Standard of Care

                So this post is probably going to be a bit of a sour post.  But, I guess sometimes that is going to happen.  I posted before that I hadn’t been feeling well.  I had gotten sick to my stomach and just icky.  Well I got over that for the most part and was feeling better, then about two nights ago I just started feeling bad again.  I was stuffed up, coughing and my throat was scratchy.  In addition, my eye would not stop watering.  I figured it was just sinus stuff and it would pass.  I still think it is just sinus stuff and will pass.   Yesterday I was feeling so bad, that I went back to my room after lunch and I went to sleep, I woke up got some dinner and then went back to sleep.  When I woke up this morning I still was not feeling great, although I was feeling better.  

       But, my eye would not stop watering and that was getting very annoying so I decided to go to the TMC (Troop Medical Clinic).  When I went in, the SPC behind the counter asked me what was wrong and I told her my eye will not stop watering and I am congested.  She responded with “well you can go to optometry, otherwise I’m not sure what you want."  I was taken a back, excuse me, what I want is medical care, some assistance and perhaps some medicine.  But nope she told me to go to optometry. 

      So I walked around the corner to optometry.  When I got there the guy behind the counter wasn't wearing the standard uniform and had no visible identification.
   
            I told him what was wrong and he looked at me and said “ok."
            I responded this time with “I would like you to look at it and see if there is something wrong so that if there is I can get it taken care of.”

               “Oh, um, ok.  Well come on in and let me look.”  So he looked around and put some drops in and looked some more, put some more drops in and asked if that felt different to which I told him it did not and then he looked around some more.
                He then proceeded to tell me “You lied to me”
                “Excuse me” I responded.
     “Well I put numbing drops in your eye and you told me you didn’t feel any difference.  It’s ok everyone does it to try and prove us wrong.”  He then proceeded to tell me that I have a small scratch on my eye that should be gone with in 24 hours.  Then he asked me how long it had been feeling that way and I told him 24 hours. 

      He said, "oh, well, then it should heal in maybe 48 hours."  He didn’t tell me what to do, he didn’t give me anything.  He dismissed me with a "what are you worried about?"
Um, I don’t know infection, loss of vision, eye damage.   Seriously guy, you are the doctor I came to you for help.  He then said he didn’t waste his time putting that stuff in the computer, because it wasn’t really any big deal.  Except it is a big deal because if I get further eye injury my records should indicate when i came in and what I came in for, and the diagnosis.
      I don’t know if he was a doctor or not, but this was some of the poorest patient care I have ever received.  Really the whole experience was.  I didn’t lie to him about my eye not feeling any different, it didn’t.  Maybe if he had asked me how it was feeling he would have understood that there was a lot of pressure in my head so my eye was feeling pressure from behind.  Then he would have realized numbing the eye really wouldn’t have done anything to help that.  Perhaps if the SPC had simply listened to me rather than dismiss me at the TMC she would have realized that I had a fever last night and was feeling very congested.  And all and all what did I come out of there with, I have a scratch on my eye to which the guy at optometry said he wasn’t going to worry about entering it into the computer because it would take too much of his time. 

     I want to say, over all, this has not been my experience with military doctors, I have had actually relatively good experiences.  But this is ridiculous in my opinion, and this is par for the course, so I hear.  I was speaking to a civilian who is here, she had gone to the doctor here and they had sent her away three times saying she was fine, she was just adjusting to the new environment.  But she was not getting better so she went to the embassy doctor on another camp and that doctor listened to her and examined her and discovered that she had fluid in her lungs, he started her on antibiotics and put her on strict rest.  That is the care that we should be receiving, that is normal care, the doctor listens to the patient and examines them and then makes a treatment plan.  And is sure to put it in the records so that if she gets sick again someone can look it up and see what her history is.  Is that too much to expect?
There are a lot of things that can go wrong here and can go around and I would understand if there were a ton of people waiting for assistance waiting to get treatment and be seen.  Not that it is an excuse for poor care but simply that if they were busy there would be some kind of excuse, but this is just sheer laziness.  Shouldn’t people get better care than that, should soldiers who are facing a lot of different things here get better care than that?  Again, I am not generalizing on all Army Doctors because that is simply not the case, but here I am honestly not impressed, and I am saddened by the lack of dedication to care that these medical providers had today.  Maybe it was a bad day, maybe it was just the person I ended up talking with but either way I hope that the standard of care we provide our soldiers is better than that.  They deserve better than that.
     Sorry this is a negative one, I promise that won’t be the norm, but I just needed to share, if you pray, pray for the standard of medical care for Soldiers to improve.   And that  I won’t have reason to need to go back.