I had surgery two days ago. Not on the breast, that's planned for later, this was on a lung and it's the second such surgery as there were findings on both lungs and they had to do it in two separate operations.
When I was given the discharge letter after the first lung operation back in August I noticed some glaring mistakes in it, including false information that could cause future harm if it entered into medical decision-making. I pointed it out only to be told it could not be changed, and only after I basically hit the ceiling they relented and agreed to take some action on it. Long and short, I came back a few days later, sat down with a junior doctor, went over all of it with him, and less than an hour later I had an amended discharge letter, error free. I was assured that the errors were no longer in the system or else the corrected letter would not have been possible.
Yesterday I was reading my discharge letter after the second operation. Anyone here wants to take a cautious guess what I found?
The SAME major false information, but this time with a bonus – the letter also claimed that my primary breast tumour was not in the breast I know it is, but in the other one.
I am normally a nice person. I am fluent in two languages that I normally keep clean, can get by in a couple more if pushed, but my extended vocabulary covers a total of 12 languages in which I can express myself to the ends of vulgarity on par with the worst that the port of Piraeus and the slums of Moscow have to offer.
When I get to the point of reaching for that side of my education I am usually also pretty loud, so I am sure this was heard everywhere, especially when some junior doctor started arguing with me about where my primary tumour was – she was adamant it was on the other side, because that is what her precious paperwork was saying, and she kept arguing with me about it. In the end, I forced her to touch both my boobs so she could feel for herself. She was reluctant at first, but this was the only way I could prove to her that the patient sometimes does know what they are talking about, and that her sacred paperwork just might be wrong.
At that point the ward's Sister intervened, and pretty much peeled the idiot off of me, seeing that the woman was making things worse by arguing rather than checking again.
I was given an amended discharge letter in the end, with my primary noted on the correct side and the other false information yet again taken out, but I told them that now I don't trust that the false information would not turn up yet again, that I was promised last time it was gone, and then threatened them with litigation on account of intentionally keeping false records they have been told about, and refusing to deal with it properly.
What I just told you are just the highlights. There were attempts to get me to chase their IT people by myself and all kinds of other stuff.
I am back home now, in pain and still livid about the whole thing.
What I would like from the group is please avoid the, “sorry to hear you had to go through this,” and please, if there is anything useful anyone can say other than, “Talk to PALs” which I already know about, I am all ears.
If anyone here has gone through similar and succeeded in cleaning up their own medical records of false information, tell me how you did it please.
One of the things I told them yesterday was this – as it happens, I can read medical records such as pathology reports, surgical reports, blood tests etc., and due to my background I can normally understand the majority of it, and I know where to look up the rest. But, what about people who do not have any medical background, good honest people whose expertises lie in other fields and who are therefore unable to go through medical paperwork with a critical eye but are forced to trust their medical care-givers to actually pay attention and keep accurate medical records?!
