Wound Care Center

[monkey5s]

What an awful experience! I will try to take the high road for a change, and say that maybe the doctor I saw is really a good person, kind to his family, a good boss to the office nurses, etc. Perhaps the only thing he lacks is effective patient interaction skills, despite his telling me, at FOUR DIFFERENT TIMES, that he's been doing this work for 15 years.

1. His insistence that he's seen my case history "at least 60-70 times per week for the fifteen years I've been doing this" seems slightly unrealistic- because there are WAY more kinds of wounds than what I brought in.

2. He kept repeating himself over and over, while he stared at me, as if he was expecting me to give some response that I did not understand. I mean, he never prompted me about anything, and I had no idea what he was waiting for.

3. It also did not help my impression of him that he told me repeatedly, emphatically, and in great detail that the pain I felt at times with the wound was physically not possible, never would happen, clearly just nerves oversensitive, absolutely nothing whatsoever could ever be done to change it, with a heavy implication that I should just stop whining.

4. And I have no idea why he was so bent out of shape over the fact that I did not want to take a diuretic, because my incontinence is bad enough without it (and I already have problems with muscle cramps from mild dehydration at times). But, he told me more than once that my wound would never heal because of my refusal.

5. However, the edema has absolutely no bearing whatsoever on how I ended up with the wound, and having the varicose veins ablated would have no impact on the peripheral artery condition that was the actual cause of the wound. I am proud of myself for refraining from asking him to explain this conundrum.

So they put my lower leg into a "boot" (heavy wrap from toes to just below knee of cast padding covered by elastic bandage for extreme compression), told me to try to endure it, but if I couldn't take it by tomorrow morning to call them, and remember that the pain was just oversensitive nerves, and hopefully I would be able to stick with it until I go back to see the nurse Monday to get it off and rewrapped tighter after it has done its work for three days. Then I see the horrible doctor again on Thursday. He's already told me that it will take MONTHS of wearing the boot nonstop in order to possibly heal the sore, but remember, it probably WON'T WORK because I refuse to take the diuretic.

I can tell you this- the pressure of the compression wrap on the sore is really miserable, but it's nothing compared to the shifting of the wrap over the sore as I move. And getting up the three steps from the ground into the house was insanely horrible. SO GLAD IT'S NOT REAL PAIN, RIGHT?

As an added bonus, he pretty much called my family practitioner, AND the venous specialist I saw, incompetent boobs who were too stupid to correctly diagnose anything.

Comments

[readinggeek451]

Oh, god, you got one of *those* doctors. I bet if you were a man, he'd believe in the pain. I take it there's no chance of getting someone else?

My most sincere sympathies and hopes for quick healing. When it does heal (and that's when, not if!), rub his nose in the fact that he told him it wouldn't.

[monkey5s]

I have no idea if he'd believe a man about the pain, but he would definitely prefer to treat men, based on what little I overheard of him interacting with the male patient in the room across the corridor when I was leaving.

I am willing to see what happens for this first week with its two more appointments- at least the first one I only see nurses, so that's a blessing. If this does look like longer term, I might ask about a different doctor, but I don't know if that is possible.

WHEN it heals, I will not only not rub his nose in it, I will take great pleasure in never seeing his obnoxious face ever again. He is welcome to be just the best asshole he wants to be, I simply do not care to spend ANY more time in his odious company than I must.

[lavendertook]

Oh, I'm so sorry! I wish you could have another doctor--is there an option? Damn, damn, damn. *hugs*

[monkey5s]

Thanks, I am not sure that another doctor is an option. There was certainly no other doctor there when I was there- and my 2:30 appointment, while I was taken back to the room promptly (by a person whose only job appeared to be 'get the to a room and tell them to sit down and wait for the nurse to come take their vitals'), required visits from three different people (one to take the vitals, one to go through a computer-based case history questionnaire that took at least 20 minutes on its own and required her to take my picture and then go out and find someone to explain how to attach the picture to my file in their NEW SYSTEM, and I don't even recall what that third person was doing, asking me about something) before he came in, and his visit took over half an hour (though he could have shortened it by a good 10-15 minutes if he'd stopped repeating himself), followed by yet a different person showing up to do the wrap.

So they took me back promptly at 2:30, but I didn't get to leave until almost 5:30. And this is why I am so concerned about the cost of this Wound Care Center- there were a LOT of staff compared to number of patients.