Navy doctor story:
Wife had a bad car accident about 5-6 years prior to getting pregnant, and had chronic back pain from the accident. Doctors in LA (where the accident happened) took MRI’s immediately and said the pain could get worse throughout the years, which it did.
One of the 4 different doctors who sees my wife for her pregnancy (couldn’t just get one doctor to feel comfortable with through the whole pregnancy like civilians usually get) prescribes two different NARCOTICS for the pain, when she’s 4 months pregnant.
We do some searching about the drugs on WebMD, and she decides it’s not worth the risk, and deals with the pain.
Second doctor she sees for a regular check-up looks at her file and sais that she wouldn’t have prescribed one of those drugs to a pregnant woman, and asked my wife if the other doctor knew that she was pregnant. Since the other checkup was BECAUSE she was pregnant, we assumed the doctor knew.
This doctor prescribes a non-narcotic drug that helps with the pain, and isn’t a major risk of KILLING our unborn child.
Fast forward to delivery. We are directed to go to a civilian hospital by a military nurse because the contractions are close, and we lived 45min. from the base. We get there and are told to wait and come back later. Okay, that’s normal. No problems there.
Her contractions are closer and stronger, so we go back and are ultimately seen about 10 hours after the first visit. We notice the same doctor is working, so it’s obvious she has had a long day. An hour goes by and my wife is ready to go into labor. I go out into the hall to tell the nurse, and one acnowledges. We wait over 10 minutes, and my wife is affraid the baby will come out, and there’s no nurse. I go back out to get her, and she’s chatting with 2 other nurses, laughing about some joke she heard. I make it clear that my wife feels like the baby will come out, and get the nurse in there (wife is on the table already, and the nurse had her situated so that if the baby did come out, it would land on the floor about 3 feet down).
Nurse goes in and sees that wife is dilated 10cm and is ready for labor.
Nurse has my wife push for about 15-20 minutes total, half of the time the nurse is away from us at the sink, or somewhere else in the room.
The nurse calls the doctor in (first time ever speaking with this doctor now) and the doctor says that the baby’s not close enough, and we have to go to a c-section. Again, this is after only 15-20 minutes of labor, when we’ve heard of women being in labor for many hours.
Doctor brings us in for the c-seciton, sits me at my wifes head, and I hear one say to another “what’s that, put that back in!” in a stern wisper. God knows what they took out of my wife.
Wife has baby, and is in terrible pain thinking she’s going to die from the c-section. Ultimately, the doctors tell her the pain could last up to a year, but usually no more than 3 months.
The pain at her section was BAD for over a year and a half. Anytime she called about the pain, she was told that there’s nothing they could do about it.
Fast forward a year and a half, doctor prescribes a drug for my daughter’s bronchiolitis, and again, another doctor says he wouldn’t have prescribed that drug for my daughter, being only 1.5 years old, at least not without trying a weaker drug first.
I don’t trust doctors anymore.