Hospital Hell
I've had several bad experiences with dentists and doctors, all involving recommendations for completely unnecessary, extremely expensive treatment, including surgery. Fortunately, I question everything, including doctors' recommendations, which has helped me avoid a lot of pain and suffering.

I have needed major surgery three times. After one surgery, I woke up in the surgical recovery ward with an incorrectly assigned patient sharing my room, a heroin addict who had checked herself into the hospital for rehab against her doctor's orders and who, of course, should've been in the drug rehab unit, not the surgical recovery unit. Without going into a lot of detail, I'll just say it's very unpleasant to share a room with someone who is hallucinating, virtually climbing the walls, and threatening you with physical harm (claimed to have a knife and was going to cut my throat when I was sleeping) when you're only semi-conscious and can't sit up, much less get out of bed.

It's even worse when you're assigned a nurse who expects you to get out of bed by yourself and shower less than four hours after surgery, even though you haven't actually woken up from the anesthesia and the doctor gave orders not to bathe for a few days after surgery due to our six inch abdominal incision. Gets worse: When I was unable to comply with the nurse's screaming demands, she decided to punish me for lack of cooperation by refusing me food and water, and later admitted writing on my chart not to allow me food and water so that the next nurses on shift wouldn't give me any. I contacted my doctor who had me released and sent home 36 hours post surgery, though she had expected me to be in the hospital for 5-6 days for recovery due to the seriousness of the surgery. She felt I'd be far better off home with my frail, elderly grandmother tending to me.

BTW, the heroin addict was forcibly removed from the hospital - kicking and screaming - by security. I have to admit I enjoyed watching that. Then, as I was dressing to leave, the nurse apologized for her behavior the first day, saying that she had been a bit short tempered because she had been on the last of three shifts in a row due to a nurse's strike at the hospital. I wanted to point out that her short temper could've resulted in serious injury to me and a hefty lawsuit against the hospital and her; instead, I kept my mouth shut and got out of there as fast as I could.

In all fairness, I'll mention that my other surgeries, both of which required multi-day hospitalization, were completely different. Everyone was pleasant, caring and professional.
(bunnybutt, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 18:54, Reply)