Taking Charge

My daughter, Shelley, is having a series of cortizone shots to her back and she is receiving a sedative each time to help with the discomfort. After her first shot, she said they'd sedated her very well and she'd sailed through the experience with no problems.

A friend here in the park has the identical problem with her back that Shelley has and she told me last week that she'd be receiving the cortizone shots as well. I told her about Shelley's pleasant experience in order to calm her fears. Well, her experience a couple of days ago didn't go as well as my daughter's did.

Carole was not given a sedative and she was too compliant to demand one. She said the pain was inhuman and she wasn't even allowed a moment to recover her senses before being urged off the table and sent into the change room. The nurse was abrupt and unsympathetic to a patient who was in severe pain.

When she came to tell me about this yesterday, I told her to call the clinic and tell them exactly what her experience had been and to say that she wouldn't accept the second shot (due next week) if she wasn't sedated.

I'm so disgusted that this lady was put in a position of pain by medical personnel when it could so easily have been avoided. So many times we don't know what to expect with any medical procedure but we always believe that all efforts to eliminate pain will be used. Well, apparently not so!

It is so important to take charge of your own body and ask questions. It is equally important to make reasonable demands of our doctors and nurses. Not all of them should be in the medical field and not all of them give a hoot about us.

My friend was forced to undergo a horrifically painful procedure by someone who should lose their licence. Carole won't make the same mistake again.

The big lesson here is to *take charge* because your priorities might not be their's.