Huge Letter For Help (Dec. 17, 2007)

messages from cameo garrett and requests for help‏
From: cam huegenot (cameocares@live.com)
Sent: Mon 12/17/07 12:43 AM
To: rbennett@wvmc.com; sfreed@wvmedical.com; rbennett@wvmedical.com; rbennet@wvmedical.com; pfarmer@wvmedical.com; dicksiedael@aol.com; pfarmer@wvmc.com; sfreed@wvmc.com
Mr. Bennett,

I'm told you're in charge while Freed is on vacation. I have left msgs for you each night I've had pain. Tonight I am writing rather than leave another VM. I am too tired and in too much to write much more than the basics.

I am glad bone cancer did not show up on the bone scan of my back. However, because the report was exactly accurate, I question the detail of the scan (for a specific area like back, was SPECT done? or just a few shots taken?) and the analysis. The analysis is plain wrong. He says everything is normal except for slight scoliosis.

I have told you, that after I had my car accidents, I had full body xrays taken in 2004, before coming to Wenatchee. They were taken so manipulation could be done without injuring me and bc I hadn't had xrays taken after my last accident. There was nothing wrong with my spine curvature or vertebrae then. Any and ALL changes came after my childbirth in 2006, just 2 years later.

In childbirth, not only my tailbone was broken and fractured off in a fragment, but from the X ray taken at your clinic recently, it also shows fractured lower back vertebrae. Then, there is also the curvature which is new, and, according to the Xray report from Seattle, they found significant sclerosis, not scoliosis, sclerosis, of the right sacrum. Bad enough that they surmised it was from a degenerative bone disease. When I told them I had nothing there only 2 years earlier, this pointed to my childbirth trauma which has been dismissed and passed off in CWH records, later, as "a normal, spontaneous, vaginal delivery". There was nothing normal or spontaneous about it. It was forced, against my will, and was frankly, assault. I hadn't thought of it that way until I realized this is what it is when someone is forcing damages upon your body when you tell them to stop repeatedly, for over 3 hours.

Now, I suffer at the hands of others who cover for those who are responsible, and leave both me and my son to be insulted and to have chronic daily pain that, in my case at least, is not improving or remaining the same, but worsening. I ask for non schedule painrelievers, even anti-inflammatories that are stronger, and I get a prescription for Aleve, which is not any stronger than what I could take myself over the counter. I supposedly have oxycodone too, but it's so ineffective it offers very little. I have tried to tell you the pharmacist said Percocet and oxycodone are manufactured differently and metabolize differently in people's bodies, and i assume this is true with me, but you don't believe me. I tell you my pain is severe and I'm handed Aleve. I was also offered Neurontin, which I was told is for pain, and I tried it, even through the pharmacist asked me why it was prescribed to me if I didn't have sharp or shooting pain. I tried it and like all anti seizure meds, it makes me tired and slows me down. When I called in pain still, even with all this, I was offered to be put on stronger doses of Neurontin to eventually reach 1200 mgs, and offered muscle relaxants. I told Freed I couldn't care for my son and be on m-relaxants as they made me too dopey and out of it. If I were taking m relaxants and anti seizure meds, my brain, which is a muscle,would slow significantly, and the electric impulses which send msgs to and from my brain would slow. My brain would be mush and I would be in no state to care for my son...but at least no one would have to worry about me writing things in my public blog...

No one cares about my pain and suffering and in fact, it appears knowing I suffer gives satisfaction to some. I asked for a back brace, and when Freed thought I'd already signed up the lawyer, he was offering a back brace and even surgery if the bone scan turned up nothing, telling me the pain would then point to my need to have my prolapse fixed and surgery would be the cure. Then, when I stated I had not yet signed up a lawyer, then my bone scan was reduced from needing to take a half hour to conduct to only 10 minutes or less, I was refused a back brace when I asked for one, and nothing was said about surgery.

I had kept Freed informed that the pain meds were NOT enough, and told him how many oxycodone I needed and how they didn't work. I asked for something else and different narcotic. He said no to more narcotics which are at a low level, but was willing to pump me full of muscle relaxants and anti seizure meds which would have worse side effects and profiles than sedatives and leave me incompetent to care for my son. I asked for stronger anti inflammatories and got hardly anything. I was told I have developed a tolerance to the narcotics, as if it's MY FAULT, but nothing was ever said about how it could have been a tolerance to the ADVIL I had been taking for 1 1/2 years. Since childbirth I've been on Advil. In the last 7 months I was taking, under doctors orders, 800 mgs of Ibuprofen 4x/day. Plus 10 mg. Percocet and a couple other things. When Freed put me on the Advil again at 3x/day and lower levels of oxycodone, it was to be expected it didn't work. How long can someone take this much ADVIL and over the counter crap and NOT BE TOTALLY TOLERANT?!

If I didn't have untreated pain for so long, I wouldn't HAVE a tolerance to over the counter stuff. Now my pain is getting worse. I fall asleep at night, only to be awakened by pain. In the last 2 weeks I have become progressively worse. I awaken 2x at night and then fall asleep soundly after the pain relievers kick in. I wake up at about 12 or 1 depending on the time I go to bed, and again at 3 a.m.

The pain is very severe and dull and throbbing. The throbbing is new and in the last week, the pain has begun to radiate to my thighs from top of thighs to about mid-thigh.

Things are getting WORSE. WHY? I don't know. Maybe my prolapses are worse. I know I have to push them back in myself manually these days, after walking around. Sometimes, after sitting the wrong way. Maybe the fracture in my vertebrae that is popped out of alignment with my spine (that was not even photographed or picked up by bone scan?) is falling apart more and becoming more painful. Now and then I feel a twinge in my pelvis and shooting pain, but not the pain that hurts the most all the time, but especially in the morning and at night, is the lower back pain.

I asked if I could come in for a non-schedule shot. No one called me. For cortisone or something. I asked if I could have an MRI to get a better idea of what is going on because SOMETHING is going on and it's not just prolapse, though I think this could be getting worse.

I am not depressed and then feel pain. I am in pain and then feel distressed, and this leads to depression, and more accurately, despair. Hope deferred makes the heart sick.

I have hoped for normal healthcare. Just to have basic stuff squared away and my son can't get antibiotics for his skin rash or a diagnose of it because of politics, and I am refused relief from pain. May as well make me suffer and punish me for daring to question what happened in the delivery room. I have come to realize that it is not as if everryone doesn't BELIEVE in my pain. They know. It comes down to the choice of either helping me with the pain or putting politics before me. If I receive pain medication, it will validate my pain and may increase damages if there is a lawsuit for my injuries.

This is what the healthcare professionals have been reduced to: accountants.

I am accused of being demanding and every obscene thing and told, "there is no pleasing you". One would think I've been unreasonable. ANd yet I've asked for very precious little. At least, it would be little cost to you, unless you are only thinking about ways to prevent me from having records that interest a lawyer to take on my case for medical malpractice and intentional infliction of emotional distress and defamation. What does it cost you? And yet you know what the cost is to me, every day, and I've been calling to keep reminding you that I am not making this up.

In the Bible, there is a parable about how even the dog under the table gets the scraps. And how the woman tugged at the hem of Christ's garment. She did not sit back on the hill waiting for Him to come to her. She suffered and knew if she could only reach the hem, she would be healed.

I have been reaching and I have put out my hands more than once, only to have them slapped.

You have talents and skills that put you in a position to help relieve the misery of others. To whom much is given, much is expected.

I have only asked this clinic, EVER, for a solution to my pain. That is not too much to ask. Any one of you in my position would be distraught. You cannot imagine yourselves in the position of being discriminated against and cast aside as having problems that are more imagined than real. You have also had very little experience with real physical suffering. You, Dr. Freed, Pam, Me, Bennett. The pains and physical injuries of the three of you put together do not amount to the medical problems and pain that I have. It is not psychic pain. It is physical. And the physical affects the psyche. I fall asleep like a baby when I'm not in pain. And I still fall asleep, but I wake up. Twice. And I walk around the house, to get a drink, to turn up the heat, to take medicine, and to think about whether I should draw a hot bath or not at 3 a.m.

I used to think the doctors just didn't believe me or were misinformed or prejudiced thinking I was drug seeking. But then I saw how I was repeatedly refused a simple X ray to explain the broken tailbone I said was hurting so badly.


I got a bone scan, but the results are written up as if there is nothing abnormal going on and I've already seen the X rays. I KNOW how I feel besides. I was then refused any increase in pain medications that could HELP me. I even offered to turn in the remaining oxycodone I had that didn't work, for Percocet. I've tried oxycodone by adding my own tylenol and it doesn't work the same. Drug addicts do not offer to swap straight oxycodone for Percocet, by the way.

I canNOT take anti seizure medications for pain I don't have. I don't have enough nerve pain to merit the use and I DID try them, honestly, and they made me too tired. Same thing with muscle relaxants. I have been accused of being addicted to muscle relaxants in the past, by a Wenatchee doc too, by the way. The only pain medications that HELP me AND keep me awake still without weird side effects, so far, have been anti inflammatories and narcotics. I have tried everything else and after I have made an effort to try all these things, I am being refused any help.

I don't know why no one from this clinic ever tried to refer me to see a pain specialist if they didn't believe in my pain.

I think the prolapses are a problem. I do. I don't think that's everything, but it's been getting worse, symptomatically. I also think my stomach muscle separation is a problem. I forget about this one, but it's fairly significant and prevents my being able to hold myself together. I have had stomach problems since childbirth and I have sore spots and internal problems. I have felt my organs are not being properly supported. My back is broken. I don't just havve a broken tailbone, which affects support for vaginal walls and prolapse, but I have a broken back. This is, I think, getting worse or maybe it recently got worse. I mean, maybe that vertebrae was fractured and then rrecently moved out of alignment or is decaying or lost blood supply and this is why the radiating pain to my thighs. Because while the prolapse makes sense when I'm awake and walking or standing, why doens't the pain go away when I lie down? It's sometimes worse. Lying on my back doesn't help, lying on my stomach makes it worse, and lying on my side seems to be best but doesn't get rid of the pain. I think it's the broken bone issue. Because of the throbbing too. The throbbing is NEW. And I don't think I'd feel that from prolapse while lying down.

Any surgery I've had has been successful. I've never had a problem with a surgeon and my condition has always been improved. With my broken elbow (both times), it was a success and I have zero pain there except very slight arthritis rarely. With my broken neck, of course, good results and it's holding up well so far, though they warned me I'd need a new neck surgery in 10 to 20 years and that warning was in 1995. I do have problems with migraines bc of it. My knee surgery was a success and they should have done it sooner than waiting 7 months. By the time they did it, they had to remove MORE of my cartilage bc I had very severe blistering under the kneecap by that time, AND my knee was absolutely giving way, without notice. It wasn't false giving way and I've nothing to gain now from saying this. The knee was helped by surgery but I do have permanent problems with it now that I never had before, and I need painkillers that are stronger for it if I'm walking much at all. As for the lower back and tailbone and prolapse...All this stuff has been very painful and is getting worse. I agree, if you still do, that I need surgery. I think doing an MRI would give a better picture of where my actual pain is coming from. The MRI will show more on my spine problem AND might show what is going on inside my stomach and how the uterus is hanging or is supported. I feel an MRI should lend validity to my belief that something new is going on which is why I'm feeling worse.

I cannot go on like this. That I know.

I cannot have people trying to claim my physical pain is delusional, and refusing to treat this physical pain. I am not depressed with myself or who I am as a person. I have respect for myself and know I am thankful for the grace to have a moral compass, even if I am not always as patient as I should be with others who not have the same standards, or who do me harm, intentionally, or unintentionally.

It is difficult for me to live right now,because of the pain. I can't stay asleep, I can't get rid of the pain, I can't clean my house, I can't bend over without worrying, and then I am intentionally bending overtrying to stretch out my back because it is thrust in an abnormal position. I cannot sit long--for the last 20 minutes while writing this, my back has gotten worse. I am currently on 4 oxycodone (took 2 at a time, gradually), one 1/2 glass of wine, 1,000 mgs tylenol,and the Aleve. The only reason I would spend this time and effort writing this, is in the hope of getting some help with the pain through better medications until I have diagnostics and surgery. I have always weaned myself from medications when I am without pain. As for wine, I did not drink even one glass for the first part of my time with Dr. Said, on better medications. My pain was so improved, I didn't need alchohol to numb the pain that over the counter stuff wouldn't touch. After 7 or 8 months without even one glass of alcohol, I am now having to buy wine and take a glass at bedtime because the minute I lie down, I am aching and throbbing and things are "settling" with discomfort.

I should not have to explain like this,nor feel I should, or hope it will make a difference. It should not be this difficult.

Please help me. I need your help and I have no other place to go. I have tried and am blacklisted and have documented all the calls I've made to get a PCP, without avail. I've done all I can do. I cannot move to another state as I've been pressured by some to do. My grandmother needs me here. I need to be here for my son as well, because the rent is affordable out in the orchard now.

I am distraught, desperate, frantic, panicked, and brought to tears because of my pain. I am not myself and I am sorry you feel this has been a problem for your clinic. With the X rays that have been taken and the match with my report of symptoms, I do not see how it is possible to ignore my plea for help, or how it would be possible to refuse to treat the pain or think this is some kind of ruse. The bone scan didn't pick up on some things and the report wasn't accurate, even if reassuring to some degree. The bone scan does not negate my reports of symptoms or disprove anything. An MRI, I am positive, will prove some things. I believe I should have had an MRI a long time ago, when I was still with Dr. Butler. Dr. Butler just gave me narcotics and didn't want to do any diagnostics. I was the one who asked for it instead of narcotics, after 4 months had gone by. He didn't want to do it, and didn't want me going to any other doctor either. I believe he knew at that time, as did my midwife and the hospital and the nurse who was there during my delivery, that what happened to me and my son ammounted to torture. They broke our bones for only one of two reasons: 1., because they were discriminating against me believing I had a mental illness and so was not reliable in describing my pain and what was going on with my body and though it was in my head and not a physical problem with delivery, or 2. they wanted to ruin me and my son and make us suffer. The fact that my prenatal care was so bad before I even delivered, lends credence to the second theory. I had gestational diabetes and they didn't monitor for it. I had a urinary tract infection and reported all the symptoms, but they didn't do a simple urine test and instead I ended up in preterm labor because of kidney infection and back pain on the left side from kidney stone. Has anyone here had a kidney stone? Mabye that's something more common you could relate to. My pain feels like a never-ending kidney stone, without the acute "i can't breath anymore" effect. Back to prenatal care...I have been thin my entire life and I shot up 100 lbs and was not told it would put me at risk. They enouraged me to keep eating the same. I asked for a back brace and they refused to get one for me. They got me support maternity hose instead. I asked both my midwife AND Dr. Butler for the back brace. Refusals. I was just a normal pregnant woman with normal back pain and they told me I was making a bigger deal about it than most women did.

Yeah. It was all "in my head".

Look at the evidence.

I was right.

I was not lying.

I was not delusional.

They did not listen. They should have known. They had to have known. They allowed me to suffer and then defamed me to cover themselves and this continues to this day.

Sincerely,

Cameo