Mo
1/5
I deliberated a lot about leaving a public review. I never do.
Save the nurses, the care here is nothing short of terrible.
Twice now, I have been written off as having anxiety.
The first time ended in a hospitalization for which no ambulance was called. I passed out in the car.
That ended up being Campylobacter Jejuni IN MY BLOOD. It was written on the ER report that as I struggled to breathe my hands cramped from lack of oxygen and I yelled “my hands, my hands!” This confused both me and my mother, who was there the entire time. My throat being closed, I wasn’t exactly capable of hollering (:
And actually this was my second visit for that, they dismissed it as the flu the first time, despite me saying I’d never been so sick in my life.
So the infection only got worse, and I spent days of hell in the hospital.
Would the infection have gone to my blood if you had just listened the first time? I wonder.
Since then, I have been diagnosed with Mast Cell Activation Syndrome, a condition causing sometimes severe allergic reactions, to pretty much everything.
This was as a result of my blood infection, which I firmly believe if it had been taken seriously the first time, could potentially have been prevented and not wrecked my health. I’m an 18 year old girl who is in bed 90% of the time, vomiting most days. In pain all of them.
Yesterday I went in because I wasn’t able to breathe (a typical symptom of MCAS, because yes, these symptoms do present with underlying conditions other than anxiety) at this point I had been awake, no sleep, for nearly two full nights.
I was experiencing sinus pressure and pain, stomach pain, dizziness, as are all typical of MCAS.
Oh, and the breathing symptoms had been increasing in severity for around a week, love how the notes state they started the same night I came in.
But of course, I’m young, I don’t know my body, and my condition isn’t real.
The substantially elevated inflammatory levels must be from my hysteria, right?
Anyway, they hit a peak last night because, I’m assuming as per usual, I ate a trigger and my body responded.
Terrible chest pain, erratic heart rate, low blood pressure. I occasionally have a slightly elevated heart rate when experiencing an allergic reaction, but this IS NOT MY NORM.
I never experience these symptoms unless I’m about to, or am having a severe reaction.
After taking contrast Dye, I ended up having a further reaction and vomiting so profusely I have burns in my throat, notes claim this reaction was remedied by Benadryl, because I said I felt somewhat better.
Actually, I was trying my best to appear collected, knowing anything I do could label me anxious, I vomited at home, and in the morning the next day. Also now running a fever with severe stomach cramps, which I wasn’t previously to being administered the dye.
They sent me home worse than I came, just swapped old symptoms for new.
The steroid DID allow me to breathe which is nice, good to have open airways for the first time in a week, who would have thought medication for allergic reactions would help anxiety so much!
Had the doctor ask if I “might be feeling a bit anxious,”
as I told of the burning bile in my chest from contrast dye, right before I vomited (because as usual, I know when a reaction is coming, and did in fact end up having a dye allergy)
and then proceeded to diagnose me with an anxiety attack.
It’s so damaging to have these things not only suggested to people with chronic illness, but on record as legitimate factors.
I hope these people don’t have their future career, life, everything altered in a blink until they’re in bed struggling and in intense pain every day.
A little empathy goes a long way, and most people (yes, young people too) don’t create bs symptoms or trick themselves into having placebo symptoms for years; most extreme diagnosis’s are NOT easily obtained.
It would have been easy to confirm the diagnosis by calling my allergist. Was it perhaps because it’s just so much easier to label medical issues in young patients as anxiety?
