Tonight's picture was taken in January of 2009. Mattie was home between treatments and received several gifts from friends. You can see two of them: the military patches that he put on his pajamas as well as a wand from the Dairy Godmother (which is a homemade custard store in Alexandria, VA)! Receiving gifts were a God sent during Mattie's 15 month battle. Mainly because each day became harder, since Mattie became further isolated and in pain. Also after a while, I could get boring (since Mattie had me around him 24/7), along with all the other objects around us. Yet a gift typically provided new stimulation and diverted Mattie's attention for a little while.
Quote of the day: When a friend of Abigail and John Adams was killed at Bunker Hill, Abigail’s response was to write a letter to her husband and include these words, My bursting heart must find vent at my pen. ~ David McCullough
After 6 years of seeing the same neurologist, today I ventured to see a different doctor for her opinion on my chronic migraines. I have not had a headache free day since the day Mattie was born. I truly believe that after my epidural, I developed a headache that has never gone away. Certainly the degree of pain varies from day to day and for the most part since I have dealt with this for the past 14 years, I have learned to work through pain, to function, and not complain. Yet that doesn't mean I don't deal with chronic pain, which is fatiguing. I have tried all sorts of medications over the 14 years and the last one I tried had terrible side effects and I landed up with kidney stones ... stones that developed and were passed every three months for a year. So my joke is I rather deal with the headaches than deal with the side effects of the medication.
Obtaining an appointment for today was also hysterical. Do you want to know when I made this appointment? TRY JUNE! June of 2015, for a January 2016 appointment. The doctor's assistant told me that people travel from other States to see this doctor! Well with that build up, she set me up to believe this doctor was something special!
Do you ever have the feeling as soon as you meet someone, that you are not going to like your interaction with them? Well this is the feeling I had after immediately meeting this doctor! We are really losing something in our health care industry, if you can't have a direct conversation with the doctor! What I mean by this is they are too busy documenting what you are saying. Most of the time you are talking to the back of a computer screen, rather than a person! The doctor is talking and as you are responding, yet instead of the doctor engaging you and making HUMAN contact, the doctor is writing notes into an electronic medical system. I am a very person centered individual, therefore this to me is already a turn off!
Putting that aside, she took a history of my of 14 years of headaches and within the conversation naturally came my dialogue about Mattie. My headaches happened in labor and a good part of my intensive treatment began after Mattie died. Yet despite the doctor hearing about Mattie multiple times in our meeting, she did not bat an eye lash or even say she was sorry to hear about my loss.
It is true I am NOT seeing this doctor for her warmth and compassion, but nonetheless, it tells me a great deal about her personality and that she can't or won't connect with her patients on an emotional level. When dealing with chronic headache pain, I think it is crucial that a doctor be able to understand pain. Pain of ALL kinds. I did not feel like she understood my loss of Mattie, nor did she have the foggiest notion or compassion for having daily pain for 14 years.
It is important to have a good fit between a doctor and a patient, and without it, the doctor misses the many nuisances expressed by a patient. Which to me are crucial with regard to adhering to treatment. So I left the office today with many suggestions, a battery of tests to do, but feeling like she wasn't invested in helping me. So why someone would travel four hours to see her is a mystery!!!
After leaving her office, I was waiting by the elevator bank to get to the parking garage. While waiting, I noticed a mom and her teenage son by her side. They were talking and at first I simply observed them, so as time went on, I said to myself...... if Mattie were alive he would be about this fellow's age. It then put this mother-son pair in a whole new light for me. I was happy they were together and joking around with each other, and yet at the same time saddened once again for my own loss.
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