TRUTH IN HEALTHCARE XVI

DOCTORS and assorted revisionist records and history

i notice from my own medical history that it slightly changes from month to month and from doctor to doctor. its the old game called "telephone"" where the message changes as it is told from person to person. doctors do not appear to be different from ... human beings. every story changes upon retelling, a word here, a period there, a shortening of a sentence or series of words, a nicer presentation, a slightly different perception, or understanding, or an attempt to not bore you to death, or the doctor was looking at the wrong person's record, or covering themselves, etc. this is written into your record as fact and would probably hold up in court.

no, you didn't have syphilis as the doctor said you had poison ivy. this actually happened to me although i was a virgin at the time. i'm sure i would have been stoned by my neighbors at the time if they knew what the doctor said. i wonder how much of this disease he saw in my neighborhood in the 1940s. my grandmother used this doctor and said in his defense that his waiting room was always full.

i noticed some changes in my medical record yesterday. one item stated that the transplanted kidney started up late. i don't know what that means. i was discharged from the hospital on the friday after the procedure which occurred on tuesday feelin' pretty good. my system was totally functioning properly as i recall right from the start. someone may be covering their butt because i was prescribed too much medication degrading my immune system and became very sick about 10 weeks later. feeling great ... ummm .. pretty good right now on minimal meds.

saw my regular, local nephrologist for the first time yesterday since december. he commented on my minimal med regimen and may have said, "thats a minimal med regimen" or something like that. when i commented on the record he said nothing.

y'know, the record is the record. those are the facts. who you gonna believe your eyes or the record?

TO BE CONTINUED. NEXT: ODDS AND ENDS.

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