Your Mental Health Files : Misdiagnosis through Misunderstanding
67Really, Now?
You have a right to access your own medical and/or mental health provider's files at any time. Misunderstanding often leads to misdiagnoisis, sure enough--but what Pam and I discovered today in her file from a previous clinic was just downright...hilarious. We're not ticked off; we're ROFLOAO. (Rolling On Floor Laughing OUR A***s Off).
There's way too much in that file to detail in a single hub, but here are a few tidbits:
1. Pam scored 144 on the Stanford-Binet I.Q. test when she was in high school. Despite some brain demyelination discovered on an MRI scan in 2003, she's still one of the sharpest critters on God's green Earth. Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner "C" met with the two of us for something like fifteen minutes one day--and graded my sweetheart's I.Q. as "AVERAGE".
We're grading "C" as "BELOW average".
2. Pam takes medicine "T" at bedtime. With that med, she generally gets a reasonable night's sleep--eight hours, sometimes more. Without it, she's a raving insomniac. Can't shut down her racing mind. We think her "normal" waking time of 4:00 a.m. led to the file entry which read, "Client states she sleeps 4 hours on T.".
So now they're convinced Pammie is perennially sleep deprived....
3. The one entry my redhead did find a bit upsetting was the obvious indicator in her file--written by Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner "S"--who clearly believed Pam was blowing smoke when she'd detailed some of her past history (on request). This one is also almost understandable, though.
My wife is, mental illness or no, a lifetime athlete of considerable talent. She was an Olympics-qualified gymnast her senior year in high school, graduated at the head of her class, obtained a pharmacology degree and worked for a time as a licensed pharmacist, raised silver blue Great Danes and Egyptian Arabians on a small ranch, knew Richard & Pat Nixon, met Gorbachev once, and was invited to Bill Clinton's first Inaugural Ball.
Yet she was also homeless for more than two years at one point, married a few times before I came into her life, and our finances at the moment are not exactly...stellar.
These two sets of absolutely true facts are, for an inferior therapist, difficult if not impossible to reconcile. So it's perhaps understandable when "S" completely dismissed my girl's entire life of considerable accomplishment with a one-word entry in the file:
Grandiosity??
As I've already mentioned, we could go on like this all night. You've got other things to do, though; it's time to wrap this up. Just one last entry, the "topper" that initially inspired this hub in the first place (redundancy intended). Here we go:
4. Yet another Psychiatric Nurse Practitioner (we apparently don't do so well with those, you think?), "K", met just once with Pam. I was not present. At that time, we were homesteading as hard as we could go. I was building our present home, literally hand over fist, but it was not yet quite ready for occupancy. Almost, but not quite.
We have an aged camp trailer which served as our kitchen and my office. However, to give Pam a little space at bedtime, I did not sleep in the camper. She did--on a 17-inch thick latex mattress with an extra gel topper, no less--but I racked out in a steel storage shed situated some 30 feet from the trailer.
No big deal.
Except...oh, this is important: We are married, on paper as well as heart-to-heart; we're not "shacking up" (or campering up, or shedding up).
How did "K" record our living conditions when Pam gave her the scoop? Thusly:
"Client says she lived in a camper but moved out and now lives in a shed with her SO (Significant Other) Fred."
That tore it. I mean, you've got to write a hub when silly people serve up a softball like that one, doncha know? For some time after we first read that line, I was going around the house, sing-chanting,
"She lives in a shed
With her S.O. Fred!
She lives in a shed
With her S.O. Fred!"
On a semi-serious note, consider the psychiatric misdiagnosis versus reality.
Reality: My wife is a brilliant, highly accomplished lady who has battled mental illness the same way she's battled every other challenge in her life--with sensitivity, determination, and absolutely indomitable will. She's had certain opportunities as well...and has utterly enjoyed them. (She still has a handful of Russian coins given to her by Gorbachev from his own pocket, for example, and treasures the time she had with the Nixons.) Bluntly put, my Pammie is one helluva woman.
Misdiagnosis: Inferior mental health practitioners at a clinic designed to (supposedly) serve the public see her as pretty much a dumbass, deluded loser who never gets any sleep 'cause she lives in a freaking shed, of all things. Kiss this one off!
Is it any wonder we had to leave that clinic after just one year to find an actual psychiatrist (not a Nurse Practitioner) with an actual brain?
Moral of the story: If an entire group of so-called health practitioners--either medical or mental health practitioners--can misjudge my redhead that drastically, it's at least remotely possible you or someone you love could benefit by snagging a copy of your own files. If there's nothing off base in them, you'll naturally be relieved...and if there is, you'll have solved a mystery, no longer wondering why "they" treat you the way they do.
Okay, okay. Maybe it's not really that hilarious after all....
CommentsLoading...
Fred, I often question who draws the line between normal and abnormal? How do we know the person who drew the line was standing on the right side of the line? In other words, who designed the ruler that measures human behavior? I would assume it goes by numbers of people who act a certain way. The group with the most people are sane, and the minority group are insane? To allow a less than qualified person to be making notes in a patients medical records borders on insanity in my opinion.
Frog Prince: Pam's all about damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead. Thanks for the kudos.
Mike: The trick in cases like these, we suspect, is that almost no one demands file copies of their records. If health practitioners KNEW that their notes were going to be scrutinized by the very subject of said notes, they'd at least be a heck of a lot more careful about coming to hasty conclusions--out of fear, if nothing else.
I also have (and always have had) a real problem with the term "patient". In my view, a doctor is nothing more than a hired hand with NO authority over my life. Period. Ever. I hire them, they work for me, I'm cutting their paycheck, and they can go straight to Hell--do not pass Go, do not collect $200--if they don't like it.
Which, as you can imagine, has seriously jolted more than one puffed-up doctor with a God complex over the years.
Thankfully, Pam's newest psychiatrist is a real gem. There ARE a few good ones out there--needles in a haystack, but they do exist!
Ghost, once again your story brings back the nightmares I experienced when I took care of my mother. I shudder whenever someone says America has the best healthcare system in the world...if this is indeed the case the world is in dire trouble. Hugs to you and Pam. Excellent hub.
Genna, I'm pretty sure the world is in "dire trouble", all right...but then, when has that EVER failed to be the case? Ask the dinosaur! Or the woolly mammoth!
Caveat: Beware not JUST the "system", but beware ALSO "human nature"--big time. Whether it's doctors, lawyers, teachers, firemen, ranchers, mechanics, laborers, or welfare cheats, both the 80/20 and 2 percent rules seem to apply. That is (a) 80 percent of the work gets done by 20 percent of the people and (b) 2 percent of the folks in ANY line of endeavor are absolutely awesome at what they do...while the rest of 'em scale down rather rapidly from there.
By which measure, Pam and I may well be "two percenters" when it comes to DEALING with "dingbat doctors". Some years back, before the turn of the century, we wanted a copy of her rather thick medical file but were stonewalled by the clinic. State law varies on that issue by more than you'd think possible, and those folks claimed that in their state (NOT Arizona), the clinic owned the files and didn't even have to give us copies.
Okay, so we countered, sitting out in the lobby, Pam pointing out that even if that WAS an accurate interpretation of the statute (it wasn't), she DEFINITELY had the right to at least SEE what was in the file--so, hey, bring the dang file out and let me SEE it.
Suckered 'em. We sat in the clinic lobby, going through the file...until a moment when the front desk gal had to head down the hallway on an errand.
SCOOT!!
We were outa there and gone in a flash. Since we had no phone at the time and no known street address, just a P.O. Box--and since we were very shortly going to be moving out of state without leaving a forwarding address, thank you very much--that was that. We had the complete file, they had zilch, deal with that, willya!
It was a good thing we obtained that file, too, for a number of reasons. One being, that was the first time we knew (from an entry made by the doctor) that he understood she definitely had fibromyalgia. WE knew it, but at the time, most of the so-called medical profession considered it psychosomatic.
We also expurgated several derogatory (and, as mentioned in this hub, wildly inaccurate) references to Pam from the file, comments more suitable coming from drunks in the bar than from health care practitioners.
Profoundly hilarious, incisively biting.
Everyone needs an advocate for healthcare. Your story proves it! I'm glad you could find humor in that disgraceful show of 'professional" patient evaluation.
I'm pretty much convinced that women with IQ that high and higher pretty much are not understood by the average folk. There is something about coupling a high IQ with a background of youthful success that causes many in society to tend to ostracize these kinds of folks, not intentionally, but simply as a reaction to encountering those who are unbelievably gifted and have extraordinary stories to tell.
Hi Ghost, great hub, I am like you darlin Pam, I have some challanges however, I must see what is in my medical chart for the very reason is that last hub I wrote about my nightmare in emergency room, they held me against my will, I am still waiting to hear from them. Tell Pam I am very proud of her, and your both lucky to have each other. Wonderful and informitive hub. rate up up love & peace darski
Chander Meha: "Incisively biting"--I like that!
Cat on a soapbox: It's taken us years to get to the humor part, believe me!
Jim: What you said.
Darski: Yes, we agree with you that we are both lucky to have each other. About your being held against your will: That's ALWAYS in the forefront of my mind when it comes to the medical profession. It hasn't happened to me, but in a couple of cases that was only because containing me was too dangerous for them to accomplish. Example: One old battleax nurse was trying to force me to use a wheelchair to go from the ER floor to a room on the 4th floor of a hospital in Spokane. I had a chest tube in at the time (following a bull riding accident)...but had WALKED into their building under my own power.
Hospital rules, she said.
No way, I said.
Two burly orderlies were preparing to jump me. I had my back to a wall, hot as an old Brahma bull backed into a corner, them not knowing I was aware of their position to the nearest millimeter. Had they decided to follow through, somebody could literally have died. I was that ready and that committed.
Fortunately for them, they were a bit afraid to go for it--because, what if they jumped this guy who'd had a punctured lung, and THAT was what killed him? Eh?
So they finally sent down this cute little nurse's aide who asked me if I'd be willing to just ride up with her in the elevator, against the rules, no wheelchair?
Yep.
I am going through serious medical dilemmas right now with my 76 yr old mom who has had a stroke and my idiot siblings who think drs are god, and there is no vehicle set up to deal with this horrible situation. need will find a way as usual. but the insight on the medical records is gold thanks
Glad you found it to be of use. It's downright incredible what can end up in those things sometimes....
The Frog Prince Level 7 Commenter 14 months ago
Now I must say that your look at these "misdiagnoses" is hilarious if it wasn't so pathetically sad.
You hang in their Pam and damned the torpedoes, full speed ahead in dealing with life as you know it.
Kudos on the penmanship Ghost. Well done and spot on.