Other Side of the Bed

They say you have to be your own advocate in the healthcare system, but nobody warns you how exhausting that full-time job will be. No one else will do it for us because no one else feels its weight.

I currently have, no joke, at least 13 doctors. My daily life is a relentless marathon of two, three, sometimes four appointments a day. I push myself through this grueling schedule for the promise of a "quality of life," but lately, I find myself asking: Is this really it? Because right now, I am just so incredibly tired.

From Recovery to a Freak Accident

My downward spiral started last July. It began with an eight-day hospital stay, followed by a month and a half of relying on a walker just to get by. Right as I was finally getting stronger and ditching the walker, the unthinkable happened. I was run over by my own 6,000-pound Jeep Grand Cherokee with 20-inch all-terrain tires. That freak accident landed me in the hospital for another two days.

A Body Under Siege

By October, my body was a battleground. I went in for my third Botox injection for my neurogenic bladder, a treatment that had worked well the first two times. But I had a brewing UTI I didn't know about, and right on top of that, I received a spinal injection for my back. I am desperate for back surgery, scheduled for June, but only after fighting tooth and nail against an insurance company that has done nothing but deny, deny, deny this entire year.
All of this culminated in the most agonizing and degrading experience of my life.

Seeking Safety, Finding Judgment

I landed in the ER in blinding, 9-out-of-10 pain. I went there for one reason: to get my pain under control safely. I have pain medication at home, but I went to the hospital because I wanted to be monitored. I went because I didn't want to accidentally overdose. I went because I wanted to live.

Instead of finding a safe haven, I was treated like a drug seeker. I was treated like I had some oozing, contagious disease of character rather than a legitimate, agonizing medical emergency. The pain was so severe, so absolute, that I was literally screaming, "I don't want to live! I want to die!" I must have screamed it 17 times.

The Breaking Point of Compassion

Only then did they offer me a mental health professional. I looked at them and said, "Now you care? After I have to scream that I want to die because I cannot live like this anymore?"

And what did they do? It would be funny if it weren't so horrific. They discharged me.

As I tried to steady myself so I wouldn't fall, a nurse violently ripped her arm away from me. She actually laughed at me. "Who, me?" she chuckled. When I told the charge nurse I was going to file a complaint against her, the charge nurse laughed at me, too.

A Dangerous Walk on the Tightrope

I was so traumatized and afraid to return to that ER that I stayed at home for five agonizing days at a level 9 pain. Five days. I survived by taking the medications I had at home, morphine, oxycodone, and Xanax, navigating a dangerous tightrope completely alone. I was forced into the exact situation I had gone to the ER to avoid, simply because the nurses refused to do their jobs.

Remembering the Sacred Duty

Until 2017, I was a nurse in the ICU of this very hospital. I stepped away when I was diagnosed with MS because I knew I didn't feel safe enough in my own body to care for my patients. Nursing was my passion. I loved my job. I understood the sacred duty we hold when people come to us at their most vulnerable.

If the nurses who treated me cannot find it in themselves to be caring, compassionate, and understanding, they have no business being in this profession.

Standing Tall for Change

There is now a massive investigation underway regarding the absolute mistreatment and abuse I endured. Tomorrow, I am sitting down with the heads of our one and only hospital. I am exhausted. I am in pain. But I am doing this to make absolutely sure that this level of abuse never happens to another human being who walks through those doors seeking help.
I am my own advocate. And I will not be silenced.