What Does It Matter?
A new day another appointment to keep and sometimes I wonder why. What does it amount to in the end? Insurance card shown, medication in a bag they tell you to bring but never look at. The same questions, height weight, vitals taken all just numbers they compare to the standard. What if you have always been outside the standard? Test results highlighted as abnormal but yet nothing to be concerned about because concern has its own chart to be measured by.
I learned long ago to listen to my body and what it was telling me. I pay attention to dreams, especially the reoccurring ones. There`s a hidden warning a clue to help, if you`re listening. If you believe in such things.
Last night’s dream slightly different but the message was still the same. CAUTION AHEAD
The Dream
The vehicle an old, tattered RV given to me by someone unknown. I know this without question. I was gifted the RV. The awning attached to the RV, used to shade had seen better days, and I was in the countryside in mountain territory. The blacktop where I was parked was greyish white cracked from years of the hot sun and cold winters where the salt laid down for traction had seeped into its crevasses with the spring rain further drying its skin.
The vehicle represents me, and I know this from years of interpretation of my dreams. I am the driver and my first clue that I determine what direction I take. There are repair men redoing the bathroom in this RV and with that the knowledge I must seek a facility in the building I am parked next to, to relieve myself. A two-story brick building, old and nostalgic becomes the obvious choice.
On my return I see only the back of someone ridding off on a stand-up personal scooter with a handle, a segway I believe it`s called. As I approach the RV on my return the owner of the lot questions me. “Why weren`t you here?” he demands. I am befuddled at the question and point out I needed to use the restroom.
Then once again the scene changes and I am somewhere with a doctor hovered over me with his hand on my chest. The room is dim as I look into his eyes. Nothing is said, he just looks at me and then I awake. End Of Dream
What does it all mean? This my third dream of a doctor with his hand on my chest. My fourth or fifth of being in a hospital setting.
I saw the cardiologist Monday. I like this doctor, and she is the one who did my heart Cath four years ago. I ask my questions; she looks at the reports of my hospital stay. She doesn`t feel there is any correlation between me losing my faculties and my heart. She suggests I follow up with a gastrologist and my neurologist, yet this does not reassure me. I question the abnormal markers I read in my reports and am told that things look fine and to see her in six months.
I spent yesterday frustrated and worked that frustration off by once again rearranging my living room. The flow of the living room was not easy for my brother to maneuver since I changed the layout at Christmas. I figured I`d kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. I`d make it easier for him to move around and push myself and my heart to speak now or give me some reassurance, metaphorically speaking.
It took me all day, and I rested frequently but the adrenalin from being so frustrated drove my determination. I fell asleep in the loveseat while as I sat and took in the new view.
The complexity of my condition I believe warrants a different chart of comparison. Not that I want there to be a problem, no not at all. Like I have said before, I have other underlying factors that when researched all say to be closely monitored. Then to add the symptoms I have been experiencing and either rationalizing or excusing over the last six to eight months, cause me to question my care and my sanity.
I`ve been through this before. When I had my first bilateral pulmonary embolism, I had dreamt my heart stopped beating. I literally saw my heart stop in the dream. I woke up and told my oldest to take me to the hospital. My vitals were all normal, but I was in pain and had trouble taking in a deep breath. I was filled with dread that did not come from my brain but from the center of my chest. I was thirty-four years old.
When I was 19, I was working 52 hours a week supporting myself and my daughter who was 3. The fatigue I felt was debilitating but I went to work every day despite how I felt. This went on for quite a while before I went and saw Dr. Poirer about my concerns. He sent me for blood work and when he received the results, I received an urgent call to come in and see him immediately.
He wanted me to be admit me to the hospital for a month. Nope, I told him I couldn`t afford that and who would care for my daughter.
“How are you working forty-hours a week”, he asked.
I laughed and told him it`s fifty-two hours I work in a week. He put me off of work on disability for a month and allowed me to stay home with a warning.
“If you do not rest, I will admit you, understand.” I had Epstein-Barr virus with exceedingly high numbers.
My good friends came over and placed my mattress in the living room on the floor. There I could be resting while my daughter played next to me and watched TV. Thank God she was such a good child. I shudder to think what would have happened if she would have been more inquisitive. It took three weeks of complete bed rest and crawling to the bathroom before I was able to slowly stand and walk. I went back to work when the month was over. I stressed to the doctor I could not afford to be out any longer.
The point I guess I am making is I have pushed myself and pushed through symptoms for years. I have been labeled by different doctors with anxiety when they brushed off concerns I have. Told to not over think, told to try harder. Only to find out, I was right to search for answers. I had to push/demand more when the precursors where a warning I heard but they ignored.
Dr. Poire didn`t ignore my concerns and that is why I loved him as a doctor. He knew me, my work ethic and who I was as a person not just a patient. Maybe that is another message? I dreamt of him for the first time ever two weeks or so ago.
Something is being overlooked, and it has to do with my chest. That is how I feel given all that has been happening and combining that with my dreams, tells me I need to heed the warning I have been given.
If you are a doctor reading my post, what would be your take on all I have said?
As a woman seeing predominately male doctors I feel, and it is just my opinion, that women are more likely to be labeled with anxiety or as hypochondriacs when seeking medical care. Frankly it pisses me off. That flippant diagnosis of anxiety follows you when placed in your medical chart. This I feel gives way for the next encounter with a medical emergency to be dismissed and overlooked.
The doctors convinced me to stay and be admitted this past hospital visit. They said I did the right thing, and my condition warranted my admission to the hospital. Why would you then place anxiety in my chart? Did they not understand that anxiety was from the symptoms not the symptoms from anxiety. I`ve longed worked out the difference and how to deal with anxious feelings.
My message- Believe in yourself and what your body is telling you. Advocate for yourself and the care you receive. Stress to the doctors that you want to be knowledgeable about what is going on, what they think might be going on and that you want to be a part of the decision making with the course of action they will be taking. You have the right to refuse medication and or treatment you don`t agree with or have not been explained.
Please understand I am not running the medical field down in any shape way or form. It is like anything else in my opinion. Not all mechanics are the same and neither are doctors who have spent years and years seeing the everyday that they are nearsighted when it comes to spotting the rarity when it presents to them.
That is my dilemma today. My appointment is with the physician’s assistant scheduled by the hospital upon my discharge. My primary doctor is like Dr. Poirer, he listens and takes the time to explain. I trust him and wish it were him I was seeing today.
What have been your experiences?
✨Be the Light