UCLA Trip a Com­plete Bust

(Note: I will be refer­ring to the doc­tor we went to see as Dr. X.)

Har­monie fin­ished pack­ing up the car, we talked about if we needed any­thing else and then got in the car. The trip was finally underway.

As we left Las Vegas, the excite­ment was rac­ing through us. We couldn’t believe we were finally head­ing down to a major Uni­ver­sity for med­ical treat­ment. It’s some­thing we had waited over six months for. The drive down seemed to go by quickly. We stopped for lunch about half way, just long enough to stretch our legs and eat, then con­tin­ued on.

When we entered the Los Ange­les val­ley, the usual south­ern Cal­i­for­nia traf­fic became a night­mare. We fought traf­fic and made it to the hotel and got set­tled in. We stayed at the same hotel where we went for our one year anniver­sary, the Trav­elodge Santa Mon­ica. We like to stay there because they have a full kitchen in the room, so we don’t have to waste money eat­ing out.

We decided to call it a night early, greatly antic­i­pat­ing the next day’s appoint­ment. We tossed and turned all night. When the alarm went off in the morn­ing, we had only got­ten min­i­mal sleep. Our adren­a­line was surg­ing. We might finally be at the doc­tor that can help me walk again. We loaded the car back up and took the short five minute drive to the clinic.

We got to the build­ing and took the ele­va­tor to the sec­ond floor.  We checked in and filled out some paper­work. We were called back fairly quickly so we took that as a good sign. The nurse took my vitals and then we waited.…

And waited.…

Finally one of Dr. X’s res­i­dent doc­tors came in and started inquir­ing about my pain and what I was exposed to in Iraq and Afghanistan. He seemed intrigued by every­thing and told us that we had come to the right place and they would be able to help. He left the room to go con­fer with the doc­tor and again we waited.

After a lit­tle while Dr. X walked in. Wear­ing a pin striped suit with pur­ple socks, he momen­tar­ily seemed very nice. Until he started talking.…

He pro­ceeded to tell us the fol­low­ing things:

1. That he sees noth­ing wrong with my knees.
2. That peo­ple have fat col­lect in dif­fer­ent areas, mine just hap­pens to be in both of my knees.
3. That they are ABSOLUTELY NOT tumors in my knees, it’s just a col­lec­tion of healthy fat tissue.
4. It’s nor­mal for fat to replace mus­cle when you aren’t up walk­ing around.
5. That I have severe nerve damage.
6. That I have unex­plain­able back problems.
7. Insisted on tak­ing an x-ray of my hip, which he found noth­ing on.
8. That if I have a bunch of tox­ins in my body, there is noth­ing he can do about it.
9. That he is a sur­geon, not a doctor.
10. He tried to force a cor­ti­sone injec­tion on me, say­ing the pre­vi­ous one was done incorrectly.
11. When we asked if he had seen the infor­ma­tion about my last cor­ti­sone injec­tion, he responded “No, it would take me hours to go through the med­ical records that were sent to him.”

So as you can see, these things didn’t make Har­monie and I very happy. Now, let me cover these from my point of view and from what I have been told from five pre­vi­ous doctors:

1. Obvi­ously some­thing is wrong with my knees, OTHERWISE I’D BE WALKING!!!
2. Oh good, I guess I just need lipo­suc­tion in the back of my knee. If only we had known! So just nor­mal fatty cells are caus­ing this much pain? Likely..
3. We already knew that they were “fatty tumors” and not any­thing else. He per­sis­tently cor­rected us when we said tumors, say­ing it absolutely isn’t that. It’s a col­lec­tion of fat cells and to stop call­ing it tumors. Every other physi­cian we’ve seen who actu­ally has reviewed my case has called them tumors.
4. Dr. X couldn’t under­stand that the TUMORS had arrived well before I couldn’t walk any­more. He didn’t seem to under­stand the tumors are the cause of me being in the wheel­chair, not the result of it.
5. Severe nerve dam­age was a new one on us. While we are will­ing to explore this avenue, not a sin­gle doc­tor or test has indi­cated any sort of nerve damage.
6. Unex­plain­able back prob­lems??? I have no back prob­lems. He tried to relate a back issue I don’t have to my knee pain.
7. Why the heck did I need hip x-rays? This one was baf­fling. As a pro­fes­sional doc­tor at UCLA, you’d think he would come up with some bet­ter test­ing than a hip x-ray
8. We already knew I have tox­ins in my body. How do you think I got the lung dis­ease? We weren’t ask­ing Dr. X to take the tox­ins out of me, we were ask­ing him to fix my knees.
9. This one really upset us. If you aren’t a doc­tor, THEN WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE!!!????? Last I heard, sur­geons ARE doc­tors, am I wrong? He may as well have described him­self as an idiot who is good with a knife!
10. I had to con­trol myself on this one. Har­monie and I went as far as call­ing the ortho­pe­dic doc­tor here in Las Vegas and got him on the phone telling him what was going on. He said “I’ve done hun­dreds and hun­dreds of knees injec­tions. I didn’t miss and had never seen a reac­tion like mine.” He even faxed the report over to UCLA and Dr. X didn’t even have the respect to go read it. Which leads me to…
11. When I con­tin­ued to decline his cor­ti­sone injec­tion because the last one did ter­ri­ble things to me, we asked him if he had read the report on my last cor­ti­sone injec­tion (the same one the doc­tor from Las Vegas just faxed down) and he said “The file is this big [made a sym­bol with his fin­gers], it would take me our hours to read your med­ical file.” This was a sur­prise to us! We told the nurse we weren’t com­ing down until they had gone over my med­ical records and she assured us he had and was still will­ing to help. So we were lied to, brought down on false pre­tenses, and made a mock­ery of all in one trip.

I would just like to add this is the fifth doc­tor we’ve been to over the last six months. My physi­cians have watched these “tumors” grow and the detri­ment it has had on my abil­ity to walk. Every­one who has been involved in my case agrees that these growths are abnor­mal and need to be biop­sied and researched fur­ther. It has only been due to the high risk of per­form­ing surgery on me that oth­ers have been unwill­ing to do so. How­ever, no one has had the audac­ity to sim­ply pre­tend there is no problem.

To say the least, our trip to UCLA was a com­plete bust. We got no help what­so­ever. This doc­tor may as well have told me that I should be able to get up and run around. I rolled out of there com­pletely dis­ap­pointed with the feel­ing that we were taken advan­tage of. At the end he said he wanted me to come back in a month.

If there is noth­ing wrong with me, WHY WOULD I NEED TO COME BACK IN A MONTH?????

Sorry, but I had to vent my frus­tra­tion. I even went to the appoint­ment guarded, but noth­ing could have pre­pared me for the ridicu­lous­ness of Dr. X.

If you have any ques­tions please leave a com­ment or get a hold of me through the con­tact page. I look for­ward to hear­ing your responses!