I have had THE most ridiculous week of my life and I am GLAD it is almost over!
WEDNESDAY, NOV. 8: I went to the dentist for my first cleaning and exam in like 15 years (I’ve been to the dentist more recently for a broken tooth, but was turned away because they wouldn’t touch me until my wisdoms were out and I had no insurance). I learned that I have about 8 cavities—not bad, considering. But what pissed me off was all the “tsk-tsk”-ing even though I went to a dentist who was advertised as specializing in working with “underserved communities,” i.e. poor people—me. I was quickly shuffled out of the exam area back to the front desk and was told by the receptionist that I couldn’t schedule any appointments for my fillings! Are you kidding me? “She thinks you should see a sedation dentist because she felt you were too anxious,” –even though this same receptionist assured me when I called to make the appointment that the dentist was patient and gentle with nervous people. My insurance will only cover one exam every six months! I called back a couple days later and told them the situation and asked if I could just make the appointments with them, and she said NO, and that they would not be accepting appointments from me in the future—ever! I’ve been fucking blackballed for clenching my fists and yelping in pain as a reaction to a sharp instrument being jabbed into my exposed root! Now I have to pay another $61 out-of-pocket because no dentist office will accept me without an exam!
My gynecologist put me on the pill last month after determining that I was not ovulating, which is what was causing my sporadically occurring and traumatically heavy and painful periods. After taking the three week course of hormone pills, I started the “blanks” to have my period, which began picking up momentum on Thursday, which brings me to….
FRIDAY, NOV. 10: About 7:30 in the morning I’m getting ready for work and I start having BLINDing cramps so I decided to just have a sit on the throne for a few minutes. I felt something weird, so I looked down, and I have never seen anything so horrifying as what I saw in the bowl that morning! I had to grab Hubby to witness it because I thought no one would ever believe me. I passed a clot the size of a golf ball! It flopped open and revealed itself to be this flat mass the size of the palm of my hand! AND THIS WAS JUST THE BEGINNING! I spent the whole weekend on the couch crying and panting like a woman giving birth, I was out of my mind with pain! I wasn’t so much bleeding as I was passing solid matter continuously for four days straight.
By MONDAY, NOV. 13: I was exhausted and dehydrated, but I went to work anyway because the cramps had eased up. That is, until after lunch. Then they got so bad again, I was sitting in the restroom crying, and just said, “fuck this.” I told the office manager I had to go home, I called Hubby and asked him to pick me up, and I called the clinic and asked if they could take me that afternoon. Hubby and I were on our way to my appointment when my gynecologist told me to go to the ER where they would do blood tests, and an ultrasound to find out the problem. But of course not: after waiting like three hours for a doctor, this guy came in and said they were going to hook me up to an IV and do a pelvic. To which I said, “Oh no you’re not.” The room was filthy (hair in the sink, biohazard container reading “full,” garbage full, and a URINE SAMPLE sitting out on top of the goddam paper towel dispenser!), and the doctors and nurses were all men with no people skills. As I may have mentioned, I am poor, which is to say that I am not going to pay 800 times more for the exact services I was scheduled for at the clinic appointment that day—which, by this time, I had missed—and have said services performed in an unsanitary facility by uncaring pricks! I called my clinic but my gynecologist was gone, and the woman I spoke to wouldn’t reschedule me because she thought it important for me to stay there and submit to their tests. Uh, no. I haggled with the doctors over the ultrasound, but they wouldn’t budge because I wasn’t pregnant and my life was not in danger. So I told them to shove it. Finally some other doctor guy came in and agreed with me that this was not the best use of their services and my time, and referred me to a different clinic and sent me on my way. The next morning I got a call from my gynecologist and she was pissed at me until I filled in the details, and agreed to have me come in. I finally have a referral for the ultrasound to see if I have any damn fibroids of cysts. And the reason I need the ultrasound? “Unable to assess [uterus]: BMI 47.” In other words, because I am a fat ass!
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