Waterpup  

Our health care system is a mess, or at least it is at Orange Coast Memorial Center in Fountain Valley, California

My 16 year old son has had a severe immobilizing headache for 17 days. 2 of those days he was ok only to get hit again and even worse the next day.

We went to the ER five times, to his doc once, the Neurologist twice and chiropractor three times, two CT scans, an MRI and all blood work done. Only on the last trip to the ER did they do a spinal tap. At this point he had missed over 2 weeks of school. All the docs can say is everything looks fine but we’ll give you more drugs to take home.

He’s a healthy kid, plays hockey and surfs a lot. One of the scans was of his neck and spine and all that checked out ok too. He doesn’t do drugs, we spend most of our time together there really isn’t time for him to do them. He really has nothing to be stressed about and I think he would have told me when I asked him. We’re very close and we talk about a lot of things.

Anyway he still had this near crippling headache and we couldn’t figure out why. Go see a doctor get more drugs is all they could do. That is until our last visit to the ER at which time I told the doctor we weren’t going anywhere until someone figured out why this was happening or put a plan in place to figure it out what was going on. This ER doc was the first that took the situation as serious as I took it.

He ordered another MRI and an MRA. But what made the difference was he performed a spinal tap (lumbar puncture) and tested the pressure of his spinal fluid. Boom it shot up and out of the measuring device. SUCCESS!! That quick procedure gave us the reason for the headaches. However we still needed to find out why his spinal fluid pressure was so high. Eventually hew was sent to Children’s Hospital of Orange County and for them I have nothing but praise which I intend to write a separate article for.

Now on to the mess that is the health care system here in America.

Whoever said our health care system and pharmaceutical companies are butt to nut could not have been more right. Why is it that each doctor we saw wanted to do nothing more than to give a 16 year old kid that doesn’t drugs heavy narcotics? Even after we both requested not to be given them they still tried to encourage us to give it a try as all his scans looked normal. Is everything fixed by taking a pill these days? It sure seems they want us to believe that. I also have a friend who every time something stresses her out she has to take a pill for it. Her doctor continues to prescribe them to her even though he knows she’s gone over her 30 day allotted amount. She’ll use different pharmacies to refill. Just how much is the kick back these idiots make to keep people addicted.

Hello drug pushers!!! A simple spinal tap answered the primary question we had. Thanks for trying to turn my son into an addict. Eff’n Jackholes.

Next is old motherfucking doctors need to retire. My son’s first neurologist is old and he’s seen it all. So many things that were probably nothing that when something comes up and the scans don’t show anything obvious he writes it off as another headache. Here’s some more drugs and make another appointment to see me in a month. Fuck off Dr. George Perinne, you old asshole.

At least one ER doctor wasn’t too interested in giving him drugs. He wanted us to go see a psychiatrist for “mental issues”. Nevermind that my son has a good life with a good family if he’s having headaches and the drugs aren’t working he must need a different doctor to pump him full of drugs and one that can convince us that’s the way to go.

Ok I could go on but if you’ve made it this far in the article I am sure you get my point. In any case if you end up seeing the doctor and are trying to fix something don’t let them just offer you a pill to fix it. Insist they use the knowledge they learned in school to help you. If you end up at Orange Coast Memorial System ER I hope you get Dr. Wong or Dr. Elgin they seem to be the only 2 that gave a shit and even called back to see how my son was doing. Dr. Wong is the doctor that went with the obvious and ordered up a spinal tap. As a doctor how hard can that be to think of?