Shortly after 5:00 pm today, my vet will make a house call to euthanize my beloved companion, Sierra. For the past 5 years, this loyal, loving cocker spaniel has shared every moment of my life… has given me a reason to get out of bed in the morning.. has consoled me through the worst physical and emotional devastation. Now she is dying. Tonight my vet will ease her passage from this life and take away her warm body.. a body which has lain beside me as my loyal guardian, healer of my heart, keeper of my soul. Sierra will be gone before the sun sets tonight, leaving a void in my life that can never be filled again. One thing I can say with complete certainty of my life…my dogs have shown me what true unconditional love is all about. If not for Sierra, I would have given up long ago. Sierra has given me the most precious gift possible when I most needed it.
I cannot even imagine what tomorrow will be without her.
This video depicts exactly what Dr. der-Sarkissian saw when I consulted him again last year. He watched as I demonstrated where and how tension and fixation the soft tissue has been pulling my internal and external anatomy to such an extreme degree that I am forced to press a piece of wood into my neck to breathe and close my jaw. As I became exhausted and breathless in my effort to show and explain this nightmare, he watched. He did not examine me by duplicating my own “corrective manipulations” to feel what muscles or their insertion into bone may be (is) torn or what function I am replacing by having to dig a piece of wood neck with force enough to exhaust me. The frustration, humiliation and utter hopelessness of his passivity is indescribable. I finally asked him to feel the force necessary to reposition the anatomy so I could breathe. He did this only after I took his fingers with my own and placed them against my jaw, held them in place for a few seconds without “palpating” or moving the fingers in a way which makes it impossible NOT to appreciate the abnormal detachment of the entire layer beneath his fingers from the bone beneath. The layer of tissue is so scant (due to Dr. E’s removing too much of it and “tightening” by pulling the DETACHED layer beneath the skin in vectors of tension even a mortician would not use in “setting the face” of a cadaver.
Dr. D never tested basic things directly related to my symptoms like asking me to protrude my tongue, lift the chin and protrude the tongue, etc. He did not even perform a basic exam of the neck that even my dental hygienist used to do before I was forced to stop having regular dental care in 2004. Instead, he said he “observed” my breathing and concluded that “anxiety” was responsible. This erroneous assumption is both arrogant and dangerous.
This experience instilled a real FEAR of what might happen if I ever collapse in some public place (a very distinct eventuality) and helplessly end up in the hands of doctors. If a surgeon who makes his living operating on the anatomical areas I must manipulate myself to breathe, while he looks on as if what he sees before him is “insignificant”, how can I trust any doctor not to cause more harm or injury should I end up unconscious in an emergency situation? I cannot. The thought is more than distressing.
The following areas of medical negligence are easily manipulated by doctors who never intend to treat “blacklisted” patients.
1. Delay in treatment due to incorrect diagnosis
2. Delay in treatment due to no diagnosis
3. Misinterpretation of diagnostic test or x-rays
4. Inadequate physical examination
5. Improper performance of diagnostic tests or x-rays
6. Inappropriate diagnostic test or x-rays
7. Misinterpretation of information from history or examination
I have been the victim of every one of these and more. In fact, as my condition got worse, my medical records ironically reflect the opposite. For example, the diagnosis on my first MBS study was “dysphagia”. Later, when swallowing was much worse, the diagnosis was “MILD dysphagia”. And the last one done in 2007 when it had already become impossible for me to swallow at all, even dry swallow, with my head in a neutral posture, without the aid of pressing the “wooden paddle” under my jaw because it was and is physically IMPOSSIBLE for me to prevent my tongue retracting and jaw pulling open, the report was so full of insinuations about “anxiety” that it may as well have said the problem was “functional”.
There is a distinct pattern and identifiable point when it becomes very evident that specialists begin to back-track on anything they may have written into the record previously which indicates a problem stems from surgical error or is iatrogenic in origin. That is when “functional component” begins to creep into the doctor’s notes. It is a blatant turning of the tables deliberately done to avoid proper diagnosis.
In my next post, I will show you the trail of medical records which reveals a glaring pattern .. a systematic method by which the patient gets worse and how every doctor reading the notes or reports of their colleagues actually influence the way they perceive the patients problem enough to change their original findings. This phenomena, which Dr. Jerome Groopman (”How Doctors Think”) calls “confirmation bias” can literally be fatal to patients.
Shortly after 5:00 pm today, my vet will make a house call to euthanize my beloved companion, Sierra. For the past 5 years, this loyal, loving cocker spaniel has shared every moment of my life… has given me a reason to get out of bed in the morning.. has consoled me through the worst physical and emotional devastation. Now she is dying. Tonight my vet will ease her passage from this life and take away her warm body.. a body which has lain beside me as my loyal guardian, healer of my heart, keeper of my soul. Sierra will be gone before the sun sets tonight, leaving a void in my life that can never be filled again. One thing I can say with complete certainty of my life…my dogs have shown me what true unconditional love is all about. If not for Sierra, I would have given up long ago. Sierra has given me the most precious gift possible when I most needed it.
Stumble It!
