Well, I was so right about the ER. And what a complete waste of my day. I was there from about 10:30am until after midnight!!! (a little after 12:30 at night) I waited 6 hours in the waiting room to go back to a room. Then the doctor was incredibly rude. She told me having these types of pains during early pregnancy did not warrant an emergency why did I deem it necessary to go to the ER for that type of problem?
She says she'll do HCG testing, hormone testing etc. but then lectures me on they did not do any hormone testing as that is not considered an emergency...if I"m bleeding fine that's an emergency and they will check hcg and do a sono to check for ectopic pregnancy etc. but what I am suffering from apparently is not an emergency according to her. She tells me I should have called my doctor 3-4 days ago if I thought this was something that needed to be checked out. I told her AGAIN for the 2nd time how I did make appts and how they kept changing them on me and finally I decided I should go to the ER and quit fooling around with this when I'm having such pain as I'm afraid I'll loose the baby again. She says to me..."Well, with out insurance what do you expect? Exactly what kind of treatment do you think you deserve?" So because I do not have insurance right now I deserve to loose my baby according to her. Isn't that how you would take those statements made by her?
They did decide to go ahead and do a sono though they were hesitant with me being only 5 weeks (just like I knew they would be). Well, I get done with all of that, the blood work, the sono and I"m waiting an hour, two hours, three hours for the doctor to come and discuss the results with me. Nurses keep poking their heads in telling me they will go get her and make her come discuss the results but she never comes. Finally one nurse tells me to dress that she will go get her and make her come talk to me. I get dress and wait 30 mins, 45 mins almost an hour and finally I go off to find her myself.
At this point it is after 11pm...I've been there since 10:30 in the morning!!! Needless to say, my patience had been really good, I was trying to be understanding, but by that pt it was worn quite thin. She still does not come to my room. So finally a different nurse comes into us and she says that she is going to go get the doctor because it is just ridiculous how I have been made to wait...she says the doc has me listed as discharged and she doesn't understand why when she hasn't spoken to me yet about any of the results.
This nurse goes off and apparently gets the job done. So in comes the doctor....and she barks at me... "WHAT is the problem?" I was so taken aback....I said...well no real problem except no one has bothered to let me know the results of the testing and I'm not leaving with out the results. She says....What testing? I'm like...well, the sonogram, the blood tests like the hormone testing...
She rolls her eyes and tells me...."It's all written in your folder any nurse could have told you the results. I don't have time to come in here discussing this with you when you are only 5 weeks along...what do you want me to say to you? You need to go see an ob/gyn. Everything looks fine from what we can see. Baby placed fine and your hcg levels are fine, so what do you want?" I told her that no one had told me any results and I was just waiting for the results and they (the nurses) all thought she being the doctor should come talk to me. She tells me that I basically wasted the ER's staff time coming in with such a complaint and asks me why I did not just go to a ob/gyn instead of the ER. I had already told the triage nurse, my nurse and her, the doctor twice now, about the type of health care I was having to use right now until I get my insurance.
She says to me that with out me bothering, yes bothering like I don't want insurance, to get insurance and not using a primary ob/gyn that's just what I get and I should not expect or ask for any better care she proceeds to tell me if I loose this baby then it's no one's fault but my own...I should get insurance and a primary doctor. I'm like hello...I can go to my primary ob/gyn for regular checkups and paps where it only costs me max about 150 dollars out of pocket but I do NOT have 1250.00 to pay up front out of pocket before they will see me for prenatal care and put me on a payment plan for the rest I would owe them. I have to wait for my insurance then I can go to the doctors I normally like to use.
I was so upset I made sure I got her name and called the ER as soon as I got home. They couldn't help me but they gave me the name to some one they told me could help me with this complaint. And it ends up she is the same one who helped us finally get better care and some answers from the nurses and Dr.Wheeler on grandma's situation when she was in the hospital getting horrid care and we couldn't get anyone to talk to us about it. She is friends with my aunts best friend too so I am hoping she will take my complaint about this seriously and do something about it.
They have a huge sign up in the waiting room too that states all this stuff about them not discriminating against or withholding care from patients who do not have insurance. Well, that's exactly what I feel like that doctor did to me today....discriminated against me and put me down because we do not have insurance right now. I am so hurt and I was practically in tears on the way home. What a horrid thing to say especially to some one who just lost a child a few months ago...I deserve to loose my baby because I don't have regular insurance and can't use my primary ob/gyn until I get it.
And further more I have just finished paying off the almost 4k we owed them from loosing our angel back in March. So it's not like they think they won't get their precious money....or her payment for her mega buck bill I know I'll get for seeing me a total of 5 mins max! (ok, maybe 10mins max if you add in the time at the end of the visit where she was putting me down)!! And once my insurance goes through...hopefully no longer than 2-3 weeks from now....they will back up and cover for the visit today too.
Anyway, I'm exhausted. I had nothing to eat all day either. Finally at 9 pm they let me eat some saltines and graham crackers with orange juice. That's all I had to eat all day..that and some water and cheese nips that Shawn got me (Shawn had to stay home with Zeb and didn't come to the hospital until the last 4 hours I was there after my mom got home from work and he could use her car to come meet me).
Hope you all had much, much, much better days than I did. (oh and this was at MWH..mary washingtong hospital again..why in the world did I go back there??? I do not know....never again though...I will use potomac or fairfax hospital I will never use them again...the doctor was Rickabaugh...and was female!!! You think she would have been more understanding...as rude as some of the men were last time I was in there they were more compassionate than she was!!)
