Adventures in Wally World

You 'n me both, sistah.

I'm sorry this is happening, Chai.

Dang. It sounds like you're being a first-class advocate, though -- a draining role, to be sure, but you're doing it really well. Great about the appt. tomorrow morning, hope you get some answers out of it.

What soz said.

First, everyone, thanks for your support.




You're right, most often they are good. I can name a few we've been to, or I know through my job, that are very very good.

But when you get a bad one....

When I came home and gave wally the information about how dickhead didn't refer us to ****, it was the first time I've ever seen any kind of negative response from him about this guy.

Looks like you've done all you can do for now, and you now have the ear of a neurologist.

While you are there, inquire about any local patient/family of patient advocacy services you can access to help you both deal with this.

Is it possible to inquire about a temporary medical power of attorney so you can get your husband the medical attention he needs from a different provider than his usual doctor, or to at least get a second opinion/evaluation of your husband?


Wally is very lucky to have you fighting so hard for his medical care, Chai. It isn't an easy task, especially when the patient is too ill to fight for themselves.

One thing I would suggest if you have not done so already, type out a history of all the recent episodes, treatments, appointments, exams, your observations, etc, and give it to the neurologist for insertion into Wally's medical file.

Catching up - not much more to say, but that I'm here listening, wishing I could help.

I really like this suggestion by Butrflynet especially as Wally's g.p. hasn't been taking things seriously.

???

To get a temporary medical power of attorney he'd have to be declared incompetent. He's not incompetent, he's just a man that like this physician that I don't like. He knows something is wrong with him, he's being a typical man. Yeah, he maybe doesn't move as fast as I would, but that doesn't make him incompetent. We talk, there's things I don't share here. Sure I was frustrated and venting about him, but he and I do communicate and he knows I'm telling him the truth. I think he just needed time to assimilate and accept. He's getting there.

Plus, do you know how long that takes? Forever.

Advocacy group? What in the world I they going to do for me that I can't do myself? I really don't need any touchy feely social workers encouraging me to emote and ****. I do that just fine. As far as getting things done, I'm the best advocate for both of us. I got us in the door within minutes of finding out we had been dumped. I'm very action oriented. I am getting a 2nd opinion, 9am tomorrow morning.

Great!

From the descriptions of him that I've read, it sounded like he was in a much more fragile state of heath. Glad to hear that is not the case, and that you are doing just fine without additional help to fight the system.

Hope you get some answers from the neurologist.

his health is fragile right now, in that we know there something wrong with him, but don't know what it is. His mind is fine, when he's not having these episodes.

Tonight he's really good. He's happy he's going too. Like I said he had to come to this point of accepting on his on.

I didn't mean to snap at you butr. your suggestion on domumention is great.

Neurologists are usually very efficient, and I keep my fingers crossed for you
that you'll find out what's wrong with your husband, Chai. It's very stressful
not knowing and not having a compassionate physician on your side.
Good luck for tomorrow!

That's good to know, about the efficiency.


oh....a co-worker told me, "you know who you need? Dr. House."

Yeah, House would take one look at Wally and say "The problem is obvious, he's got a squirrel up his ass. We can't remove it, but we can deprive it of protein so it will remain inactive most of the time."

Dr jaye Bellyea
Southwest Oaks Family medicine..

In seton emergency room off of 290 close to the Y .

if you dont have to lug a 75 lb box of records for Wally with you, and getting a second opinion / different doc is easy for you..

Call her.

I will definately broach that subject when the timing is right.

thanks girl

I picked her and stayed with her ever since my stroke.

She is meticulous, and very odd. but she was the ONLY doctor who listened to me and the only one who didnt smile and shake their heads at a 20 something claiming stroke.


hmm...

here is a thought. And completely up to you
but I have to see her soon anyway.
Wanna meet her? Off your insurance time? Lemme know.

following.
J

Ugh -- sounds like a drawn out ordeal from hell!

Pulling in a chair to help keep you company.

How's this morning going? JPB, is the seat next to you taken?

wow.

Now this guy was a doctor.

cj was right, he was very efficient.

Not only that, but took nothing at face value, and kept digging.

When Dr. N came in he asked Wally what brought him here. (he did know what the notes said about the confusion, unstable episodes.

Wally, said "ask her"

So the doc turned towards me, and I said directly to Wally, "We're not going to play that game."

Doc (to me) - Ok, what's going on here? (meaning the previous exchange)

Me - I have a lot of information to give you that he's not aware of, and anything you're going to ask him, he's going to tell you nothing is wrong.

Here's where the coolness began...

Dr. N turned to Wally and said "So, there's nothing wrong, and you're just here to make her happy, and stop her from gripping."

ding ding ding!!!

Wally: well....no....

Things went much better after that.

It was like Wally had to test the waters to see if he could "good 'ol boy" his way through these questions, like you know, the little woman worries.....

This guy got his number in an instant.

I won't bother to go through all the information you already know about.

It was wonderful how he wouldn't let Wally gloss over something, or change the subject. Honestly? I felt like I was listening to myself ask the questions.

Doc asked him where his pain was, and Wally, typical, said "all over"

All over? You mean your ankle knees, back, nose?

Yeah.

Well, tell me about this pain in your nose, when did it come about? How severe is it?

Wally actually reached up and touched his nose then. (snort)

Same thing when W. tried to turn answers into amusing anecdotes, the doc would just jump in and repeat the question.

That's exactly what I do, only he would get pissed at me, asking me how many times I was going to ask the same thing. I'll say "until you answer what I asked you."

Anyway, he of course still is going to get an EEG, but from everything we told him he does think it's seizure activity.

He left the room for a minute, came back in and said "Here's what we're going to do."

I mean, how decisive is that? Here's what we're going to DO.

He gave us samples of Lyrica, explained the dosages and said to me "I'm fairly confident I know what the problem is, and if I'm right, you should be seeing an improvement within 2 weeks. If there's no improvement, we'll go from there."

wow.

At some point after Wally had realized that this ain't no party, this ain't no disco, this ain't no foolin' around, I took a deep breath sitting there listening to the doctor, and realized "oh my god, I'm actually breathing again."

So, he starts the new medication tonight. We'll see.

That's encouraging.