Chronic Health Conditions Discussion and Support

I was rip-roaring PISSED when I was hospitalized after the surgery. After doing fine after the surgery.....I apparently was lucid and, according to my bro (who sweetly came to stay at my house and take care of my dogs while I was in the hospital) was raring to go then, bingo, suddenly had two days of delirium when I wasn't even oriented to self!

(Actually, there's a funny story here. On the 3rd day, I was coming out of the delirium and the surgeon came in to check on me. My docs don't know that I check on ALL of their voter registrations! One can do that here -- i always check to see which party my docs are affiliated with. Well, this guy is a Republican. So on the 3rd day, I still couldn't tell him when my birthday is BUT I accurately told him who the president is. And then I said, "And I have bad news for you, doc, I helped get him elected!" So THAT I remembered.....I not only remembered Obama but which Party the doc was affiliated with.!)

Okay, back to the delirium. They called in a neuro consult and this absolute dimwit decided it was due to a benzodiazepine withdrawal! She noted in my chart that I take clonazepam for restless legs. What the total moron didn't bother to do was check how often I take it, which would have taken the extra step of one damn phone call! When I worked in medicine, I did that ROUTINELY! But no, that was too much for too-stupid-to-be-a-neurologist! What she and the rest of the docs failed to note was the one difference between time A and time B was that I FELL! That they documented, but then when this delirium followed, they attributed it to benzo withdrawal! I clearly had a mild TBI (traumatic brain injury) from hitting my head in the fall. (I'd had one previous mild TBI and 25 years of an MS laden brain -- that'd do it!.) My last clonazepam prescription of 30 pills with no refills was from January of 2011 and I still have 8 left.....meaning I had taken all of 22 clonazepam over the course of 10 months at that point! I'm well aware of the dangers of benzo dependency and am thus VERY cautious -- I only take them when the RL becomes truly unbearable (I also get tremors, which the clonazepam also helps....I RARELY take it for tremors.)

So all of that is now in my med record! Arrrrrgggghhhh! I wrote a SCATHING 3 page letter excoriating the neurologist & the docs for their stupidity and made sure I documented for my med record my LACK of benzo usage! But that's the kind of thing that gets in a med record and then docs look at patients askance when they need to prescribe anything potentially addictive. I've seen it happen a million times. So glad you have a doc who works appropriately with you! IMO, it's smart to be very careful with opioid medications -- one does build a dependency, necessitating more and more. Caution is wise!

Sorry for the long response and delay -- it's actually been sitting here for 2 days as I interrupt myself. Poor attention & concentration is one of my MS symptoms and it seems to have been accentuated by the hospital TBI. It's all fun, fun, fun in chronic illness world! At least, that's what ReTHUGS would have people think -- I'm just lazy and should curl up and die, right? Gotta love 'em. Yeah, I was lazy when I worked half-time while getting my Ph.D. in full-time grad school.....all while I had crippling fatigue from MS!