A Summation of Suffering in General Mental Anesthesia

Diatribe time! (Parts of this will be verbally graphic, read at your own risk).

https://www.gofundme.com/jayeeryk

Ok, so I need to get this off my chest. I’m angry and more depressed than usual. Part of the latter is just being so sick and not able to work etc… but one thing is really getting under my skin. The lack of ‘care’ in supposed health care.

It’s a fact (one in which I’ve lived 1000x over) that if you don’t have health insurance you’re treated like a piece of garbage in hospitals mainly. The nurses treat you well, the Dr’s… not so much.

Several things have happened to me over the course of the past year leading up to present day. To sum up:

1. During my 2 week hospital stay this past January, about 1 week in; a gastroenterologist comes up to me, leans down and gets right in my face and says with a serious look: “There’s a rumor going around that you don’t want to leave. How do you feel about that?”

My situation in that moment was this.

A. There because of ulcerative colitis. I was in excruciating pain. I was getting sick 20x a day or more. I was bleeding profusely. I had c-diff as well (which especially with a newborn at home meant that I couldn’t be around her or anyone really). I was also suffering with severe side effects from extremely high doses of medications like 250mg of Prednisone which caused such joint pain (and those of you that know me, know that I have an extraordinarily high tolerance for pain (I should warn you that I am not comfortable admitting this to all of you, but I’m nothing if not honest)) that I nearly killed myself had there been a sharp enough object nearby. (I was frantically searching for one as nurses came in). That incident caused me to also be seen by the hospital psychiatrist. Dr’s never figured out what was causing me to be in screaming agony, it lasted for days!!!

B. Does that sound like the sort of person that ‘wants’ to be in the hospital. Does it sound as if I was enjoying myself or having a good time? Being stuck with needles at all hours, not getting any sleep ( I already have insomnia and the steroids I’m on only exacerbate that issue). I never had any visitors and having one invasive procedure after another? Had I the strength… I would have punched him in the face!

1. My main gastroenterologist at the time has said that he won’t release me from the hospital (just as he didn’t the last two hospitalizations months earlier) unless I was going to the bathroom no more than 4x/day and with much less blood loss.

A. After 2 weeks in the hospital, I was just as sick as I was the day I showed up! All these meds and things that they were doing to me, causing me so much more pain than I needed to be in and just trying to counteract that with drugs like morphine did absolutely nothing! In fact, most times I refused pain killers. My body wasn’t healing, resistant to all treatments. Instead of Doctors talking to me and trying to figure why what they were doing (which is the exact same thing previous Doctors did back in the 90’s that didn’t work still wasn’t working; all they said to me was that I have a very rare and aggressive form of ulcerative colitis (I already knew this of course) and although they wouldn’t admit it to me, they didn’t know what to do.

B. Another gastroenterologist comes in that afternoon and says that she’s sending me home. What the fuck??? I mean, seriously? Why the hell did my gastro send me to the hospital in the first place if you’re just going to release me in the exact same condition I was in when I showed up? How unethical is this???

C. When I questioned her about it, she proceeded to ask me one of the most idiotic questions (2 actually) I’ve ever been asked. She asked: “How many times have you gone to the bathroom today?” Really? Everyday, these things are documented by my nurses and you can’t be bothered to read up on my chart before walking into my room? Now you may not think that’s unusual, but let me explain. C-diff is extremely contagious and it kills 30,000 people a year within 30 days of contracting it. When you have c-diff, no one can enter your room without first putting on a gown, gloves and mask. You’re basically treated like the bubble boy. That said: when I go to the bathroom I have to flush of course, and wash vigorously with soap and water. I responded: “About a dozen times so far”. It was about 1pm. She then asked: “Can you prove it?” Holy fuck!!! I can’t believe what I just heard! First of all, the nurses are very busy at this hospital (not to mention understaffed) I’m on a floor full of patients suffering just like me and you want me to not flush the toilet after I go? Then you expect me to stand there without wiping so a nurse can look at the toilet? Or… do you want me (with c-diff especially) to throw the toilet paper in the waste basket? And often I have to go again minutes later. So if a nurse doesn’t immediately respond to me, she can’t keep an accurate count and I still can’t clean up properly? Yet you want me to call a nurse in every time to look?

Any of my nurses would have called her an idiot just for saying that.

She then sent me home to my nurse’s surprise. Such as the way things are without health insurance.

1. To make matters even worse; my gastroenterologist had a very specific plan regarding my weaning off of Prednisone. Because I kept getting sick, this time he said to do it very slowly, go down by 5mg every 2 weeks until I was off. By now I was suffering with very serious side-effects of being on this medication for so long (Particularly, excruciating joint pains, swelling, confusion, short term memory loss & volatile mood swings) but the level of idiocy and lack of care by my Dr’s knows no bounds as I was released with only 1 week of Prednisone. I then called my Dr. and believe it or not, he refused to write me a prescription for Prednisone (even though he knew I couldn’t just stop it, plus it was the only thing keeping me alive!!! I was flabbergasted! He had officially given up on me. I was then forced to go see a Primary care Dr. who filled the script.

2. Speaking of the Primary Care Dr. The third time I saw her, she too refused to prescribe more Prednisone. Forcing me to go see another gastro for the medicine. All these Dr’s are just ‘passing the buck’, I feel like I’m being toyed with. I’m currently on a Prednisone ‘maintenance’ program as I can’t stop taking it or I’ll be hospitalized. Only after seeing my homeopathist will I finally be free of this hell! She saved my life in 1998 & I know she can do it again! All these Dr’s know my financial situation. I haven’t been able to work, bedridden 90% of the time, I’ve lost everything in the past year paying these asshole Dr’s and it’s left me with nothing, literally nothing. Yet now… I had to come up with $275 to see a new dr.!!!!!! I had to borrow money from 3 different sources in order to see him, just so I could get a medication that is killing me just as badly as the colitis is.

I’m thankful at least that I get to be with my pug “Inspector Noodles”.

This is where I’m at now. Some days the joint pain isn’t so bad, but others (in random places) it’s incredibly severe. I’ve had days when I can’t pick up a pen because of the pain, other days I’m limping so severely you would think I just had knee surgery. My fingers are so swollen, I can’t make a fist and I’m dependent on the Prednisone if I want to live. The new gastro has me back on Lialda as well (provided me with samples (thank goodness)) because it’s $1400/month otherwise! The worst thing about Lialda (aside from more side effects) is that just like Asacol & Apriso etc… it’s a sugar pill (to me at least). None of the meds have any effect, except for negative ones.

Lastly, my entire life I’ve had perfect blood pressure, but over the course of the last 14 months or so, that is no longer the case. Partially because of the constant pain and the stress, but also complicated by taking Prednisone, my blood pressure has gone from perfect to anywhere from 140’s/110’s to 160’s/130’s! I now have to monitor myself with a cuff and will in all likelihood need to be put on a medication for that by weeks end because my heart has been under a lot of strain for a very long time now.

All of this is what led my friend to start the GoFundMe campaign.

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We were talking and I was mentioning something about the Prednisone and she had lost a close family member to ulcerative colitis and she herself suffers with it, so it was an emotional thing that hit close to home. She knew that I would never do one for myself, and she didn’t tell me that she was going to do one for me until after the fact. The reality is that I don’t have the social media reach to get the page out there and seen and I feel so disgusted with myself every time I mention it; like a beggar or a loser who can’t take care of himself. I don’t know how to word it differently; I’m an independent person and I tried everything and spent every dime (and then some) to get well, but to no avail. Every Dr. failed me, every medicine, every hospital… failure, failure, failure… and that’s how I feel… like a failure.

And although all of this is about me, my head is constantly flooded with thoughts of others who suffer, not just with this, but everything, herniated discs, dental issues even a broken down car etc… suffering is inevitable, even with insurance, but so many are without and their suffering is prolonged or permanent. Understanding this in spades makes me feel guilt that I am unable to help them. I would much rather help others than receive help, but just like in an airplane when you’re told to put the O2 mask on yourself first, I can’t help others if I don’t get well.

I suppose this diatribe had a dual purpose. I’m not looking for pity; no thank you. I just desperately needed to vent and I wanted to explain and justify the GoFundme page. I do not like posting personal stuff like this, historically I veer away from it, but I’m out here in North Carolina (sure with my mom & sister & my niece) but also away from everyone else that I care about, my family back in Boston - (ALL) of my friends there; my many close friends in Florida and everywhere else; I miss them, I miss you guys, I miss working… (sigh…) I miss my life.

When I owned my own business making handmade realistic rotting skulls, bones & corpses for Halloween, Haunted Houses, Horror movies and just for people that want unique horror collectibles. (Tech, I still own the company, I just can’t afford the website or to keep inventory right now… :/)

Filming a T.V Sitcom Pilot with truly amazing and awesome people!

Operating a jib crane during a scene from a Christian film I worked on.

Hanging out with my friend Lacy on a cruise. The good ‘ol days in much better health!

Last updated September 27, 2017