Love this little buggar!
I’m totally in love with this little cria that was born to my friend Stephanie Mize of Gulf Breeze Alpacas. The cria was sired by one of our herdsires. Guess which one? (Looks just like his daddy) I could blog about this kid all week. And I will later. On the road today. But I had to throw out the gratuitous cute baby pic. Smooches.
Halloween 2008
Because I couldn’t miss the chance to share this. Watching Rachel Alexandra run is divine! Here she sets a new track record and barely breaks a sweat.
(A post in which I go way off the reservation into a rant about crummy healthcare.)
I’ve been fortunate not to have had a terrible complicated migraine in months. When I’m not in pain I’m not thinking of migraines. On Friday morning, I noticed the old, familiar light-flashing aura wash over me. I quickly remembered that I had a prescription for my migraine medication that I had not filled. My thoughtful husband left almost immediately for the pharmacy so he could be there as soon as they opened to get my Rx filled.
When he returned to the pharmacy to pick it up they told him it was expired and with it being for a controlled substance – they couldn’t fill it. Once he told me, I called my doctor’s office. Of course I couldn’t speak to the doctor but I did leave him a detailed message about the severity of my migraines and the serious neurological symptoms which should be in my chart anyway. They never called me back. I called again. They never called me back.
The receptionist remarked, “You haven’t been in this year.” I explained to her that I did visit the doctor specifically to get this very prescription at the end of 2008. I didn’t know the Rx had a magic expiration date on it. It didn’t say so on the paper copy. How was I to know this? If anyone would have given me a heads up to fill it right away – I would have. I still have the darn expired Rx so I can show them that I did not already refill it and come back “drug seeking”. Did they listen? no. Did they care a wit? I guess not. So it would have probably been to much to ask them to join me in a hug because, “Hooray, I haven’t needed the pain meds in the last 7 months”.
I tried to phone again after hours wondering if maybe I could at least leave another message with the answering service or machine. If I was super lucky my doctor might have been on call and I would have been able to speak with him. Or so I dared hope. Instead there was no answer. I guess this is their solution now to patient care - just don’t answer their calls. If it’s bad enough over the weekend they’ll go to the emergency room or the doc in a box and it won’t be our problem. Am I the only one feeling nauseous here?
If this was the first or second time I have experienced this lack of concern I would not be writing about it. This is after many times of being treated as a “difficult” patient just because I want them to give me a prescription that the doctor has already said was okay. Good luck getting to the doctor.
These days doctors are more well-guarded than most governors. You can NOT talk with them. Unless, I guess, you are wanting to pay a $35+ co-pay for an audience. For which I receive a lot of polite nodding and agreeing that “Yes, the system stinks. It’s not fair. I know you’re not drug seeking, and here’s your prescription”. My doctor apologizes profusely in person for the way I’ve been given the run around by the staff and never called back. He goes even further in his sympathies because he has a wife who also suffers from migraines. He knows how hard it is. He empathizes. He tells me he will get me an appointment with her fabulous neurologist.
Oh, I bought into it several times. The most caring doctor when you’re in the room with him. But once you leave that office, Sayanara to the concern. During my last visit I was supposed to get a referral to a neurologist according to the Doc. Never got one. Obviously I never got the pain medication either.
Now I realize that following up on these things is MY responsibility. And I dropped the ball. I goofed. Once the headaches got better and stayed better for months I forgot about it. I went on with my life, got busy meeting my many responsibilities, and forgot about the “what if” of another bad headache.
So here I am Friday. In pain, with the possibility of this pain progressing into agonizing, debilitating pain. The people at the pharmacy showed compassion but their hands were tied. It would have taken any number of people at my doctor’s office a matter of minutes to call in my prescription and save me from pain. Even calling in a dose or two until I could come in next week would have been preferable to being completely ignored.
I have worked in a hospital and other medical settings when I was a psychologist. I know what it is like to have a mountain of messages to go through at the end of the day to see what can possibly wait til the next day. Some things can wait. But how does a man whose wife suffers from migraines and “understands” and cares for his patients so well….how does this man abandon the patient who has been suffering from a migraine all day without as much as a call back? A call from him, or any human on his staff would have been sufficient.
Or is he unaware of who even calls because the gargoyles at the gate make those decisions as to what’s important enough to tell the Grand Poo bah?
We live in a smallish town with around 12,000 people, where we don’t have a lot of choices for family physicians. We switched several years ago when we couldn’t get return calls for a family member after he was discharged from the hospital where he spent almost a week suffering from encephalitis. What is going on with doctors who don’t seem to care about people’s severe pain? Are they devoid of empathy?
I debated over whether or not I should post on this topic. This tweet from @Zenasurialpacas helped me decide to go ahead with it. “I say blog away. What’s the doctor going to do? Refuse to call and leave you without pain meds?”
With the internet, we have a voice. The patients out there can be heard. This is a broad issue that affects millions of Americans each day. We need our doctors and we can’t talk to them. They truly don’t get paid enough anymore to spend more time with patients. I know that there are only a few hours in a day. But if the doctors can’t be in touch then they need to find a way to do better. Perhaps hire better nurses. We generally expect nurses to be helpful and caring but in my experience the “gatekeeper nurse” is often less concerned than the doctor OR the receptionist.
The system is broken down. We all know that. But what doctors need to know is that their patients do have a voice. With the internet, there are repercussions for letting patients fall through the cracks. Not only can people leave and go to another doctor, but they can also tell others how they feel about the care they receive over the internet. There are numerous places where people can go and rate their doctors and leave comments about the care they’ve received. Yahoo has a place to rate doctors, so does Angies List, and many more.
The internet has turned our world into one in which Consumers hold more power. Patients have access to more information than ever before. Hopefully this will result in an improvement in doctor patient relationships. Trust and positive regard must be the basis for any successful business relationship, medical or otherwise.
What do you think? Have you ever not been able to get in touch with your doctor when it was important? Do you think the internet will change how people relate with their doctors? Please leave your thoughts and comments.
Yesterday I started my day with a headache. A migraine headache.
I know that is what’s going to happen when I look at my computer or TV screen and see more flashing lights than usual. Next I see diagonal, flashing, silver, shaky lines cross my field of vision. The odd thing is – this doesn’t hurt. It just tells me I’m in for some hurtin’ pretty soon. Usually I can run grab some Exedrin, take it, curl up in the dark and disaster will be averted for the most part. (Did you know that Exedrin Extra Strength and Exedrin Migraine have the exact same medicine in them? The label is just different for marketing purposes.)
On other days, it is a whole different ball of yarn. Occasionally I have what is called Complicated Migraine. E-medicine describes this as where migraine attacks are accompanied by persistent neurological defects, such as paralysis. When I have one of these migraines the pain is excruciating. I often experience numbness on one side of my body from the arm to the tips of my fingers. Sometimes in both hands. Speech may become difficult. On a couple of occasions I have found it hard to find the words I was looking for (mild aphasia). In one of my worst attacks, when my oldest was a baby, I remember being unable to make a phone call. I tried punching in the numbers, but I couldn’t make my finger go to the correct button. I was trying to hit the eight and couldn’t do it. I knew I was hitting the 3 instead but my brain wouldn’t communicate properly with my hand to touch the 8. Scary stuff right?
Bad headaches run in my family. My mother and sister have such bad headaches that over the years they both have had to give themselves shots. However, neither of them experiences aura or the neurological symptoms that I do.
You’d think I’d have a team of neurologists. I went down that road once. It didn’t help. They found nothing exciting in all my scans and tests and tried to get me to quit breastfeeding so I could take medications. Medications that they had NO guarantee would help. Most of them really didn’t want to talk with me about any of it until I wasn’t pregnant or nursing.
The one thing all the neurologists and I agreed that my headaches were hormone related. No exciting “triggers” for me. Sure, too much chocolate or alcohol can give me a headache, but not the doozies with the neuro problems. I had 13 severe migraines the first trimester I carried my girl twins, 3 with my oldest daughter and none while pregnant with my son. Hello, estrogen poisoning. My migraines started with childbearing. Then there was the nursing of the darling babes. I’ve only been out of the baby-having thing for a couple of years. For so long I couldn’t take anything for “women who are pregnant or nursing” and I’m just now getting used to the idea that’s not me anymore.
I have avoided being a professional migraine patient because:
Getting medication for those rare days when I do get a bad headache is a trial with my primary care doc these days. And I have to face it – I don’t see my OBGYN as much as I used to.
So it’s time to go back to the neurologist. Hope he’s a good one…
Read the article from the Longmont Times-Call.
Hooray! They realize that Alpacas are not emus!
I have been meaning to tell you about this incredible website. How do you have a successful career, operate a farm smoothly, and keep the husband and children happy? I have no idea, but cooking with the crockpot can help!
This darling gal made it her New Year’s Resolution to use her crockpot every day this year. Visit her site for lots of great meal ideas that will save you time and money. Plus she’s giving away 5 FREE crockpots. A Year of CrockPotting: Happy Crocktober! Brand new eLume Give Away.
Can I take off my shoes first?
This week we had our herd health day. We usually have one of these every month. On this particular day we handle every alpaca on our farm. We give them a shot of Dectomax (a dewormer). This is to prevent the nasty meningeal worm which is carried by the white tailed deer and can paralyze, or even kill, an alpaca within a day. We also look at their toenails and teeth. If time permits we will go ahead and trim them. If not, we add them to a list of alpacas to trim another day. On herd health day, we body score the alpacas. This gives us an idea of their body condition, and tells us who’s too skinny, who’s too fat, etc. We weigh the little ones. For those over 50 lbs., we use a scale in our chute. For the smaller ones, we use a sling and a cria scale. Our farm manager, Jeremy (pictured right) and I discuss these alpacas and make a determination if we need to make any management changes.
For example, yesterday, we noticed that Honeybelle was a bit thinner than we’d like her to be. Well, she IS nursing a cria. Still, the cria was dragging her down too much. After looking at his birthdate and weighing him, we decided to wean him from mom. Next, we determined which pen to move Honeybelle into. This weekend, 4 alpacas are going home. That gives us room in our “skinny girls” pen, perfect for Honeybelle to move into. She will have access to alpaca chow and alfalfa at all times and should gain weight nicely after we remove the adorable, fuzzy parasite from her (her cria).
On a side note, we have found that when we wean alpacas, it is better to remove the mom from their current situation than it is to move the cria. Mom is going to be much better able to handle the transition to a new group. (These guys are a bit neurotic and we try to cause them the least amount of stress possible.) We used to move the cria into a new group. That was dumb. Here we were, taking a baby away from mom and moving him into a new group where most, if not all, of the alpacas in that group were a stranger to him. Talk about stress. If weaning is not done properly, you can lose the little weanling. Mostly because the stress leaves their immune system open to parasites and illnesses. Now we see weaning as a process rather than an event. If the weanling freaks out and is visibly stressed, we will do day-weaning. That is a process where we separate the cria from mom during the day and put them back together at night. Usually after about 5 days of this, mom and baby are ready for a true separation.
Back to herd health. This week we also checked everyone’s eyes and gums for signs of anemia. Only a few showed possbile signs so we made treatment plans for each of them. (Watching them closely was the plan for most) During the summer, the alpacas’ goal is to stay cool, so many of them try to stay as wet as possible. This has resulted in some seriously matted, yucky topknots with tips caked in dried mud. Think Don King meets PigPen. I brought my scissors out, and trimmed most of their topknots. They look better, and a bit funny. The new hairdo’s should calm down and look okay by National Alpaca Farm Days next weekend. You know how, when you get your bangs trimmed, they always look too choppy for the first couple of days? Same deal.
See ya on the other side of Tropical Storm Faye.
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