Doylestown ER - Dr. Jennifer White Restores My Faith In Doctors

On Thursday, March 13 - I was feeling quite crappy. Literally. Running to the bathroom every hour because I had a case of the runs and feeling really bloated and crampy. Still the pain in my lower left area. John invites me out to lunch - anywhere I want to go! I normally love going out to eat but feel so horrible I turn him down.
Around 2 or so, the pain in my lower left is now in my back and upper abdomen. What. The. Fuck. I call Dr. Ukropec. She is with a patient so I leave a message that the pain is bad and should I go to the ER? I'm starting to have shortness of breath - but I'm not sure if this is from the pain or something else is going on. Did something burst inside me? WTF??
While I wait for Ukropec to call - I call Dr. Minissale and they say they can't help me - it doesn't sound like a GI problem because my stool isn't loose and if I'm having trouble breathing, that's not a GI problem. WTF! I'm hesitant to go to the ER again because on March 3rd - Dr. Choi really didn't take me seriously and when the ultrasound didn't show a cyst, I second guessed myself. Maybe I didn't know my body as well as I thought I did.
Finally I give up and go to Doylestown ER.
Dr. Jennifer White is on duty.
She is the doctor that saw me in September 2013 when I initially went in with left sided pain and she had focused on possible kidney stones.
Well, she treated me seriously. She did a contrast CAT scan and did blood work and I was starting to have palpation's so they hooked me up to the heart monitor.
I DID have a cyst on my left ovary after all. It was the same size and in the same place as it was in September. I also had a lesion on my liver (was told not to freak out, it's probably just like a birth mark). And I had a large diverticuliti on my duodenum (which, she thought, might be why I was having upper GI pain as well now).
My red blood cells, hemocrit, and lymphocytes were all abnormal (low).
Now - what I wouldn't know until I requested copies of my report in late July a few months later, was that the EKG came back as abnormal with possible left atrial enlargement).
There was also a mild amount of fluid around my lungs.

She gave me some oxycodne, she gave me the name of her ob/gyn, and she gave me the name of a family doctor. Most importantly, she treated me like a patient and was sympathetic and took my symptoms seriously.

I left feeling hopeful that at least we were on the road to figuring out what was wrong - the faster we pinpointed what was wrong, the faster I could get back to my old energetic self!

While in the ER, I got a voicemail from Dr. Ukropec - she left a message advising me not to go the ER - there was nothing they could do for me.

I couldn't believe it. Seriously??? What doctor would EVER tell a patient who calls complaining of shortness of breath to NOT go to the emergency room? I couldn't fucking believe it. And thank god I had gone, because it showed the cyst, and bruise on my liver, and screwed up blood cell counts, and diverticuli on my duedenum and palpations!!

I really did not like Dr. Ukropec and I could now understand why no one gave her a gift of bacon of the month.

The Start Of It All...

It all began on September 12, 2013. I’d been having bad pains in my lower left side all week. I’ve been prone to ovarian cysts so I thought (even though I only have about 2 periods per year) perhaps I had a cyst that had ruptured. 

An odd thing I’d noticed, was that whenever I ate peanut butter (that week, I was on a peanut butter kick: peanut butter on apples, bananas, crackers) I had sharp pains in my lower left side. As a medic, I knew this didn’t seem rational, but my body is not rational anyway. It has so many weird little things wrong with it, I’m thinking my mom may have been given DES when she was young – or maybe that’s just how I am – odd in almost every way. Anyway – long story short – I ended up going to Doylestown ER. Dr. Jennifer White was my doc and for some reason, from the admitting nurse to the doctor, they all seemed focus on kidney stones. I didn’t think it was kidney stones. Other than pain, I had no other symptoms of kidney stones.  I thought it was a cyst that had burst. Or maybe something to do with the peanuts? Maybe I was allergic? 

A cat scan was done and showed a cyst (water density lesion in left adnexa of 17mm diameter (most likely functional was noted on report). No fluid. 

There were no kidney stones. I was given a shot for pain (yay – it wiped the pain right out!). Dr. White thought I should see a GI doc and an OB/GYN. She was totally nice (though I was 100% sure it was NOT kidney stones and had been frustrated that they zeroed in on that). 

I went home with some oxycodone (12 pills that lasted me until the end of July 2014!). I didn’t bother to ask for copies of my medical reports. I should have done that. 

I followed up with Dr. Minissale Jr who is with Central Bucks Speicalists. He had a great bedside manor. He expressed disappointment that my CAT scan wasn’t done with contrast. After being examined, while I was still in the room, he dictated a memo to my Doctor Notte (my family doctor). I wish I would have asked for a copy of that too (I would, but not until much later when things started going wrong). I would have discovered that besides the cyst on my ovary, I also had what looked to be a duodenal diverticulum (this is a pouch on the “pipe” that leads to my intestines). I had no idea about this. After my visit with Dr. M (who advised I see an OB/GYN) – I stopped eating peanuts and my pain slowly resolved. Blood work that Dr. M ran showed I was a bit low on my vitamin B12 and iron and to start taking supplement. I was negative for celiac disease. 

All was pretty well the rest of the fall/winter – aside from this total lack of focus. I wouldn’t say I was depressed, and I was still mostly a positive happy person, but suddenly I found I didn’t want to go out and drink with friends and family. I was working part time at Wegmans and by the time I came home, all I wanted to do was sit on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and watch some behavioral TV (trashy reality shows) and just tune out. I did visit Dr. Notte sometime in the winter…I suggested maybe I needed Adderall – maybe that would give me some energy and help me focus. I hated that I wanted to do a million things but lacked the focus or drive to actually accomplish anything. Dr. Notte suggested I should see a behavioral doctor – he thought maybe I was just really sad over Obama winning and it had sucked the air out of my balloon so to speak. I had laughed. Maybe. Perhaps. I didn’t want to see a psychologist; my experience with counselors has been horrible. There was the wonky eyed marriage counselor who was going to counsel me and my ex – but I couldn’t take her seriously when she admitted she had been divorced 3 times. Anyway, the holidays came and went, and after the start of the new year, I was looking forward to the 2014. I had a burst of renewed energy! This was going to be my best year ever. I was going to write a book a month. Start doing videos again. Rich Zeoli of 1210 am radio had contacted me and asked me to do a weekly spot on his radio show. Radio sucks, by the way, very difficult because it’s live and you can’t “see” your audience. But then, during the month of February, I started experiencing pains in my left side again. And this time it was also in my lower back and right over my pubic bone. No fever though. It felt like a UTI but I wasn’t passing blood and I didn’t have a fever. So I didn’t really think it was a UTI. It was like that cyst was back again. 

After about two weeks, I finally gave in and called the Family Care Medical Center. Dr. Notte had left (which I knew, and was terribly sad as he was the best family Doc I’d ever had – big personality and very much a family man) and I made an appointment with Dr. Dusty Ukropec (she is a female – which shocked the doctors at Doylestown ER who always thought “Dusty was a man.”) and then I spent the month of March in the ER and the month of April visiting doctors…and this is my diary. I’m actually writing this on August 5th, 2014. 10 days prior to surgery to take out all my internal lady parts. I’m panicked I 

A) Have Cancer

B) Will die during surgery

C) Something will go horribly wrong during surgery and leave me with a colostomy or as a paraplegic. 

John says I’m totally fine. Just over reacting. Possibly. Hopefully! I hope I look back at this and laugh – but honestly, even if the surgery goes awesomely well – there is a lot to learn from my journey these last few months. From the awful way I was treated a few times, to the importance of obtaining copies of your own records, to the obscure and at times confusing medical journey – and why is it that I feel no one is LISTENING to me. Do I have to be a bitch in order to be taken seriously? It shouldn't have to be that way. Anyway, with the internet and social media, we…the everyday American who doesn't have elite doctor connections or vast boatloads of money, do have access to something just as powerful: our voice. Our voices, our stories, will help other people navigate through their journey to health. I hesitated to write this because I didn't want to offend or worse, cause medical personal for treating me differently – but shouldn't those in the medical community treat every patient as if every patient DOES have a voice and will use it? I know as a paramedic, I wasn't perfect on every call, but 95% of the time, I treated a patient as if they were my best friend or my favorite family member. The other 5% were frequent drug addicts or drunks or asked me to take their trash out before I wheeled them out the door. 

I’ll be dating these posts as they happened – and luckily I have a 2014 Yearly/daily planner that I had hoped to fill with the ticking off  of my goals of writing new books each month, shooting new videos, etc – but it turned into a doctor visit planner. And once I started getting my reports, I created a binder to organize all my test results and ER visits. Look, don’t leave it in the hands of the doctors – just like everything in life – this is up to you to be in charge of. The more knowledge you have, the more power and control you have. I have no quirky witty way to end this post, so I’ll just leave it with this: if you haven’t already started keeping track of your medical stuff – go forth and buy a big ass binder (or a little one if you’re quite healthy – good for you and your big nose) – some plastic sheet protectors, and some pocket divide tabs. Get organized, get proactive, and be the guide and the guard to your health.