Fibromyalgia Experiences
On this page I am chronicling my experiences at Seattle, Washington's Harborview
Medical Center's Chronic Fatigue Clinic, headed by Dr.
Debra Buchwald, one of the leading American researchers in diseases of
chronic fatigue (especially CFIDS and fibromyalgia) and the current president
of the American Association
for Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. So far I have been there once, and that
experience is up on this page -- in detail, I must warn you. I will be going
back in May, and I will chronicle that experience here as well. That time I
will be meeting with the esteemed Dr. Buchwald herself.
My experiences at Harborview Medical Center's Chronic Fatigue Clinic
The day of my first appointment, I headed out early. I was not
looking forward to going to a hospital, especially alone, since I have
somewhat of a hospital phobia, and I decided it would be better to be out
being busy rather than worrying at home. I went and ate a pretty good lunch
(most recommended if you are going to a doctor's office), bought some bottled
water and a protein bar to take along (it was also recommended by the clinic
that I bring a snack and water along, which I would have done anyway), and
spent some time at a cafe. Then I went up to the hospital. I had never been
inside that hospital before. It was very confusing -- many of the signs were
poorly done or nonexistent. Eventually I wandered to an information desk and
got directions through a hallway, down a stairway, and into another hallway to
the new patients desk. I went there, finding my way all right, but there was
no one at the desk when I got there. I checked the clock -- 12:50. I thought
maybe the worker that manned the desk was at lunch break, and wondered why she
hadn't put up a note. Eventually someone came to the desk. A woman that had
come at least five minutes after me was helped first, which irked me. It
continues to frustrate me, sometimes, that other people are not nearly as
courteous or thoughtful to strangers as I am, especially in a place like a
hospital where it is presumed that most people are there for a reason and that
it's probably not a particularly happy one.
At least the other woman's request was a relatively short one, and then I
was helped. I was told to go down to another room and a woman plugged my
information into a computer. She then cheerily said, "Meet you back at
the front desk," and disappeared into a back room. A couple minutes after
I got back to the large front desk, she emerged from a back room with a form.
It was a consent form basically saying that yeah, I agreed for the hospital to
give me medical care. I signed and dated it and then she signed and dated it
as a witness. Then she went to make a card for me in the back room and came
back with it. At this hospital, I discerned there (although no one told me),
you get a patient card that they can scan and you take it everywhere with you
and give it to staff members and I guess that's how they keep track of your
account and stuff. I believe this hospital is networked up to some other
medical stuff in the area and I assume you can use the card at the other
places, too.
So then the woman that had taken down my information asked me if I knew
where I was going, and I said I had no idea. She went to check a list of the
different clinics that was taped to the wall, and couldn't find the chronic
fatigue one. She turned to the woman working the main desk and muttered,
"Where the hell is the chronic fatigue clinic, anyway?" I chuckled.
She found it and came back and told me the wing. I asked her how to get there
and she told me. I found it all right. There was a sign saying what desk to
check in at for the clinic I was going to. I walked down and had to wait a
while before anybody helped me, which irritated me a little but I lived. I
noticed that there were bright, bold art prints of butterflies on the walls
and that calmed me a little, as butterflies are one of the symbolically
calming and reassuring things to me.
Eventually I was given two forms to fill out. They were both incredibly
short and I was a bit surprised, given the lengthy and complex forms I've had
to fill out elsewhere, although I reminded myself that I'd already filled out
lengthy forms for them before and had mailed them in. One of them was a simple
basic consent-type form again and the other one was one asking for my consent
to participate in a research project on chronic fatigue. I consented to both
and handed the forms back. I then sat down to read. As is common for me in
such situations, I had a lot of trouble concentrating and spent as much time
peoplewatching and rereading the same sentences over and over as I spent
actually progressing in the book. A few minutes after I started
"reading," a woman that looked to be about my age, maybe even
younger, came up with a woman that appeared to be her mother and was given the
same forms I'd gotten. It heartened me a little to see someone else relatively
young at the doctor; when I'd been to other rheumatologists and such, I'd
always been surrounded by people that were at minimum 15 to 20 years older
than me. I had always sat there thinking that they must be wondering why
someone "so young" was seeing a specialist, that they must be
wondering what was "wrong" with me.
A minute or two after the other woman and her presumed mother had come into
the lobby, a nurse came out and called my name. She introduced herself and
took me back into the maze of rooms and desks. She was young -- I'm bad with
ages, but she was probably only a handful of years older than myself -- and
talkative. She said that we'd have to go most of the way through the maze to
get to the room we were ending up in and apologized. The acupuncture clinic
was looking for more rooms and she said to someone on the way that they could
use the extra fatigue clinic rooms. She apologized again and explained that
they worked things out as they went along, and I said that I understood and
not to worry. She explained that I was going to first meet a woman with a
laptop who would ask me a lot of questions about my history and that it would
probably take around an hour, and then I would see her again and she would do
some basic tests, and then I would meet with the physician's assistant (who
has worked with Dr. Buchwald about ten years and whom patients meet instead of
her on their first visit to the clinic). She took me into a room where the
history-taking woman was sitting at a table with her computer and introduced
us.
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