TTSOML #166: Wenatchee Valley Medical Center Problems

When I was forced to go to Wenatchee Valley Medical Center, I already had my reservations about them.

For one thing, they had been one of the clinics where I directly tried to get a simple X-ray and couldn't get one. Even when I got a PCP who Dr. Freed assigned to me himself.

I went to the Wenatchee Valley clinic for their walk-in a few times. But I had problems. First of all, Dr. Shaw, a woman doctor there, was a problem. The first time I ever saw her, she didn't know who I was and I was new to Wenatchee. She wrote me a prescription for anxiety or depression because I was in the middle of the Archdiocese litigation still. She was kind and warm. The second time I saw her was like meeting her evil twin.

The second time I saw her, she yelled at me and harassed me when I showed up with migraine or pelvic pain, after being turned down at the hospital. This was after I'd left the Columbia Valley clinic and they promptly sent horrible notes about me to every clinic, even if I'd never been there before. She came into the office and said she'd made a call to Dr. Butler's office, and that she wasn't giving me ANY "narcotics" and said, "You have some real issues and you need some mental help". She was so rude and angry towards me, I left her offices crying. I said not one thing back to her. But I was angry inside too, at what she'd done to me and I marched straight over to the information desk and asked to speak to the medical director, who was then Dr. Freed.

As I stood there, I told the reception desk women what had happened. Dr. Shaw came out of the clinic and walked all the way across the hall to the desk to nervously ask me to come back so we could talk. I confronted her in front of the other women. I repeated what she'd said to me and she mumbled and then left. When I got through to Dr. Freed, he told me Dr. Shaw had just called him and told him I was harassing her and that she felt frightened by me. I said to him, "I was NOT "harassing" her" and then added, "She was YELLING at me and insulting me and I got up and left without saying a word, after bursting into tears, and then she FOLLOWED me out. Dr. Freed, if Dr. Shaw felt so FRIGHTENED by me, why did SHE follow ME?" I then pointed out to him that he knew they had cameras which captured exactly what happened, and the receptionists at the front desk could also confirm it.

No one could argue with that, so they dropped it. But that wasn't the end of my problems there--just the beginning.

Two different nurses through this clinic, at different times, wrote into chart notes about me, lying about things they claimed I said. I found out later they thought I'd never know, because while regular chart notes are printed out at the patients request, with records, there were more "internal" notes which a nurse could make, which are not typically given to patients unless the patient knows about them.

I found out a couple of the nurses there were trying to blacklist me and lie about me without having me find out--they hoped.

I cannot remember their names now, because I'd have to go through records. One was especially adamant about claiming I was harassing her and a bunch of people, and I was NOT. This nurse wore a crucifix around her neck and I assumed, from this, that she was Catholic. She was very hateful towards me. The other nurse didn't seem mean on the exterior, but she purposefully wrote an internal note claiming I'd asked for narcotics, when actually, at that visit, I had NOT. I had asked her if the doctor would prescribe heavier duty anti-inflammatories, because I already knew he wouldn't prescribe narcotics. I specifically asked her about this, several times, so there was no way she got confused. I later found out she tried to sneak in an internal memo about me. The only nurse I actually looked up and was going to report, was the one who deliberately lied and claimed I was harassing her and made some comment about my son as well. She really went out of her way, and her name was Alison, and I'd have to find out the last name. Alison was bad enough that I looked up how to write a formal complaint against a nurse, to the nurse association. Her comments caused me to be disparaged by other nurses and clerks who were not typically a problem. She claimed she wanted security because she was "afraid" of me, among other things. I'm not sure, but I'm sort of thinking her husband was involved in law enforcement. Not totally sure about that though.

Alison would hang up on me when I called the clinic. So I'd have to call back and she'd hang up again, over and over, and then claim I was "repeatedly calling the clinic" as if I were harassing them when I was simply trying to get through. They had caller ID.

I had to go to Dr. Freed for severe back pain, which was mainly caused by external factors, by that time, of what was happening to me and my son out in the orchard house, but when I told him how bad it was, I had thought it was an MRI but I think he just did X-rays.

He took X-rays from an angle that hadn't been taken since my childbirth, and this is when the herniated lower back (very low) disc or fractured vertabrae was discovered. It was the first time my back instead of my pelvis was X-rayed. I actually think he did call it a herniated disc, but whatever it was, it had to do with my lower spine, and it was not only fractured, but out of place, bulging out. Dr. Freed claimed it was likely "sclerosis" and that it's a degenerative process, but I knew it was additional documentation of damage from childbirth.

That kind of "sclerosis" is very slow moving and I didn't have it prior to moving to Wenatchee, and I didn't have any falls. It also lines up with explaining why I have cauda equina syndrome. I had not just prolapse, pelvic fractures, and a broken and oddly displaced tailbone, but a lower broken spine as well. Which results in nerve compression and disrupts signals going to the brain for urination and other bladder or "that area" problems.

Dr. Freed gave me a prescription for narcotics because of it. But it wasn't enough, because nothing could mask the pain of what was happening which was outside of these already painful physical injuries.

I'm going to break over to posting about the computer and health problems, and then it will come back around to the treatment by medical people and what happened next.