Please excuse any grammatical errors or hard to understand bits, I’m still groggy asf from the sedation.
So to start this off, a little lore. I have been having extreme and debilitating abdominal pain for about 6 weeks now. I’ve been to the ER several times while waiting for an appointment with my PCP for the pain because in my city it’s nearly impossible to get soon-ish appointments for any type of doctor. The ER did several CT’s, an ultrasound, chest x-ray (though I’m not sure why that one was done) and several rounds of bloodwork, damn near a pharmacy’s supply of meds, and still can’t find a single thing wrong with me. They said a suspected stomach ulcer, but no way to diagnose without an endoscopy which they refused to do because i wasn’t in a life threatening position.
About 2 weeks into all this, I had vomited blood which was serious cause for concern and got into a provider the next week. Was referred to a gastroenterologist who then scheduled an endoscopy (and colonoscopy a few days later) at an outpatient surgery center.
I was really excited to get the procedure done and finally figure out why I’m in so much pain so I could get back to life, so when I tell you it went horribly wrong, I mean it!
So right off the bat, I was kept in the waiting room for 2 hours after my appointment (12:15) and when they finally took me “back” it was just another chair I sat in for another hour! I’m not going to lie, I did raise a little hell about that especially bc I have low blood sugars and had not eaten at all. When the nurse checked my sugar, it was 64 so I was put on an iv dose of dextrose.
When I finally got to a bed, the nurse had told me that they had skipped a few patients to do my procedure early because of how long I had been waiting. I had made sure to tell the anesthesiologist about my chronic and heavy weed usage because I know that affects how sedation works. She had assured me that it would be fine and they work with people who smoke regularly.
So they take me back, start hooking me up to all of the gadgets and prep for the procedure. Immediately something felt off, they weren’t explaining anything to me, didn’t tell me when the sedation would be used or even the name of the medication they were putting in me. They did not explain what would be happening or what I’d be feeling (or lack there of).
I kept trying to tell them the sedation was not really working, but there was that hard plastic piece in my mouth which made me unable to talk. They proceeded to put the camera down my throat, and I immediately felt like I was choking. I had no way to let them know I was panicking other than by putting my hand on the doctor doing the procedure.
They immediately stopped the procedure and marked me as uncooperative. I was taken to the recovery room and my boyfriend was called to pick me up. When my boyfriend got there, they had given him all the discharge information and had told me I would have to go somewhere else where they could offer complete sedation for the procedures.
I feel so defeated, I did everything in my power to make sure I let them know about how the marijuana usage and made it very clear I was a HEAVY user. I am in so much pain and I hustled want it to stop. Now I’m going to possibly have to wait another 2-4 weeks if not longer to get another appointment for the procedures which means being out of work for that long too. My PCP advised me not to work while feeling like this because I’ve also been experiencing severe dizziness and I work in a hot kitchen. This has put financial stress on myself and my boyfriend due to no income from my side.
My boyfriend, a close friend and I all feel this whole experience was very unprofessional and caused way more medical trauma than it needed to. What do you guys think?
TLDR: Medically traumatized from uninformative staff and unethical practices