Skip to main content

I am a wanker magnet

First of all, my weight is a bit up at the moment. We are not at all surprised by this at your humble narrators house. You see I am on volt@ren again and this causes despicable water retention. I've also discovered a new food love, couscous. I'm sure it can be good for you in small quantities, but that is another story.

Also yesterday the stresses of this week forced me to eat a doughnut. Forced me I tell you!

Basically work is shit. We're experiencing extremely high call volumes and at the same time one of our systems keeps crashing every half hour. It sucks. I am tired and cranky, and I have a very sore left shoulder.

But the bit that takes the cake is this, on Wednesday morning I went to see a surgeon hand picked for me by my insurance company because they wanted me to have an independent assessment. I was told to take my films and be there for an appointment at 9am.

I am notorious for never being late, in fact most of the time I am early for everything including work. This particular morning was a bad example though and I was 15 minutes late in arriving at the office for my appointment.

I explained to the receptionist that I was in traffic and wanted to ring them but unfortunately did not have their number. She asked me a few questions, took my films, and had me sit in the waiting room. After a few minutes had past she came over to me and whispered, "he is going to ask you why you were late..." The look on her face conveyed that I should be worried about this, or scared.

I made my husband come with me to the appointment simply because he didn't have anything else to do, and I have had terrible experiences with doctors lately. This of course was no exception and goes down in the book as possibly the worst, ever.

At first he looked annoyed when I asked if mr. ralph could come in, but said, "if he wants to that is fine." And began the conversation with a statement, "I am to perform an independent assessment of you for workcover which as far as I was aware was meant to begin at 9'oclock." I told him I was sorry but traffic was bad and having never been there before I did not know the number to call to tell them I was on my way... This of course did not seem to appease him as he continued to look angry.

The man himself in first impressions does not exude any confidence. He is very large and overbearing. He made me feel immediately uncomfortable. He never introduced himself or did any niceties one would normally expect at a first time appointment.

From there it was straight downhill. He asked me a series of vague questions relating to my injuries, but refused to reword them or clarify what he meant when I asked for it. He actually argued back and forth with me that his questions were clear and self-explanatory when they most definitely weren't. I was so frustrated that I answered what I thought he meant.

At one point he stood up and asked me to take my shirt off and then walked out of the office leaving the door ajar without an explanation. I looked at my husband and shrugged but obliged and took my shirt off. Next thing I know he returns with the receptionist I mentioned before who did not say anything but merely sat in my seat next to my husband and began reading the paper. Then he performed some simple tests like reflex and looking up and down, raising my arms ect.

After that he asked me a few more questions and then told me he would need to keep my films overnight and said we could pick them up the following day. He asked me if I had any questions for him, and regrettably I asked him one and after I received somewhat of an answer he just sat there staring at his desk.

A weird silence past in which I wasn't sure what to do so I asked him if he was finished with me and he said, "yes have a good day," without even looking up at us.

When I left his office I burst into tears. This guy was a complete stranger to me and my case made me feel like a bug. He made me feel like I was an inconvenience to him, or a leech. I began to wonder why on earth he treated me so badly. Was he just a shite doctor? Was he just angry at my being late? Does he hate Americans? Does he think that people on workcover claims are just trying to steal from the system?

He repeated one question in particular that made me think he was suspicious of me. He asked me if I had at any time ever had any medical conditions other than this, and I said no. He then said, "never?" I said, "no." Then he said, "you've never been in a car accident?" I said, "no." "You've never been in hospital for any accidents?" Again, "no." He didn't seem to believe me.

I wrote a detailed letter of the event and sent it directly to my claims manager at my insurance company. I wanted them to know how unprofessional he was before he hands in his report. This way I don't look like I just don't like his report. I was contacted by my case manager's superior who told me they would, after receiving the report, have one of their staff discuss my letter with this doctor. So he will be made aware of how he made me feel. This I feel is good. Also they will do another independent if I feel it necessary. And this time I believe it is my right to choose which doctor I see. I will be asking my physio for the name of a good surgeon for it.

Of course this makes my new claim that is pending longer.. but I don't really have a choice. I can't imagine how this guy can assess me when he was obviously biased against me.

Sigh.

I know I mentioned this earlier when I was talking about doctor's in Aus, but seriously what is wrong here? Why do I keep having these f--ked up experiences with doctors?

I've got an appointment tomorrow with my normal GP and she is going to do a blood test so we can see if there is anything wrong with me that is causing my exhaustion other than work and the neck problems.

Lately I feel like I am drowning. Everything feels so hard. I also made an appointment to see a psychologist to talk about how I feel about the injury. The fact that has taken over my life and has been the center of it since the end of 2003 and doesn't seem to have an end in sight is really making me feel depressed. Everything is suffering. Up until recently I just wanted to keep it all together, pretend that it wasn't bothering me. But I can't pretend anymore. It is putting a lot of stress on me and it isn't letting up.

Comments

Anonymous said…
I related to your comment "lately I feel like I am drowning". That is how I felt before resigning from my call centre job. I totally understand your frustration and stress doing that work! I am a new person away from that phone. Sorry about your doctor experiences - I have never had a bad experience in NZ (luckily).
Jeanna said…
I'm so sorry you had such a crappy time at the doctor's office :o( I've had some really nasty ones here, too, so I feel for you. I hope things go better at your next one *fingers crossed*
Anonymous said…
Oh my gosh, what an ass! What's up with doctors in Australia? Haven't they ever heard of customer service? God bless you for being so patient and not saying anything to him. Had it been me, I would have lost my temper and told the bastard a thing or two that he certainly needs to hear.
Marybeth said…
I'm here from Michele's and I'm glad I came. I'd like to add you to my list of daily reads. The weight thing...yep, I know it all too well.
Rebeka,

Oh honey, I absolutely feel for you. You are in pain and you need someone to listen first, then fix the pain.

It wasn't til I read these comments above mine that something clicked.

I haven't had any bad problems with all my years with Aussie doctors and I really, really think it is revoltingly unfair to plonk all 'Aussie' doctors in one basket and say that it is a problem with them. That's like us saying all American's eat at McDonalds for every meal. It's unfair and un true.

I do wonder though, whether they are sending you to doctors who are ball breakers because it is a compensation/work cover claim? We all know how much insurance companies want to give away their money. (yeah right!) so I wonder whether the under lying feeling is simply because they are on the back foot because it is a Work Cover claim?

The reason this clicked was because my ex-husband was electrocuted and thrown 10 metres from his work station and had alot of resulting problems after that. Each doctor that work Cover sent him to was suspicios in nature and generally very 'short' with him, their treatment and diagnosis.

This has been my only experience with anything to do with work cover.

Could that maybe the answer?

I'd be interested to know how these doctors would be if you simply went in with a runny nose and a sore throat.

Regardless, you need medical attention and healing and I feel shitty reading that you aren't getting it.
Anonymous said…
It is extremely unfair to be saying 'what's up with doctor's in Australia' because of bad personal experiences. Doctors I've visited (and I live near Mclaren vale too) have been absolutely kind and caring to me. I'm sorry about your experiences but please don't spread trash about Aussie docs. Lisa
Shannin said…
Sorry you are having such a hard time with the doctors assigned to treating you, especially because it sounds like you don't really have a choice in who you use. I guess the cranky treatment wouldn't be so bad if they were actually doing something.

Popular posts from this blog

A trip down memory lane

Hello to all of you all of you coming via Michele , thanks for stopping by and I only hope it was worth the trip over. I began reading through the questions on the Slimmer of The Year application today. Of course there are so many things I want to include, but I can't possibly write everything I want to or they will be getting a novel. When I started thinking of how long I have been overweight and the reasons I struggled for so long with food and weight issues a lot of memories came back to me. I've been challanged by my weight for most of my life. Granted some of that time I only thought I was fat when I really wasn't. The point is that I have been fat inside my head for as long as I can remember. One of the most shameful and embarrassing moments was when I was 15 and some of the boys in my class thought it was funny to sing "thunder, thunder, thunder thighs hooooooo!" when they saw me coming to the tune of the cartoon "Thunder Cats." That experie...

Not working

I don't know where to begin. I didn't even want to post. My instinct tells me that because I don't want to, it may be the best thing to do. I haven't weighed myself, but I've had a few very bad days. I went out on Friday night and drank an unknown amount of gin and tonics and then I ate almost a whole bag of kettle chips yesterday. I put on a pair of my size 12 jeans that should fit and are too tight last night. Damnit! I have a lot of cute clothes that I cant go anywhere near because of about 3 kilos. This 3 kilos is doing a lot to depress me right now. I stopped tracking my calories because I don't even know how much alcohol I consumed on Friday night and who wants to know how many calories and fat are in an entire bag of chips? Not only do I feel like shit, but I can't seem to motivate myself either. I know that the way I am feeling is not new and I will work through it, but right now it feels pretty much like a death sentence. It is not that I don...

Double your pleasure, double your fun...

Halfway through I do switch gears and talk about weight-loss once again [begin political rant] Recently I went out with one of my aussie female friends on a night where she was meeting up with a guy she had met on one of the match websites. That night I did happen to partake in a few too many drinks due to the price of one of my favorite bottled beers being only $4 compared to $7 or even $8 in some places. The man she met happened to be very nice, and I enjoyed speaking to him, but he had a friend with him who was with a female the likes of which I refer to as "granola". You know the kind. I don't like to contribute to stereotypes, but I hope the term "granola" is not in the least offensive to any of my readers. I like; it is good with some honey and milk. Anyway to get to the point the man friend and ms. granola appeared to not like me and it became increasingly clear why. With every comment I made about anything they seem to have the exact opposite opinio...