Home from the hospital

Today was rotten. I hated it. It sucked. But now I'm home and things are looking up.

To sum up: My expectations were not set correctly for this procedure, and it was a bigger deal than I thought it would be (wearing a hospital gown, being wheeled around in a bed, full medical history AGAIN, etc....I thought it would be more like getting a cavity filled....stupid me!). But the bad part is that the people (doctors) who treated me today treated me like a machine, were disrespectful to me, did not honor my request to explain what they were doing, and made the whole thing really frightening. I had a drape three inches from my face so I couldn't see anything, and several times (perhaps accidentally) they leaned their hands on my throat, making it difficult for me to breathe. When I said, "Your hands are on my throat - it's hard to breathe" they commented back words like "Oh." This happened multiple times. At some point, the doctor left (without speaking to me about it) and turned things over to an assistant. At one point he came back and asked her questions ("Did you remember to.....did you place this...." which made me feel like she was a total novice using my body for experimentation. Nobody ever asked me how I was (I was wide awake and fully coherent for all fo this), and it was horrible. At one point I started to be able to feel the procedure fully - think knives and needles - and they said "well I guess we'll give you more medicine." Oh, and to top it all off, I somehow got overmedicated and started seeing spots that looked like bugs running across the drape, which startled me to say the least, and when I said that they laughed and said it was no big deal. Yeah, well, it was a big deal to ME.

To top it all off my blood pressure fell in the middle of things, as did my pulse, and so I had to stay a couple of extra hours in recovery when I just wanted to LEAVE.

I am a person. I am a person with breast cancer. I am full of fears. I have to visit members of the medical establishment several times per week most weeks. I am at the beginning of a long road, and I know that. I need to feel cared for by the medical profession. I need to believe that they understand that I am a woman filled with hopes and dreams, that I am deserving of respect, that I feel both physical and emotional pain. I need them to understand that I can hear them when they talk about me five feet away from me, and that I do not appreciate being treated like I am not in the room. I need to believe that the next year and a half of treatment will be full of compassion, and the idea that I could be treated like this again makes me weep.

And that is my downer of a day.
Kristina

PS Something good about today.... I had told Ryan that today was "no big deal" and not to come. He used what he called his "husband radar" and left work mid-day and arrived shortly after I'd been wheeled into recovery. I cried the second he walked in the room....I needed him, and there he was, like magic. My husband is a VERY good man.

PPS - editing to add this - I LOVE my "real" docs at Swedish - my surgeon, Dr. Dawson, is amazing, and I already feel a strong connection to my oncologist, Dr. Rinn. Today was with a "random" doctor that I'd never met before, and I will probably not meet anyone from his team again until it's time to remove the port. Swedish is fabulous in general, but this is one bad experience. Dr. Dawson has asked me to put it in writing so that she can share it "with the appropriate individuals" and I think that they will get a good talking to. Their behavior was unacceptable, and Dr. D agrees with that. Monday's surgery is with Dr. Dawson, and I feel very safe in her hands.