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Two months after my doctor at the community health clinic, Betsey,
had placed me on antibiotics, I had started to dramatically improve
and I returned to Denver's Premier Medical Center to pick up my three
month supply of fat enzymes. While there I noted the improvement in
my condition and the reason, and my doctor there told his supervisor
and apparently all hell broke loose. It was at my subsequent visit to
PMC three months later that I found this out as my doctor there,
whose only contact with my health care was to copy a prescription
note during the past year so their pharmacy would supply the fat
enzymes to me, sheepishly spilled the beans as to what had
happened.
It had been the general medical consensus in Colorado over the past
three & a half years that my health concerns should not be
addressed. Reasons for this were wild and varied when I would hear
about them. Most, if not all, of the reasons were not based on
reality, but on the ego of the imaginative doctors involved. The one
medical doctor who had taken my health issues seriously three years
earlier, Dr. Smith, had been run out of the state. In part it was
because he was one of our state's first practitioners of 'Clinical
Ecology', a field with the focus that many of our health problems
were due to allergens and intolerances in our daily environment.
Even though, in practice, he was little more than a souped-up
allergist, it was a new concept that the Colorado Medical Community
didn't want to see take root. As a result, Dr. Smith's existence in
Colorado had been controversial but after he treated me and confirmed
that some of my medical concerns were based in reality, the medical
community had to get rid of him less some more respected doctors who
had been poo-pooing my health concerns might have their
competence questioned. So three months after treating me, Dr. Smith
decided he had to leave the state rather than fight to retain his
medical license in Colorado.
For the next year & a half, the medical community of Colorado was
happy as my health concerns were once again being ignored and thus
their reputations were not being brought into question while they, in
turn, continued to trash my own. Even Betsey had spent her
first year with me by ignoring my health concerns to the point of
sending me to a psychologist to address a bulging spinal disc. Why
had she bucked the establishment and prescribed me antibiotics in the
Fall of Nineteen Ninety? Had she begun to have some doubts of her
own? Had my single appointment with her since seeing Jude, my new
counselor, made the difference with my using the comforting &
pondering tone I learned from him
when discussing my health issues with her?
Had he called her up and vouched for me after his discovery that my
fears of being persecuted by the medical community had turned out to
be true? Or had it simply been a case that she truly thought my
headache that Fall really was a sinus infection which required an
atypical treatment of five hundred milligrams of Cephalexin four
times a day for a whole month? Then to be extended for a second and
third month despite the fact that it wasn't addressing the headache
pain itself?
It was now clear why Betsey had gone into a flurry of having my
medical concerns looked into by other doctors at the start of the
year, as I now knew she had been threatened by the medical
establishment of Colorado once they knew she was treating me
seriously. And while two of the consults had affirmed my health
concerns in the neurological area, the gastroenterologist review of
my intestinal issues had found nothing. Was it because the
problem could not be found now that I had been on four months worth
of antibiotics? One thing we did notice was that if the
antibiotics were discontinued, my intestinal problems began to
return. So Betsey had concluded to keep me on a maintenance dose
indefinitely to allow my continued improvement.
After I had been told about this behind the scenes threatening of her
by the medical establishment, I asked her about it at my next
appointment and while she confirmed it had taken place, she really
didn't want to get into the details of it as she felt medical
community politics was not something a patient should have to
deal with. By the following month she told me she would be leaving
the state to establish her own practice in Kansas. When I asked if
it was due to the medical community politics, she confirmed it was.
She had wanted me to be transferred to a new doctor just starting at
the clinic and gave me his name, but told me that the head of the
clinic had vetoed that decision insisting that he, himself, would
take over my continuing care. As she felt the head of the clinic
wasn't going to be a good choice for me, she was giving me the new
doctor's name as there was nothing stopping me from making an
appointment directly with him to continue my care. I thanked her for
the thought, and kept the name of the new doctor in mind, but told
her I would like to see the head of the clinic just to hear from him
personally. She understood.
While I had nothing to speak of to thank her with, I did know she was
also a fan of 'The Other Show' I liked and had written speculative
scripts for, so I printed up two more copies of my latest scripts. I
returned to the office the following week, her last, and I offered
her the copies in thanks and hoped she enjoyed them and wished her
well on her new practice. She thanked me for them and we exchanged a
hug.
The following month I returned for my appointment with the head of
the clinic. By this point I had over eight months of training by my
counselor, Jude, as how to handle emotionally troubled people and
that knowledge came in very handy. When the head doctor of the
clinic came into the exam room he was all shrieking and yelling,
pacing the floor as he did so without even seeming to think of
sitting down. He called me many names, disparaged my character, and
let me know he knew I had been faking all of my health
problems these past many years, regardless
of what the neurological
consultants had found. Rather than being sucked into his
emotional outburst, I sat calmly in place and just observed his
behavior and once he was finally done I simply, gently asked, ''Does
this mean you won't be renewing my antibiotics for this month?''
His energy having been spent from his tirade, he scoffed and then
went to the counter and pulled out a pad and his pen. He threw the
renewal prescription slip at me and left the room. On my way out, I
scheduled my monthly follow-up appointment with the new doctor who
had joined the clinic.
I had met a member of the beast which had been disparaging me over
the past three & a half years behind my back and found that,
other than bluster and hatred, there was little else there...
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