The Aftermath

(Please note that all professionals names have changed for their protection and mine)

With the alarm set for 2 hours, drugged and exhausted, Tom assisted me into bed and off to sleep I went. Every two hours I was awoken by the insane buzz of the clock and Tom handing me a pill and my water. Being doped up, in pain and in and out of consciousness; Monday and Tuesday are a fuzzy blur. I do recall Tom telling me that our followup was going to be with Dr. Victors and I had a fit. I'm not saying he is not an outstanding surgeon, I'm just saying it's been my personal experience that his personality is equally comparable to the Grinche. The soonest he could see me was Thursday, I not only didn't want to see him but was also afraid I would run out of pain meds by Thursday (I was still in quite a bit of pain by this point) Tom started calling around McMinnville to see if someone could fit us in sooner. He was told that the "on call" program set up strictly restricts them seeing ER patients not on their rounds, but one doctor was more than happy to write a prescription for more pain meds.
Thursday morning rolled around and I was headed in to see Dr. Victors. My pain levels had been leveling out and I had decreased my pain meds, so I hadn't yet dipped into the new prescription. We checked in at the front desk, it was very busy and no available seats so one of the ladies on the staff (who just happened to be my Mother's first cousin" set me up in their staff room. That was the nicest thing that happened at this particular office, at all. We waited 2 hours to be seen, we were took to a room, my vitals were taken and then we were left alone to wait again. I'm not sure how long the wait was there before the doctor came in, no one had taken off the splint from the ER yet, so he left to find a medical assistant (MA) to remove it. After that wait they decided to put an air cast on and take 3 more x-rays. Back in the room the waiting continued for about another 10 minutes or so before the MA brought in the films and put them on the viewing board. Dr. Victors wasn't far behind this time, bursting through the door in his freshly pressed yellow button up shirt and dapper pleated gray slacks, walked straight to the films and turned around, grabbed a pen looking thing out of his shirt pocket, placed it on the ball of my foot and asked me to press my foot into it. Then he proceeded to the top, inside and outside of my foot. I felt very strange that he wouldn't even touch me. But that wasn't the worst of it. After he put the utensil back in his shirt (which I thought was a bit of an oxymoron, considering he wouldn't touch me with his hands, but would put an unsanitary utensil back in his pocket) he sat on his stool and opened my file. "I don't mean to be the narcotics police, but I'd like to know why you got another prescription for pain meds....." he grilled us about the reason why we filled another prescription so soon. We tried to explain what the discharge nurse had told us about how to take the pills and worrying about running out before we could get into see him, but he continuously cut us off mid sentence and was very accusatory. I finally told him that I don't smoke, I don't drink alcohol or caffeine (what I meant was soda, cause I do drink coffee) and that I wouldn't even begin to know where or how to have a drug addiction. After a nasty lecture about how this looked he finally got to my condition. He was so tart and matter of fact, "you need surgery to fix this break, it's the best route to take!" I tried to ask about prognosis, Tom asked about cost and alternatives to surgery, but he just barked SURGERY, SURGERY, SURGERY. We signed the papers, scheduled the surgery on our way out of the office, feeling like we were just going through the motions and just got slammed into an over priced car we didn't want by a sleazy salesman.

Finally in the car, it was almost 2:00 PM, I felt so discouraged, frustrated, limited and hungry. My emotions were all running so ramped that the last thing I needed was Tom barking at me now. But is precisely what I was getting, "I can't believe you just..." and "You know we can't afford...". My head was spinning with thoughts of it's own right now, mostly around all the things I had done very wrong up to this point and all of the things that were now in jeopardy. Being the sole provider of income in our family working sometime 50 hours a week at our massage clinic. Questions filled my head so fast, faster than I could even process, trying to figure out what I would do with my clients, how much business would we lose, would my other therapists make enough over the next 6-8 weeks to pay the bills. Everything began to spin as I looked outside the window and back at Tom, his lips were moving and I hear the sound of his voice, but it was getting jumbled up with my own thoughts. Trying to put my thoughts in their appropriate spot for sorting, I began to cry. Tom stopped talking and just pulled out of the parking lot. I tried to talk and justify my actions of signing up for the surgery, but my rationalizations weren't making any sense to me, let alone Tom. We both knew we were hungry and headed to a local restaurant for a late lunch. Maybe with our blood sugars more evened out and a little time we could clear our heads a bit to talk.

Cheese burgers and fries later we went to the office to make some calls. The one thing we could agree on was that neither of us liked Dr. Victors and we needed a second opinion. I called my mother-in-law, Mary to let her know what had been going on and she suggested to call Oregon Health and Sciences University (OHSU), she remembered one of her grandchildren getting a surgery there and they charged on a sliding scale. Finally a ray of hope, a direction to go in that didn't seem like such a mountain. You can start laughing now, cause nothing, absolutely nothing is easy. After 4 phone calls, 3 transfers and 4 different stories the only thing I was sure of was that I had to wait to get paperwork in the mail; that could take up to 2 weeks to arrive, fill it out, send it in and wait for an approval. I literally felt like I was going to lose it at this point, I was exhausted, even more frustrated and wanted to scream at the top of my lungs and throw a tantrum. Tom insisted I go lay down on one of the massage tables in an empty room and he would take care of every thing. And he did. He found a place in Salem that could see me the very next day. This was music to my ears, it would only cost us $200 for a second opinion and Tom was very pleased with the level of customer service he received. Now I could focus all my thoughts on coulda, shoulda, woulda's and how in God's name were we going to make all this work.
Friday morning rolled around and off we went to Salem to meet Dr. Johns, the man who would change my opinion of surgeons, most definately in a good way. When we first walked into the orthopedic clinic I felt at ease, everyone; even the patients were all calm and friendly, unlike the chaotic and gruff experience from the day before. We were promptly called back to the exam room, the nurse was so nice, which at this point was in her best interest. She asked us the same questions we had already answered a thousand times before, took the DVD of the x-rays taken at the ER and loaded them onto the computer. We didn't wait very long when a VERY tall, skinny oger of a man walked in. He seemed to be in his 60's with gray hair. He introduced himself, shook our hands and took a look at the pictures on the monitor. He explained the fractures as he skipped back and forth between screens until he lost all but 1 of the pictures. He laughed a little and made fun of himself and technology challenges. He then did something that Dr. Victors didn't do, he removed my air splint and touched my foot, YES he TOUCHED my foot, palpating and examining and asking questions. I inquisitively watched him probing, listening to every word that rolled off his tongue as not miss a single syllable. He talked about the fracture and the ligament damage to my Deltoid Ligaments on the medial side of my foot, how my metatarsal bone, Talus, had dislocated and moved medially (to the inside of my foot) and that it would take several months to a year for those to ligaments to heal. Tom didn't miss a beat asking for alternatives to surgery, Dr. Johns was eager to comply, explaining a lengthy casting process they may still result in surgery. He explained he understood the urgency for me to get back to work as well as the cost, his advice for the best and fasted results were to fix it right the first time. He left Tom and I alone to discuss our decision... Surgery it would be. We felt as good as we could about this decision as we could and scheduled the procedure for the following Thursday.

We now had so many things to do in preparation of a surgery; we had our son, the clinic, my clients, our home and animals to take care of. We had to plan for weeks of me being incapacitated. Thank goodness Tom and my sister were able to keep the clinic running, clearing my schedule, moving clients and all the other very important aspects of operating a massage clinic. The next several weeks would prove to be some of the most challenging weeks that my family, staff and I have ever faced...