Slow going

It's been 10 days today since surgery.  I am still not feeling super great.  I was told that it could take several weeks before I start to feel better.  My surgery was Monday of last week.  On Thursday (last week) I called my doctor's office because I felt like I had a UTI.  I went in and they put my on another antibiotic.  (I was already on an antibiotic for the surgery)  On Saturday, I was just not feeling good.  Major UTI symptoms and I was leaking a lot of urine.  Just what everyone wants.  (Sorry, too much information).

I made the decision to call the doctors office and talk to whoever was on-call.  The doctor that answered was not the one that did my surgery.  I started explaining to him what was going on and all my symptoms.  It was like I was just talking to myself.  When I would pause, I would hear nothing.  No sounds of "okay", "yes", no questions, nothing.  He finally said, "I don't understand what the emergency is."  I told him that it wasn't exactly an emergency, but that I wanted to know if it was fairly normal, or if I needed to be doing something about it, or be seen.

When I hung up the phone I was fuming mad.  If you looked closely, I'm sure you would have seen steam coming out of my ears.  The doctor was absolutely no help and just gave me a lame, brush off answer.  I was so mad, and after a minute I called him RIGHT BACK.  I basically gave him a piece of my mind.  I told him that it may not be a big deal to HIM, but to ME it was a big deal.  I said, "Do you think I am just sitting at home with nothing to do, so I decided to call you?"  I let him have it for several minutes.  I did not hold back.  He then started apologizing and answered my questions and offered to go to the office and meet me.  I didn't end up going in.  I felt like he needed to know that he should be a little more helpful and kind when a patient calls in with questions.  It's not like I was wanting him to prescribe me drugs or was asking anything hard of him.

At the end of the phone call I apologized and explained to the doctor that I have been going through breast cancer treatments and that it's been a rough year.  But, I didn't completely let him off the hook.