With today’s doctors hiring physician assistants and nurses that haven’t been trained right in giving IM Injections, there will be many more people suffering from unnecessary sciatic nerve damage due to IM Injections. I am one of the unlucky recipients. On November 9, 2009 I went in to see my general practitioner because of a sore throat and sinusitis, the doctored ordered the nurse to give me an antibiotic shot and a steroid shot.
The first thing the nurse did wrong was not to twist or pinch the muscle and just jabbed the shot in. The second shot was given without ever warning me the shot was coming and I screamed because the nurse injected the medicine in to fast as it was suppose to be given very slowly. That was extreme pain!
I was still hurting when I walked out of the office after getting the 2 IM Injections. As I made my way home the pain continued, and when I got in the house and sat down I felt a trickle of pain going down my left butt cheek. Thats when the burning started in my left hip joint area and skin,the pain continually got worse thru the night and by 2 a.m. I couldn’t even stand the sheet touching my hip.
I tried getting hold of my doctor on Friday because it was getting worse. They never returned my phone call. So finally I called my neurologist and she said it is protocol for your GP to handle since it was their mistake. At least thats the way its suppose to go.
This is how it really went when I went back in today and saw the doctor per the head nurse, not the one who gave me the IM injection. First I had to sit and wait for 45 minutes before I saw anyone. Then they send a physicians assistants in, the same one that ordered the injections to begin with. Immediately, he came off defensive and asked me how I knew they gave the shots wrong, I told him his head nurse told me and two I went to nursing school.
He examined the area where the IM injection was given and then got quite and said that the nurse had damaged my sciatic nerve. He tried to make light of it by saying that it had happened to him when he was nine and that it took six weeks to heal and then it was gone. Can you imagine being laid up for six weeks and be told not to move around too much or to drive too much? But this wasn’t the end,they insulted me further.
When it was time for me to go, he said I was going to pay for my own pain meds (that’s 20 or 30 dollars), I told them to forget it that I would use Tylenol. Then they didn’t have a cane for me to use so they told me to charge my Health Insurance and get one at a supply store. And if that wasn’t bad enough they charged my Health Insurance for the office visit.
After talking with my husband about them charging me today, he told me he wanted me to call them back and ask them why they charged me. They said If I had come back the next day they wouldn’t have charged me but because I came back a week and a 1/2 later they did. I had tried to get hold of them the previous week on Friday morning, I even left a message on the nurses voicemail and they never called back. When i went to the docs this morning he told me he never even got the message til this morning that i had called yesterday.Their office manager told me she would leave a message with the doctor and would call me back.
Well, the doctors office called back and said they had decided not to charge my Health insurance for the office visit, but that they still wouldn’t pay for anything else. I have been so nice to them about all of this and then they proceed to charge me for everything. What is the medical community coming to when they can’t own up to their mistakes and take responsibility?
