Sitting in that hospital, spending time with my Father post-heart surgery, I started to wonder about all the other times I had found myself in a hospital. I was four years old and had to have stitches because my Grandfather’s dog had bitten me across the face. It was 1975 and whether or not it was a horrific experience I cannot recall, I only know what I do from the stories my mother tells me of the event. I am sorry that my Grandfather felt the need to put the dog down even though it was just an accident. My fingers got caught in a matt in its fur and the dog instinctively turned and snapped out of pain. I can’t even see the scar unless I contort my mouth and nose into the most unnatural position and turn just right in the light of the bathroom mirror. Apparently it had taken two doctors and three nurses to hold me down – they did not have the same medical knowledge back then as they do now. I could have had an even less notable scar and probably been much less traumatized if they had known just a little more about anesthesia and its safety in children.
A broken collar bone when I was twelve brought me back to the hospital, which I had so luckily avoided other than the basic check-ups. I wore a brace for a couple of months, which embarrassingly pushed out my still non-existing breasts during the course of my seventh grade year. It took me a while to get over that one, but had there been reality TV back then, and a less embarrassing way of healing my injury, I may have had more of a laugh over my predicament. I thought then, even in my twelve year old mind, that the world of medical healing was amazing, even if it there techniques were embarrassing. I would learn so much more about how quickly this science evolved with the birth of my children.
The birth of my first son in 1989 was a major mile stone in my life and my first real overnight stay in a hospital. The doctor did not ask me any questions about my ‘birth plan’. They were practically unheard of back then. An episiotomy that I never asked for, and did not know I would be getting, a few drugs, and some major pushing and I held in my arms my first true lesson in personal, true, unconditional love. The nurses did not ask me much about what I wanted. I must have frustrated them with all my calls, requesting that my baby be brought to my room. I even fell asleep with him lying next to me in the bed, my arms protectively around him, only to be woken up with a few quick admonishments about how such behavior was extremely dangerous and my baby being whisked away again to the nursery. I could not wait the week it took for them to allow me to leave the maternity ward, so I could get down to the business of loving my child without the interference.
1995 and 1996, two more son’s thirteen months apart meant two more trips to the hospital in an otherwise uneventful life in the way of ‘sanitary’, clean, white environments. I had birth plans for both of them and things went a lot more smoothly. Modern medicine did not dictate episiotomies and I was in more control over how things unfolded during the birthing process. I did not have to get sick with each contraction – they now had good medicine for that that didn’t leave me feeling groggy. My babies were not rushed off to some foreign room to be checked out while I impatiently waited to hear the results. They were laid upon my stomach, checked right there in my room, and then I was able to hold them for some special ‘bonding’ time. What a difference five years could make in just the birthing process and how doctors viewed their role in it.
It took them a year and a half, and multiple trips to the hospital, to diagnose my Crohn’s Disease. I had been told everything from “ You just need to get some more exercise” to “Worst case scenario is colon cancer” before my final diagnosis came through. It was amazing to me how little was known about this disease, how little is still known about it. After all the medications they had suggested failed to bring me into remission they pulled out their biggest and best weapon – Prednisone. I went home, did my research, and refused the treatment. Instead I took matters into my own hands and got myself into remission through alternative medicines and changes in diet. I often found myself educating my Gastroenterologist. I did not fault the medical community for this, rather I found peace in the fact that they were even able to diagnose me in just a year and a half, something I was told would not have happened years ago. What I did find interesting was that I was able to manage my own healthcare – I told the doctors which medicines I did and did not want to take and they listened. They had somehow come to the realization over the years that they did not have every answer and sometimes, when you have a patient willing to do so, it was best to let the patient ‘heal thyself’.
A forth pregnancy and my Crohn’s out of remission meant many trips to the hospital in 2004. Six blood transfusions saved both my life and my daughters and the tests they ran, that had not been available years before, ensured our safety. For this birthing I had multiple options. If it weren’t for the Crohn’s complications I would not have even had to go to the hospital at all. Even in the hospital I found multiple offers to take advantage of; massage therapy, my own chosen music in the room, the availability of a tub so that I could birth my baby under water, and even given my complications – less medication and less intrusions than my previous birthing processes. The whole time I found it odd that for all of the medical advancements we were somehow regressing back to the basics in births, with a lot less doctor intervention and a more natural approach to the entire thing. If this had only been available back in 1989 how different things would have been!
Here I am now, in 2009, and they are preparing to discharge my father from the hospital only seven days after open heart, quadruple bypass surgery. Years ago this surgery was not even available. Hell, six months ago the previous surgeon refused to do the surgery, but now here we are, the surgery is done, and my father is deemed “young” enough not to need physical therapy because he’s progressing through his healing so nicely. Medical science still has a way to go I’m sure, but at this rate who knows what the next twenty years will bring us in the way of miracles? I just hope those miracles of better medicines and surgeries find their balance with giving a patient the power to heal themselves and have control over their own medical process, just like I witnessed in my experience with the births of my children. And I would hope that more patients find it within themselves to take charge of their own situations, and be allowed to do so, as I did with my Crohn’s Disease and my father did with his heart.
This is neat.
ReplyDeleteWhat I'm always afraid of with this assignment is that people will misread the instructions and write an autobiography or will simply import a few quick cultural references.
You've done something completely different and original which is to filter yourself and your medical experience through the medical changes over the not-so-many years you've experienced.
And you've done more than give us facts. The strand of the writing which pushes a worldview and an approach to health and healing is nicely supported by the examples--but not overstated or preachy.