Walking the Line

In the last six months, I've been walking the line.

The line between nurse and patient.

If you ask most providers, they will confirm that nurses make lousy patients. Hell, you can ask my friends and they will whole-heartedly agree. I am no exception. I detest being on the other side of the stethoscope. I hate allowing doctors to poke and prod me. I hate having to sit in an exam room, biting my nails waiting for them to saunter in and deliver bad news. I hate that I have five prescription bottles on my nightstand. I hate that I make more visits to the clinic than any average 25 year-old should. I hate having to constantly justify and try to legitimize my pain. I hate trying to coordinate my life around my appointments. I hate it when a provider cancels the day of the appointment, twice, and expects to reschedule for a third time. I hate not getting the answers I want or that I deserve.

In essence, I hate being a patient.

This entry wasn't intended to be a bitch session but it sure seems to be unfolding that way! In all these blog entries, I have danced around what my back injury is and how much it affects my life. I have neglected to detail the trials and tribulations of being a patient AND being a nurse. I plan to clear the air here and now.

The diagnosis attached to my particular injury is as follows: sacroiliac joint dysfunction with a closed dislocation of the sacrum and pyriformis syndrome. In non-medical terms? The junction of my hips and sacrum ("tailbone") is out of whack and my muscles are pissed off about it.  Even this diagnosis has been heatedly debated amongst my care team. Who are these people? Well, let's see, there is my occupational health doctor who originally started treating me. Then there was my physical therapist, then two different chiropractors in New Hampshire over the course of 6 months, a nurse practitioner in pain medicine, a pain medicine physician for a steroid injection, an anesthesiologist for another steroid injection, another chiropractor, another pain medicine physician for plasma injections, two case managers, and a massage therapist. Lost yet?

Amid all the appointments, injections, adjustments, and physical therapy I was still practicing as a nurse. Still taking care of patients while trying not to be one at the same time. Many times, people perceive those who work in medicine as invincible. As if we were not human, we never get sick, never get hurt, never falter, never fall from our pedestal. After going to a few of my appointments still dressed in my blue and white scrubs and getting inquisitive stares from my fellow patients in the waiting room, I now pack street clothes for all my appointments in an effort to avoid imploring eyes; somehow ashamed that I have let my patients down.

To this day, I still feel as though I am not allowed to be injured. I must simply "suck it up," I tell my chiropractor. I am a nurse. I've studied every system of the human body, am acquainted with multiple disease processes and countless medications. I don't need to be cared for, it is my job to take care of others (a line my close friends have, no doubt, heard many times).

But having all this knowledge and skill doesn't protect me from injury or sickness, it doesn't make the pain go away or become easier to deal with. Despite being a child of the system, I still have to navigate through the immense ocean that is the American medical system. I am still at a loss as to how people who do not work in medicine make their way through and get what they need.

The answer: they don't.

Walking the line between patient and nurse has taught me a great many things and opened my eyes to what we in the medical industry can do better. I now know how my patients live. How pain creeps into every nook and cranny of a persons life, chews it up and spits it out. How having multiple medical appointments in a week can ruin a person's social and home life. How managing and coordinating complex care can wear down a one's psyche.

The best and worst part of it all? I didn't come upon this knowledge by paging through a text. I learned it by living it.