It usually is… A story of my own patient advocacy
So, here’s the thing, we all know that when we aren’t feeling well, and its a pain or sickness or something that persists for several days, or gets worse, that we should…probably, go see a Doctor, or go to the ER, or Urgent Care, or something of that nature right? Especially when it is something that you cannot fix yourself. So after about a 2 week span of pain I was experiencing getting worse, I decided it was time to follow my own advice.
I had an unexplained pain that began in my left lower back, flank area (around where you would think of your kidneys to be), it gradually was getting worse with intense sharp pains that would take my breath away, and ultimately would lead me to not be able to stand or walk for more than 5 minutes at a time. At the time that it started to get really bad I was traveling visiting family and going to concerts, and was using any kind of home remedy I could to keep the pain at bay. The pain started to travel into my ribs, over the other right side of my low back, and even to the front of my abdomen on the left.
After going through a grueling few weeks of travel with walking and concert going, and knowing I had to coach at a lacrosse tournament the following weekend, I decided its time for urgent care and an appointment with my primary doctor. The day after I got home from traveling, I could barely get through my patients that day without wincing in pain, and would later end up in the ER that night.
While at the ER, the Doc on duty, asked all the pertinent questions: did a blood test, urinalysis, and a CT scan, which all came back normal. He couldn’t explain why I was having such severe pain, because there were no masses, no tumors, no kidney stones, no infection, nothing. So I got sent home with nothing more than a pain killer that would put me to sleep and an armful of saline solution. His orders were to follow-up with my primary, which I already had an appointment with later that week if it got worse. It got worse.
So I went to my primary and saw the Nurse Practitioner that day for a regular wellness checkup and to talk about the pain I was having. Her response was that the ER did all the testing and if they didn’t find anything, then there must be nothing wrong, and then proceeded to tell me that I probably pulled a muscle or something.
To which I responded, “I am a Doctor of Physical Therapy, and I know what a strained muscle is and feels like, this is not that, what else can we do?”
To which she responded, “You must have lifted something heavy and don’t remember because you have a muscle spasm.”
My rebuttal was along the lines of, “Muscles spasms don’t get worse over time, and they don’t get more profuse, and they surely do not migrate from one spot to take over a whole side of your body. “
She didn’t say much after that, except that she could prescribe a muscle relaxer, and do more blood work. I left the office with less answers than I came in with, and a deep and true understanding of what patients that do not have degrees in medicine go through on the daily, and why ultimately they end up in my office.
Feeling angry, unheard, unacknowledged, and down right pissed, I went home to lay down and be done for the day. Only to get ready for the weekend which included a lacrosse tournament over 4 hours away that I would be coaching at.
While at the lacrosse tournament, I could barely stand, let alone actively coach like I normally would, and worse, in every picture of me you could see me clenching and pulling at my back and left side to try and find relief. Between games I found comfort in laying on the ground on a bag of ice with my feet propped up like I had just gotten done playing 45 minutes! The medication I was given didn’t ease the pain, the nurse practitioner told me to take 800mg of Aleve, that did absolutely nothing. It started to make me realize and understand why and how people get addicted to pain pills, because they are just trying to find some relief, even a minute or two where pain is not present in every thought and breath you have.
Once I got home from the tournament and the long drive, I scheduled an appointment with my chiropractic friend and my acupuncturist, because I knew if anything they would at least hear me out, and help me problem solve what was going on. At this point my thoughts on the matter were going everywhere from an ovarian cyst rupture, to a spinal mass that the CT missed. I had no other symptoms to note besides the pain: bowel and bladder was normal, no fever, no vomitting, slight nausea because the pain stopped me from eating or moving much, no dizziness, no other red flag signs. I got an adjustment, including a pubic adjustment which seemed to help a little bit, as well as a thoracic adjustment. Then I went to the acupuncturist, and we talked it all out.
I’m still not sure what exactly she did, besides that her theory was something was happening in my descending colon, or essentially at the left colic/splenic flexure, the junction or down turn from the transverse colon to the descending colon. She said that sometimes your large intestine gets twisted up from stress or other things, and even if you are pooing normally, not everything is getting absorbed like it should or its moving through your system to fast or to slow and getting caught up somewhere.
I was still a little skeptical on the colon issues, but what I was not skeptical about was how she at least had a sound theory, and that after getting a chiropractic adjustment and acupuncture that day I felt 85-90% better and could actually stand and walk for more than 5 minutes without pain. Today I am close to being back to my normal self. With that being said, I have changed up my diet a bit, changed how I have been handling stress, YES I do more yoga, meditation, and you guessed it journaling ;) Check out the Journals I use if you would like a copy.
I’ve learned in this painful experience, that patients deserve better advocacy. That not everyone understands their body, medicine, or how the two should interact, and that is why we need more health care workers that are willing to put in the time to listen, to be afforded that time by insurance companies and the people who pay them, and we need to dig into things that are out of the ordinary. If I didn’t know my body, and know about healthcare, who’s to say that something worse wouldn’t have happened like a bowel obstruction that lands me in surgery, or a spleen rupture or gallbladder removal. Do I think I’m out of the woods yet, no, but am I going to do more research on my own, absolutely. Because I want to be armed with information, and know what to ask for, and know what issues I could possibly have, so that I don’t get dismissed again. It’s not fun, and to all of my patients and to whomever has used America’s western medicine model, be an advocate for yourself, do research if you aren’t getting the answers you are looking for, and always, always get multiple opinions before making any major medical decisions!
