparently “problematic” because I chose to get the mistakes from the October records corrected. I have a five page letter with corrections this time but thought I would share one big thing here.

When I was at the wound center on February 7th, the doctor gave me a script to get a PICC line inserted and start on Vancomycin. With Vancomycin, they measure the levels in your blood weekly and adjust it up or down depending on the levels in your blood.

This was in my records for February 28th:

This was the actual script that I was given on February 7th:

Hospital Nightmare and Escape!

I ended up in the hospital with an infected foot. Last Friday, I went to get some NPH insulin because I still didn’t have good Levemir. Novo Nordisk replaced the 2nd bad box with the same lot number and that was also bad. They wouldn’t ship it Friday because my area doesn’t have Saturday FedEx deliveries – it was going to be Tuesday until I could get it.

I don’t know if it was the NPH or something else, but I gained 3 pounds between Saturday and Sunday and another 5 pounds between Sunday and Monday – and no, I wasn’t snacking on Christmas cookies! I was really swollen and when I took the bandage off my foot Monday morning, my foot was getting red. I “thought” it was because my bandage being tight when my foot swelled up. I didn’t think it was infected because my blood sugar was doing really good (other than the bad Levemir and testing out NPH). I didn’t feel good but I thought that was from being exhausted – that was day 8 of taking insulin every 2 hours and I was really to drop over.

Tuesday morning when I went to get my shower, I took the dressing off and the red had spread so I knew it was infected. I called my mother to come and take me to the ER. We went to the local ER at Conemaugh Hospital. The doctor agreed it was most likely infected so he did some blood work. My SED rate and white blood cell count were both up and he wanted to admit me. I didn’t want to be admitted there because I go to the wound center at Ohio Valley General Hospital in Pittsburgh and since it was a wound related problem, wanted to go there. They were great in calling Pittsburgh to get me transferred there.

Medical Records: Very Angry Right Now

I sent for copies of my records from the wound center at Ohio Valley General Hospital and they came today. There were a bunch of mistakes in them, including stating that I was a Type 2 instead of Type 1 and had coronary artery disease (which I have never had) nor did I seek treatment for my wound (I have been writing about my visits to a wound care doctor since May 1st).   I am going to do a post in a couple days with all those but this one in particular has me fuming.

They had a given me a book with patient information in and when I was looking to see if they had a process to correct errors in your medical record, I came across this:

 

Specifically I am referring to number 21, “A patient has the right to an environment that preserves dignity and contributes to a positive self-image.”

The doctor that I saw on my 2nd visit there was Christopher Hajnosz, DPM. I didn’t particularly care for him but figured he was a temporary person that I needed to see to get my wound closed. When my records came, I was a little surprised to read this: