It’s Winter in the ~Western part of the world, it’s hot as shit in December in Florida and I am n o t o k a y with that, and E.R. visits continue to suck. WELCOME TO LIFE WORLD! After a grueling process of trying to find where to report a medical professional — grand spoiler alert: there is technically no place to do this electronically — I managed to find a contact form, where I tried to submit the following*:
* Please note this was done while I was still very sick and out of it, and also on heavy pain medication; I did not realise how truly articulate I can be when I am sick and out of it, but damn dude. I will now pat myself on the back for that one, and also try hard not to laugh that I thought to save this shit upon it NOT working and promptly passed out right after, apparently knowing not-sick me would take care of it (she fucking did).
I would like to report a doctor that I was treated by, as well as a CPA. The doctor in question is either Jenny Lin or Jenny Lim, and I would like to report her on the following basis: verbal harassment, inaccurate physical treatment, as well as several instances of lack of medical procedure and protocol (i.e. urine sampling, blood testing, breath treatment, reflex test). A CPA, after retrieving me from laying down on the waiting room floor, then told me I could not “lay down or relax, this isn’t a hotel room”. She also kept telling me, “We’ll pump you with fluids and you’ll feel better”, even when I kept telling her that was not what I wanted. The doctor performed a physical assessment on my upper torso, but reprimanded me for a curse word I was not really cognitively aware I said. (I had my mother with me to help me communicate.) After that, she would not let me tell her when something hurt, instead looking at my face instead of listening to me. She ignored my insistence it wasn’t my normal stomach problems. (Again, without any testing.) Last but not least, the doctor asked me unprompted, “do you smoke marjuana?”, and when I told her yes, she then told me that was a leading cause of GI issues, which is scientifically false, as well incredibly inappropriate, given she also kept telling me, “E.R. doctors can only treat actual emergencies”.
There is so much to unpack here. It’s not the worst I’ve ever had — fuck, it’s ranked at 4 — but it was the one to make me breakdown, which hurts the most. I’m pretty fucking strong when it comes to being confronted about most things: I am easily corrected, I don’t get my feelings hurt easily, I am not prone to defending myself (particularly if I know I’ve done something wrong, or it looked like that from the other party). To be broken down by what I know is another run-of-the-mill emergency care doctor isn’t just heartbreaking for me, it’s also hard to get up from. I don’t, still to this very day, look down on emergency care workers, but I know which ones care and which ones don’t, and I seem to almost always come across the latter.
I rated her a 4, not because I don’t think the shit she said or did is okay, but because she immediately showed what a moron she truly is by that marijuana comment. Regardless of her tenure with her work, she’s not keeping up and/or reading about the things she goes out of her way to discuss, apparently, but she clearly is not keeping up with the basic ground work. Knowing what doctors think work for patients, and what the patients are telling these same doctors actually work, are to very different things that every single doctor should know.
She made me cry, yes. She continued the never-ending cycle of blaming the patient, yes. But she is so inept at something that is literally her career, and I’d take any night of my pain over being bad at something that I chose to do and made a career out of.