MUNCHHAUSEN

 

MUNCHHAUSEN & ME

I hate hospitals!  Do all I can to avoid them. Doesn’t help. Best guess is I’ve been in a dozen; as to exact number of times, even God has lost track. My kids no longer miss a beat hearing daddy is in hospital. To save time for the various folk who are going to ask same questions they always ask, I carry a card with my top-10 procedures.

Have developed a ‘prudent man’ rule which has meant being able to not go any hospital about nineteen out of twenty times I’m ‘symptomatic’ – ‘If chest pains are both significant and sustained the prudent man with history of heart issues goes to nearest ER’.

Upon going to ER, as any who may be asked says must be done, we travel a well-worn path. Been through schnick so often I know when they miss a step. Always ends with night in Observation Ward. As one doctor told me, given what my card tells them would get me a night in any hospital in the country “just to cover our legal liability”.

Last month had something of a 25th not-anniversary. Naturally I celebrated by making an inspection tour of two local emergency room facilities and review of area’s finest Observation Ward. It’s actually a long story, but I do have a lot of long stories.

The story I remember almost every time I do the ER thing is about that first encounter now these 25 years past.

Sunday, May 23, 2021 was the 25^th anniversary of very first time anyone ever suggested I had heart problem. A suggestion including 10-day very traumatic confinement in a ‘teaching’ hospital. A stay begun with my first ER visit. Visit made more traumatic both by having no preparation for such a situation, and by knowledge my father had died at about that age under similar circumstances. It may well have been last time I was really scared by such encounters (put a pin in that scared thing).

Apparently Interns in big city teaching hospitals are not required to have command of English language as spoken in America. An Intern of obvious Asian decent lacking a certain familiarity with English took my “medical history”. A history which at the time was non-existent regarding the heart problems they assured me I was having. He asked what drugs I was on. Is ‘none’ an answer? Should have stuck with that. Instead I answered “Advil”. Said it more than once. Nurse, probably a St Louis native, repeated it. One of us spelled it for him “A-D-V-I-L”. He wrote in to the official record that I was taking Paxil.

Was in hospital over a week, underwent numerous tests (good insurance will do that), and was given to understand I had ‘serious’ heart problem. Turns out it was not-all-that-serious. But, what did I know?

At some point I accidentally learned they were actually “treating” for Munchhausen Syndrome. FYI this syndrome is “a mental disorder in which a person repeatedly feigns severe illness so as to obtain hospital treatment”. A treatment embarked upon because Paxil is almost always issued by a psychiatrist, by whom they assumed I was being treated. Fact Check: I need spell-checker just to type word psychiatrist.

So, every time I’m overwhelmed by a ‘prudent man’ situation I reluctantly end up in someone’s Emergency Room. As much as able always try to treat everyone in a way of which my father would be proud. I do what they ask me to do, and cautiously endure hospital food.

A lot of times they find some really bad thing going on inside my body (see my card). But, as happened with last month’s round, many times they just say ‘you didn’t have a heart attack’ and send me home. When they do I find myself wondering if I’m being treated for Munchhausen Syndrome?

Kay says I should stop saying I’m in ‘perfect health’ (except for that heart thing). She might be right. Maybe it’d be harder to hate hospitals if something else was wrong? Surely Baron von Munchhausen would approve.