Letter to an ER doctor

To whom it DOES Concern,

I was in your ER department on Friday. I was in pain again. This was my 2nd visit to your ER. I will not go back to your ER because you do not get what I am going through. You do not care!

I am in pain. Yes I have fibromyalgia. Yes I am in pain almost 24/7. But I know when it is a new pain. I know my body much better than you ever will. This pain is not my "normal" and it is not chronic. It came on suddenly and will not let up. My primary doctor sent me to you because they don't have the equipment to run the tests that you can.

When you first walked in to my room, I thought you may be different. By the end of the examination, I knew you weren't. I showed you where the pain is and I told you how it radiates. You poked me and I winced. You got so close to the area that I thought you were going to lick my breast. I was mortified by this alone.

I am a woman. I have very large breasts. No one has to tell me this. You were not gentle. You were not respectful.  You took my left breast in your hands and squashed it and then asked if it hurt. NO SHIT SHERLOCK, it hurt. Your version of a mammogram was painful to my body and to my dignity. However, that is not where the pain is. It is under my ribs. I apparently cannot put it in to the proper words to describe it to you.

What I should have done was to get up and walk out right then. Instead I listened to you all but called me a liar when I told you that my two incidents of Shingles were on opposite sides of my body. Yes I know this is very odd. But two doctors in WI cannot be wrong. I know Shingles pain… this isn't it.

You decided after poking my stomach in only two spots to send me down for a CT scan. Though you said numerous times, "It's nothing. Nothing is going to show up. I know it. This isn't your stomach." I know it's not my stomach. It's something under my ribs. I don't have the degree… you do.  You told me that you'd give me something for the nausea and for the pain. That was at around 3. I was taken down for the CT and came back. No meds were given to me at all.

At 5:55 the nurse came in and told me I was being discharged. You hadn't come back in and she had no answers for me. I asked why I hadn't been given the pain meds that you said I'd get. The nurse pulled the IV out and asked if I'd asked for anything. I was crying while You, Mr. DR, examined me. You said you'd give me something. Instead I sat there in that room with pain stabbing through my chest. I was scared and you did nothing for me. The old man in the room next to me got pain meds moments after you said he'd have them.

Finally, you came in and told me "as I thought, there's nothing there. It’s on your skin. You need to ask your PCP for Trazadone for your chronic pain."  To which I replied "I’m already ON IT!" More proof that you didn't look any further at my records.

And then I just shut my mouth because once again I knew no one believed me. Hell I don't even think my own parents believe there's anything wrong with me. Thanks for reinforcing that in their minds. 

Once again I was made to feel like my pain is not real. Believe me if I wasn't in pain my BP wouldn't be high. My chest wouldn't hurt like someone is taking an ice pick and shoving it in to me. I wouldn't get sharp blinding headaches when I lay down. I wouldn't feel like I've run a marathon after walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night.

I didn't fill the prescription for the pain meds you gave me or the Lidocaine patches, nor the nausea meds. One- I'm allergic to VICODIN. I told you that but you still wrote it out for Percocet at the same level as the Vicodin that I'm allergic to.  As for the Lidocaine, it's not going to help. This pain isn't on my skin. You said there's a rash under my breast… that's called heat rash from sweating so much because of the pain. The same "rash" was under my other breast and it didn't hurt when you touched it. More proof that you weren't thinking it through. And I'm already on the same nausea med you wrote it out for.

The nurse didn't like that I got upset that I wasn't being listened to. Her answer was "it's not life threatening" and that's all the ER is for. Believe me, I know that. You're also there to make sure that the patient feels better upon leaving. I didn't. I felt worse.

You failed me. You failed seeing me as a patient. You saw me as a pain pill popper, as someone who is in your ER for attention. If you had asked a few more questions you would have learnt I don't like pain pills. I don't want to be on them. I want an answer as to why I have pain in the left side of my chest that radiates in to my left arm and into my left jaw at times. Instead I left your ER humiliated because once again I'm left in pain with no answers as to why this pain is happening. As to why my pulse rate goes up while I'm sitting still. My pulse shouldn't be 120 while sitting still. My pulse shouldn't jump up to 145 while I'm working on my laptop and my BP sure as hell shouldn't hit 176/118 for no fucking reason.

Once again, I'm left with telling everyone "I'm fine" when that's just a lie. I want to scream and cry over how much I hurt. I want to curl up and die from the pain. But I'll put a smile on and act like there's nothing wrong. Fighting doctors like you and all the others who think this is in my head is more distressing than I can handle right now. I need to save my energy for faking it, which means there is nothing left to fight people who don’t believe me.

Thanks for nothing….