I was running late today thanks to this cold I have and on the way to work I got to listen to Wisconsin Public Radio at a time that I normally don’t hear it. Joy Cardin had a guest, Elizabeth Cohen, on that was discussing how to get the care you need from your doctors.
There are two stories that she told that really caught my interest. The first one was about Elizabeth’s newly born little girl. Apparently, two days after she was born the little girl was having some seizures. So the hospital started doing spinal taps on her to make sure she didn’t have an infection in her spinal fluid.
Well the spinal fluid ended up being fine and the neurologist told Elizabeth that no more spinal taps were needed. Great!
Well when Elizabeth went to see her baby early the next morning, the nurse said she couldn’t see her because they were getting ready to do another spinal tap on her. Of course she freaked out and tried to tell the nurse that the neurologist said not to do them but the nurse didn’t listen and, in essence, told her to go away.
In the end the spinal tap was stopped by the neurologist but why wouldn’t they stop when the mother told them not to continue? What could Elizabeth have done to make them stop right then and there?
The second story was about Elizabeth’s mother. One day she started feeling run down and tired out of the blue. So she went to her doctor to find out what was wrong.
Her doctor told her she was just overexerting herself and needed to take it easy for a while. He didn’t even do a simple blood test to be sure that was the issue. Well she listened to the doctor and let it go for a while.
She shouldn’t have listened. She should have pushed for a blood test. When all was said and done Elizabeth’s mom ended up needing a kidney transplant. It all cold have been prevented from a simple blood test. A blood test would have alerted the doctor to the growths on her adrenal gland that caused her kidney to deteriorate.
So we should all hate doctors and nurses right? Not really, no. They are under a lot of stress due to the nature of their jobs and the amount of people that they have to try and help out each day. Sometimes they will get it wrong. As a patient you need to know the right questions to ask and the right things to do when you are in a situation that you know something is wrong and don’t feel you are getting the attention you need.
Because of her experiences, Elizabeth wrote a book called The Empowered Patient
Not only that but it is really inexpensive!
If you want to hear the whole interview from the Joy Cardin show, Listen Here!
Elizabeth Cohen is a CNN senior medical correspondent and author of the book, “The Empowered Patient: How to Get the Right Diagnosis, Buy the Cheapest Drugs, Beat Your Insurance Company, and Get the Best Medical Care Every Time
…sometimes we’re late to work for a reason….
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The audio file I linked to is a Real Media (.rm) file. You can play it using the Real Media Player.