My respect for doctors has diminished…

My mother was diagnosed with stage 1 stomach cancer last year. It was rough, mainly because I was in a different state. Toward the end of her treatment the rest of my family managed to move back to be close to her. She had officially beat it and had a couple months of treatment left but she didn’t react to it well. Couldn’t drink. Couldn’t eat. They had to pause the remaining treatments until she got strong enough to finish but she never did. She only ever got worse and got to a point where she couldn’t dress or bathe herself.

One day, she was talking and what she said made no sense and her mouth was droopy. We suspected a stroke and called an ambulance. She only ever got worse in the hospital. The first doctor always said he’d come in to speak with us but never did. Never met him. The second doctor was the same, though we did get to speak to him a couple times. Third was there and spoke to us regularly… but one thing that was consistent with all of them, especially the last one, is that he’d tell us one thing one day and something else the next. That there were no signs of stroke when we took her in. She had a blood infection. She had this or that. But the next time we spoke to him and asked about progress on any of it he’d say “no, she never had that.” And at one point he yelled at my sister and said we needed to get our info from him because he had never heard of any of it… we got the information from him himself. Some of the nurses were the same and a couple were rude, but the majority were very nice.

We attempted to transfer her to a different and better hospital but they wouldn’t allow us. Said they couldn’t provide transport in case something happened to her during transport and could only release her and if something happened to her we’re at fault. We asked multiple times. Ok, can’t move her so we kept her there. A friends mother who is a nurse came in and checked over her as well as her friend who is a wound specialist. She had awful, possibly necrotic bed sores. At the end of it all, the doctor said she did have a stroke when we first brought her in. Of course there’s nothing we ourselves could have done, but it would have been nice to get correct and clear information and know what’s going on instead of pissy doctors who don’t show up. Another man there we happened to talk to said he had the same experience. Said he was brought there and refused operation. Having been a police officer, he had been to all the hospitals within the city and although voted #1 it was the worst one. He said it was like they spin a wheel on what illness you have and that’s exactly how it was with my mother.

I just needed to vent. I’ve always respected doctors but… not anymore. Not those ones. I’m just glad my mother isn’t suffering anymore. A month and half in that awful hospital.