Ongoing saga -- health care venting

I couldn't cope with the misery of my skin "infection" last night. I got out of bed at 5:00 a.m. and crept downstairs and just groaned and wept. A real pathetic sight.

At 6:00 a.m., I took a long hot shower, which helped. I got my wits about myself. I decided to either go to the emergency room or back to my doctor. I woke up my husband and asked him to get up. He was dazed and confused...not too surprising.

He called my primary care doctor's office. We couldn't get through to my doctor's office. It's a part of UNC medical center. It's big and bureaucratic. The system is terrible during off hours. A answering service takes your message, then gives it to a nurse. Thirty minutes later, you convey the same information to a nurse. She then calls the resident on call. Over an hour later, while I'm actually in the examining room of the primary care office, (I got sick of waiting and decided to just storm in. I went in before 8:00 a.m. as they opened and begged to be seen right away.) a resident finally calls and asks me all the same questions. She says, "Oh, don't come to the ER, go to your primary care doctor."

So I see a nurse practitioner, who tells me she thinks I don't have Impetigo, but Shingles! They draw blood just in case. She sends me to a dermatologist across town. She says it looks like Shingles. She takes a culture just to be sure. She gives me two new prescriptions (finally, some pain meds!).

So, at 11:00 a.m., I'm finally getting medicine for a condition that I have seen three doctors, a nurse practitioner, and four appointments, not to mention treating it for a week with the wrong medicines. My face feels like someone took a blow torch to it. And, I've spent $160 on co-pays, $50 on medicines, and missed two days of work. Did I mention that I don't get sick pay?

Shingles is painful and miserable. We know way too much about it. In fact, my husband had a case of it a couple days after our son was born. I think his case was brought on by the trauma of our son's birth that included horrific anesthesia with eight attempts to get the spinal/epidural in, followed by very difficult C-Section with added bonus of bowel surgery, and ending with our son in distress and needing a week in the NICU. That's another long story for another day.

Obviously, the poor man was freaked out and was then terrified that he would spread the virus to our newborn. In his case, the winner, on-call doctor's advice was to check into a hotel until he was symptom-free. Another great piece of advice?!?!

I think my case was brought on by the hell of going on vacation with my family to see the rest of my family. A prescription for disaster: Sleepless nights in one bad bed with two kids, the stress of driving with those same kids, the ususal family Sturm and Drang, the state of my father's health, the ongoing issues with siblings, and more.