WHAT!?!
So let me back up a bit for those of you who don't know Matt or don't know this about him. His back is pretty jacked up. He's 32 years old & feels at least twice that. See, he was rear-ended three times in the span of about a year and a half (I was there for one of them when I was 23 weeks pregnant with Natalie. Good times.), and his back was damaged so repeatedly that despite everything he does he's never quite been able to heal. He's been to orthopedists, chiropractors, various physical therapists... you name it. We had one PT in KC who was pretty great (we love Drew!), but once we moved away he went downhill pretty fast. And let's face it. He's stubborn as hell and has this "I can do it" attitude and doesn't recognize his limits sometimes. Fixing up this house hasn't helped.
So anyway, I digress. So this happens on Wednesday morning, while he's watching all three kids and I'm at work helpless. I tell him to call his doctors office & see what they think & get back to me. He does and sends me a quick text a few minutes later "heading your way. Call you when I get there." Ok cool. So his doctor thought it sounded serious enough that he needed the big hospital where they have facilities to do maybe an MRI and have specialists who can treat him. He gets to my hospital just as I'm about to send my patient for a procedure, so I had perfect timing to go see him and make sure he's okay. Or so I thought. I get down to the ED just 15 minutes after he told me he arrived. Just 15 minutes! And he was already walking out the door.
Oh my freaking God! Are you kidding me?
He says the doctor barely even looked at him. Told him to take three flexeril and lay down for three days (What!). He came in telling them he had a 10 out of 10 pain rating and no one even so much as offered him a tylenol! The doctor gave him a script for naproxen (aleve) and when Matt said that doesn't help him he just said "well then I don't know what to tell you." What!?! I was LIVID. And at that point there was nothing I could do to help. I just had to watch him walk out the door (unable to even stand up straight) with my three kids in tow so I could go back to work. Words cannot express how angry I was at how he was (not) treated.
So that night & the next day he loaded up with advil, ultram, & flexeril to bring his pain level from a 10 to about an 8. I insisted he call the dr again & go in to see her. Thank God for the nurse practitioner!! :) I do love nurse practitioners. They seem to take the time to listen so much more than doctors are ever able to do.
Anyway, she was pretty certain that he herniated a disk & she gave him this suped-up attack plan to finally help him actually diagnose & heal his back! Yay! Steroids for a week, x-ray, appointments for a spine specialists (& subsequent MRI with them), and a highly recommended physical therapist. Yay! She was going to prescribe some pain meds for the night before he started the steroids, but thought the advil/ultram/flexeril concoction would work just as well. Ok. Cool. That night (Thursday) we went to a party with my work friends & he did pretty well on all of that. Except we forgot one thing.
Steroids don't work for two to three days. And you can't take advil or ultram while on them.
CRAP!
I have never seen this man so miserable. It was torture just to watch him. And the NP was out of the office on Friday and the nurse that took his call didn't do a damn thing to help him either. So he had to suffer until yesterday when he finally started to notice some improvement.
I am so incredibly sick of how horribly my husband has been treated. For years really. His doctor in KC treated him like a drug seeker and only doled out a few ultram a month after numerous calls for refills. (Ultram! It's seriously no stronger than advil and that's the strongest thing he's ever taken!) And the ED too! I know Mathew is a pretty stoic guy. I can take one look at him and know he's in unbelievable pain, but to someone who doesn't know him he may not look that bad on a day to day basis. He's not the guy to scream in pain. He'll carry on a conversation. But with this it was obvious how badly he was hurting, and it makes me so sad and angry that our society has switched from helping those who hurt with the ungodly amounts of resources we have at our fingertips, to immediately assuming a person is a drug addict if they ask for pain relief. It's horrible! And I can't tell you how hard it is to be a nurse, a person who's job it is to relieve pain & suffering to the best of my ability, and come home & look at the man I love more than anything in this world & not be able to help him.
So anyway, I'm impressed if you made it this far in my little rant. He's doing a little better for now. Needless to say I have no idea what kind of damper this puts on our timeline for fixing the house, but that's not a priority right now. We'll deal with that as it comes. PT appointments are for tomorrow. Say some prayers that we can finally make him better!
