My Traumatic Hospital Experience
Itโs taken me a while to write about this.ย
However, I feel itโs necessary as a person with a disability to share this story in hopes of spreading awareness about the challenges anybody can face when headed to the emergency room.
I suffer from seizures. These started as absence seizures, but over time I began to have convulsive seizures that occurred while I was conscious. The problem here is that doctors expect to see aย โcertain kindโ of seizure, and when your seizures donโt meet these expectationsโฆ
Well. They donโt necessarily believe you when you tell them youโre having seizures. So they look to other explanations first.
They tell you youโre having anxiety if your hands are shaking and convulsing. Even if you tell them youโre not anxious at all.
They run drug tests on you without your consent, or without telling you that theyโre running drug tests.ย
They jump to every possible conclusion OTHER thanย โthis may be a seizureโ - even if I have a strong, verifiable history of seizures which I have told them about and which has been confirmed via EEG.
Hereโs the thing. There are many, many types of seizures other than the typicalย โgrand malโ seizure that most people think about. Sometimes you fall down. Sometimes youโre conscious. Sometimes youโre not. Sometimes you do strange things. Sometimes youโre very confused. Sometimes you lose time. Sometimes you experience strange smells.
In MY case, I was having a series of episodes that began with convulsions while I was conscious, and that over time moved to me being frozen in place, also while conscious.ย
Whileย โfrozen in placeโ I couldnโt move. I couldnโt speak. I couldnโt do anything.
When the paramedics found me after I called because I knew an episode was coming on, I had fallen to the ground in front of my house because I couldnโt stand any longer. I remember listening to the 911 operator calling for me and me being unable to respond. I remember waiting, and waiting, until I finally heard the ambulance coming for me.
I came out of the episode long enough to tell them I was having seizures. Then I went right back into seizure.ย
The paramedics got me onto the stretcher and into the ambulance. Then they began asking me questions. Of course I couldnโt respond. They asked me again and again. I couldnโt respond.
Then the paramedic threatened physical force - pushing on my chest - if I didnโt respond.ย
Fortunately I came out of seizure long enough to finally speak back. Then I got to the hospital
Then I got to my room, where I encountered my nurse. Again, my nurse began asking me questions. I began seizing.ย
I couldnโt respond.
She questioned me further.
I couldnโt respond.ย
โMegan, you have to cooperate,โ she told me angrily.ย
I couldnโt respond.ย
โYou have to cooperate!โ she told me. This continued as I lay there in my bed, frozen in place, unable to respond, unable to move, unable to do anything as my nurse shouted at me that I needed to cooperate.ย
She continued to berate me and tell me to cooperate even after I told her that I was trying - that it was the seizures preventing me fromย โcooperating.โ
Even though I had told the paramedics that I was coming into the hospital for seizures. Even though the nurse should have known that I was coming into the hospital for seizures.
There is an endemic problem in the way that people with invisible disabilities are treated in emergency rooms and doctors offices and in the medical community in general.ย
I was traumatized by this experience to the point that I am scared to ever call emergency services or ever go to the hospital for my seizures ever again. I needed to share this to let you people know that this is not okay.ย
If any of you ever plan to go into nursing, to become doctors, or simply want anything to do with medicine, do not ignore anybody when they communicate with you - when they say what is happening with their bodies.ย
