Will The Real Nurse Ratched Please Stand Up?

Here's to you, Nurse Ratched.  Bottoms up! 

Oh wait, she doesn’t have to.  I’ve met her already.  She’s real.  And she gives me nightmares.  That’s right.  My Nurse Ratched isn’t the stuff of fiction.  No, she’s a real live woman who trolls the halls of the bowel control program.  Yeah.  I don’t think you need any more information than that.

Every time she calls me, she suggests yet another remedy for my severe constipation.  Have we tried this?  Have we tried that?

This is the woman who, over the past several months, has had me do a bowel cleanse five separate times.

I feel like Bill Murray in “Groundhog Day.”  Every time my phone rings and it’s her, it’s the same thing over and over again. 

It’s worse than deja vu because there is no escaping it. 

And despite my frustration, I have been compliant, because I need help, and at the moment, she stands between me and a treatment that will hopefully work. 

Then, out of the blue, I get a letter saying that the office has tried to call me multiple times without success.  That’s interesting since I’d been wondering about them.  And I hadn’t received a single call.  Actually, I got two copies of the same letter on the same day.

The letter ends: “If we do not hear from you within the next t 30 days from the above date, we will assume that you no longer require our assistance.”

Guess what bitches?  You aren’t helping me anyway.

Really, you’re going to drop me as a patient when you’ve only contributed to making my problem worse?  That’s pretty funny, if you ask me.

She and the other nurses that I have communicated with have made my life miserable.  This one in particular has downright been a bully, basically telling me that I have to do exactly what she says...or else… 

My bowels move about as well as an eighty year old’s, at this point, and I’ve done everything they have suggested I try, and nothing has worked.

Her latest suggestion is Lactulose, whose main side effects are “Gas, bloating, burping, stomach numbing/pain, nausea, and cramps.”  I think she is single-handedly trying to kill me.

Lactulose is basically like what I would imagine drinking corn syrup straight up would taste like.  

And it gave me the worse gas pains of my life.  I was literally sitting on the toilet, my body convulsing, and going alternately from sweating to death to freezing, and all I could think was “somebody kill me now.”  I felt like a druggie jones-ing for a fix.  My body has never reacted to anything like that before. 

Way back in August, my doctor prescribed Amitiza.  This would hopefully be a one-pill-a-day solution to my chronic constipation.

But no!  Nurse Ratched told me over the phone that a pre-authorization is required, and that a denial would need to be appealed, and that takes too much of her time.  So rather than doing what my doctor prescribed, she’s had me try every constipation regimen under the sun, which has caused my body to basically flat line in the pooping department.

These days, if I go once a week on my own, that’s saying a lot…    

I think I’m more likely to shit gold at this point than excrement.  It would probably feel better, too.  And at least I’d be rich.

I don’t think this nurse understands that while this isn’t my biggest problem, though at the moment, it may actually be, it’s a quality of life issue.

I would honestly rather deal with arthritis pain than gut issues.  They can be totally debilitating. 

I’ve been told by pretty much every doctor I’ve ever seen for this problem that I am too young to be having the problem to the degree that I am.  But I’m supposedly too young for lupus and RA too, so that’s a mute point. 

 

I’m so over this nurse-on-a-power-trip thing.  You’re not a doctor, so stop acting like one.  And do what my doctor told me he thought was best, not what is easier for you.  Just because you’re too lazy to do the prior-authorization and then file an appeal when it’s declined, isn’t my problem.  But you’ve made it my problem.  And quite frankly, now I’m just royally pissed….And royally constipated.      

The next time I go to my doctor, I’m going to bring my Lactulose with me and ask my doctor to get Nurse Ratched.  Then I’m going to have her do a shot of Lactulose with me.  A small price to pay for my pain and suffering.  It’s the least she can do.  In solidarity, right?