Doctors Make You Sicker

I started my school year this year in the hospital. I wasn't broken. In fact, I wasn't even sick until the doctors got a hold of me.

It all started 5 years ago. I was having gallstones. I was new to the community where I was living and didn't have an established GP or anything, so I went to an Urgent Care and from there ended up with a referral for surgery. My laparoscopy removal of the gall bladder was a bomb. The doctor had to cut me open fully. My recovery was horrendous. I lost more than 30 pounds and was more than nine weeks before I could operate at any level that might be called normal. I had more pain and illness in the weeks following the surgery than I had from the gallstones.

So, there's the first doctors to cause me problems--quite literally, he left me sicker than he found me and it took additional doctors to cure me from his cure.

Flash ahead to about a year ago. I had to get an immunization. I don't even remember what. Just whatever was out of date. The nurse stuck herself with my needle, trying to stuff it into a sharps box that was already quite full. So, we both had to have blood work to make sure I hadn't given her AIDS or hepatitis or anything. No worries on those counts, but they did find that certain levels in my liver were weird. So, more testing, and eventual referral to a specialist who did, yep, you guessed it, more testing. This would be because the GP and the specialist didn't talk enough to get the right tests run before I got there. So, there's my second set of doctors to hate. Just flipping talk to each other and run *one* set of tests--I need my time and my blood more than you do.

Finally, nearly a year these blood tests, I am sent for additional testing--this time a liver biopsy (no, they don't think I have cancer, it's other less awful stuff). That night, I get *very* sick. In fact, I have a bacterial infection in my blood. I go to the emergency room, am kept all day with no real diagnosis, sent home, then called back, then incarcerated for four days while they fix an illness I wouldn't have had if they hadn't been trying to find out "what was wrong with me" when I was feeling perfectly healthy.

So, from here on out, I'm eating more apples. Doctors make me sick!