Medical Blogs

There came a time when I had to get an education... just in case my husband died or left me (God forbid) with three children and no real marketable skills. We had married when I was seventeen and had the kids in my early twenties. It was a given during the fifties and sixties that wives stayed pregnant and barefoot. But, when it dawned upon me that I couldn't manage the house payments on my own, off I went to nursing school (I was forty). We had one in college and two in high school, but I never wanted them to do housework in addition to their school studies, extra curricular activities and their jobs in a restaurant. In the end, all three paid for their advanced education and we provided them with room, board, laundry, all personal needs, a car and tons of love.
After I had the education, I went to work in a hospital for twenty years. First on a general med-surg floor with a smattering of peds for seven years, then on to the cardiac floor for four years and finally to maternity/nursery for nine years. I am an absolute fool for anything medical, so when computers finally entered my life I was thrilled to find all sorts of medical bloggers. I avidly approached each new blog and snickered at their rants about weird patients or drug seeking goofballs. Then, I read The Angry Pharmacist and his feelings about old people (oldfartitis...April, 2008) and realized that not all medical people are dedicated to helping the sick and infirm. In his ranting and raving, I saw genuine meanness with a small attempt to be super smart and chic. I love folks who come over here and read my blog and make comments. I love reading their blogs (my favorites are on the blog roll on the left) and making comments. We are a community and feel as though we know each other. I care when people have a problem and anxiously read their work to follow the latest outcome of a problem post. For example, Matty at Running on Empty has been writing a daily account of her grandson's battle with childhood leukemia and bone marrow transplant. This is real medical stuff coming from the heart of a real loving person. She writes of his daily struggle in his blog...Young Warrior, because he is too sick to do anything. Matty and Tayten have been at the mercy of medical types for over five months with two months to go. Working in a hospital is difficult and sometimes it hurts your soul to see the heartbreak there, so when nurses and doctors get a chance to have a laugh and let off some steam... they might step over the line and joke at some of the weirder patients that come across their path. So, I read and thought some blogs were really clever and I admit I laughed at some of their antics. But, then I started noticing that if someone disagreed with their point of view or challenged their dedication to the healing and compassionate standards in the comments sections, the commenter was torn to shreds. Nurse K from Crass Pollination, an ER Blog was one of my favorites and she is truly popular and witty in the blog world, but the further I read, the sharper the point gets on the end of her scalpel. While her views of ER are probably true to life, they are pretty snarkey. I asked a question in the comment section and was rebuffed to the extent that I am afraid to ever comment again. One thing I have discovered is that after finding a blog you like, you can follow endlessly to other blogs from one to another. It would be wonderful if these medical people could change their style just a bit... to educating and entertaining the public without the cruelty and lack of compassion.
I would offer you one bit of information.... be careful when you are answering questions from a medical professional and you get the feeling that they are forming a false idea of what you are saying. If one nurse, doctor, pharmacist or whatever writes a disparaging remark in your chart.... that little bit of information gets passed from shift to shift or person to person and your medical record or care is compromized. Way back when I had my second child, I was gingerly sitting on the edge of a chair to feed him his bottle, because I couldn't actually sit down. He started choking and gagging and I dropped to my knees on the floor and sat him on the bed to have access to him while he did a little projectile vomiting. I jerked on the emergency light and a nurse trotted in and took the little guy back to the nursery for real nursing care. Later that day, my doctor came into my room and asked me, "What's this I hear about you sitting on the floor to feed the baby?" So, from one busy nurse who had misunderstood the situation... I was suddenly some kind of kook or perhaps starting "post partum depression". This is what is happening in the medical blogs and they are supporting each other with such lack of savoir faire.