Episode 25
When All Else Fails: A True Story About Fighting the System and Saving My Dad
When my dad — a doctor — started losing the ability to walk, I thought we’d find answers quickly. Instead, we ran straight into a wall of hospital red tape, conflicting protocols, and doctors too afraid to take a risk.
This is a true story about how I fought the healthcare system to save my father’s life.
It’s about standing up to bureaucracy, finding the right information when no one else would, and learning how compassion sometimes matters more than protocol.
Expect platelets, hallway confrontations, and neurosurgeons who definitely didn’t expect me to show up armed with research from the Cleveland Clinic.
Oh, and also, the tooth fairy industry almost suffered a financial blip thanks to my husband...
Check out my programs to help you do better in your business and marketing:
Mentioned in this episode:
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Transcript
He had had chest pain on Thanksgiving and
Speaker:didn't tell anybody because he didn't want to miss dinner.
Speaker:Your doctors are playing defensive medicine and protecting themselves and not doing the right thing
Speaker:for you. That's not okay. That's not something you want
Speaker:to hear from your neurosurgeon before he's planning to cut into your brain.
Speaker:All right, here we go. I'm going to pretend I'm pushing record, because that feels
Speaker:right. Okay, I'm pressing record. Boop.
Speaker:Hi, everybody. I'm Lauren Howard. I go by L2.
Speaker:Yes, you can call me L2. Everybody does. It's a long story. It's
Speaker:actually not that long a story, but we'll save it for another time. Welcome to
Speaker:Different Not Broken, which is our podcast on
Speaker:exactly that. That there are a lot of people in this world walking around feeling
Speaker:broken, and the reality is you're just different, and that's fine.
Speaker:At one point, I want to say in like, his early 70s, probably,
Speaker:my dad started having a lot of trouble walking. He was a doctor,
Speaker:and in theory, should have had access to the best medical care around
Speaker:from colleagues and unaffiliated providers and just knowing
Speaker:the medical system the way he did. But that is not usually the way it
Speaker:works for doctors. Doctors tend to get the worst medical care, so
Speaker:much so that doctors will tell other doctors families to not tell
Speaker:people at the emergency room that your family member's a doctor.
Speaker:There's a couple reasons for that. One of them is complicated
Speaker:healthcare stuff. But the other one is that when people
Speaker:find out that something about you could
Speaker:warrant special treatment, which nobody should be getting special
Speaker:treatment, but if they find out that your brother
Speaker:works in that hospital or in that ER or whatever, their
Speaker:inclination is to treat you differently and usually to
Speaker:treat you better because you have some sort of special relationship. And that
Speaker:sounds great, right? It sounds. Oh, well, this is gonna be faster for me or
Speaker:I'm not gonna have to wait as long or I'll get priority
Speaker:service, or they're gonna pay better attention to me or care
Speaker:more or whatever. Like, all of that sounds great, but the
Speaker:reality, what actually ends up happening is that
Speaker:they don't follow protocols in an attempt
Speaker:to give you, quote, unquote, specific special treatment. And when you don't follow
Speaker:protocols, people die.
Speaker:Dr. Stevens to ER, please. Dr. Stevens to ER. Thank
Speaker:you. Now, are there
Speaker:bureaucratic reasons that protocols are in place, and
Speaker:do they all serve a healthcare purpose? No. I mean, yes, there
Speaker:are bureaucratic reasons. No, they don't all serve a healthcare purpose. Sometimes they
Speaker:serve Other purposes that are not helpful. But if it's
Speaker:the protocol, it's the protocol and they need to follow it for you. Even if
Speaker:you're quote, unquote, special. Special patients die because you skip
Speaker:important steps that avoid infection, that help
Speaker:with, you know, making sure everything's done, that ensure that
Speaker:things are not getting sewed back up into you that need to
Speaker:be out of you. Things like that happen all of the time. And it gets
Speaker:worse when you take the protocol out. The protocols are, for the most part, there
Speaker:for a reason, even though there are some that are ridiculous bloat that need to
Speaker:be dispelled of. But by and large, we have protocols for a reason
Speaker:and special patients die. And a really
Speaker:good example of this, and this sounds wild, but Joan Rivers
Speaker:died because she was a special patient. Joan Rivers convinced a
Speaker:doctor to do what should have been an inpatient procedure as an
Speaker:outpatient procedure. She was, like in her 80s, maybe
Speaker:even her 90s, or at least very close. There's no such thing as a
Speaker:routine outpatient procedure when you're in your 80s or 90s.
Speaker:Had they followed procedure and put her in the hospital for that
Speaker:procedure the way they should have, would they still have complications? I don't know.
Speaker:Could she still have died? I don't know. My understanding of that
Speaker:situation is the reason she died was the delay between the complication and
Speaker:getting her to the correct medical care that the only thing that they could do
Speaker:was call an ambulance, which takes time and delayed the
Speaker:care that she needed. Celebrities tend to also get really
Speaker:bad medical care for the same reason. Like, people will do them favors because
Speaker:they're famous and they have a lot of money and they want to be liked
Speaker:by famous people. And as a result, they often die from really,
Speaker:really horrific medical care. Somewhat different reasons. Often it's
Speaker:because they get everything they want, as opposed to somebody who
Speaker:has no money and gets nothing that they want or gets no attention. They get
Speaker:too much attention and nobody will tell them no. But it's very similar special patients
Speaker:dad for like five years. And the
Speaker:majority of the. Probably six or seven years before my dad died,
Speaker:he really struggled with walking. And it got progressively worse to the
Speaker:point where if we wanted to take him anywhere, we really had to take him
Speaker:in a wheelchair. He could only walk short distances, and
Speaker:nobody knew why. His legs were fine, his spine was fine.
Speaker:He wasn't in pain. He. He just couldn't walk. And he would
Speaker:also do this thing that I very distinctly remember where when he would
Speaker:stand up, he would take three or Four steps
Speaker:before he would actually start walking. Almost like roadrunner, like
Speaker:ramping up. And at the time I was like, ha ha, you look like road
Speaker:Runner. Well, now I understand that that's actually in and of itself almost
Speaker:diagnostic for what he ended up having. So it
Speaker:got progressively worse, Progressively worse. We had trouble finding a doctor that
Speaker:could help him. We took him to a bunch of doctors. Finally, he went to
Speaker:a neurosurgeon who looked at him and said,
Speaker:that's normal pressure hydrocephalus, which means that there's a backup
Speaker:of cerebral spinal fluid on the brain. Your cerebral spinal fluid is not
Speaker:draining correctly. And so because of it, it impairs
Speaker:motor function, it can make people foggy, it can impair
Speaker:cognition, and also it makes it difficult to walk.
Speaker:Basically, he said, you're going to have to have brain surgery, which sounded
Speaker:terrifying to all of us, like, are they going to have to cut into a
Speaker:skull? And you. Still a very busy practice. He had no interest in
Speaker:retiring, obviously. I heard brain surgery and, like, panicked.
Speaker:He didn't care. He was like, cut into whatever you want. I hate
Speaker:living life this way. I don't like not being able to move. So,
Speaker:you know, fix it however you have to fix it. So we started the process
Speaker:of. There was like a registry we had to enroll him in. I don't remember
Speaker:why he couldn't just go get the surgery. Like, I feel like it's a
Speaker:surgery they do without enrolling you in a registry, but I don't remember all of
Speaker:the details of that. And that is kind of unlike me because I usually know.
Speaker:Know those things inside and out. But he went in front of the registry and
Speaker:they got all the paperwork, they did all the evaluations in the process
Speaker:of this process. It was Thanksgiving, and
Speaker:I don't remember there being anything specifically interesting
Speaker:about that Thanksgiving. All very normal. Now
Speaker:it's, you know, officially Christmas time. Dear Lord. Went back to work.
Speaker:Got out of work early that day. I don't remember if we just had a
Speaker:short day with patients or whatever, but was out with a friend of mine.
Speaker:And I think my parents had doctor's appointments. And my mom calls me and
Speaker:says, your dad's going to the hospital. And I was like, why?
Speaker:Like, he was just going for a regular follow up. And she said, well, he
Speaker:told Dr. Gurgis that he was having chest pain. And Dr.
Speaker:Gurges sent him directly to the emergency room because he was looking at his EKG
Speaker:and he didn't like the numbers. And so we, of course, rushed over to the
Speaker:Emergency room. And we were there with him. And then I get the full story.
Speaker:This was, like, three days after Thanksgiving. He had had chest
Speaker:pain on Thanksgiving and didn't tell
Speaker:anybody because he didn't want to miss dinner. That was
Speaker:the reason. He looked me straight in the face and said, I didn't
Speaker:want to miss dinner. So I didn't tell anybody that I was having
Speaker:severe chest pain. He said, but then it went away, so it's fine.
Speaker:And I looked at this man, whose name is followed by
Speaker:MD and nearly slapped the life out of him.
Speaker:They do all the tests, and they said, you know, your tropronins
Speaker:are fine. We don't see any indication of a heart attack, but
Speaker:your doctor wants us to admit you for further monitoring and to talk to a
Speaker:interventional cardiologist. So they admit him. Interventional
Speaker:cardiologist comes over, says he needs a stent. Now, we found
Speaker:out later that the stent was not
Speaker:curative. It was not treating anything. It was just
Speaker:to address the chest pain, which he had only had one time ever for a
Speaker:very short period. But at the time, like, it just felt like.
Speaker:I think all of us were so terrified by the idea that he could have
Speaker:just had a heart attack or recently had a heart attack and he had had,
Speaker:like, a triple bypass years prior that we were like, just get the damn
Speaker:stent. They put in the stent. The stent means that he has to stay on
Speaker:blood thinners and anticoagulants basically forever, which was fine
Speaker:because he had to anyway because he had had a aortic valve replacement. So we
Speaker:just didn't think anything of it. We're like, no problem. Whatever. He's already on the
Speaker:medicine. Well, then this goes in front of the board of
Speaker:deep thinkers who decide whether he can have the surgery for
Speaker:normal pressure hydrocephalus, which will restore his ability to walk. And
Speaker:they said, well, you just had a stent put in, which means
Speaker:you can't come off of your anticoagulants. We can't do brain surgery while you're on
Speaker:anticoagulants, so you can't have the surgery. You're denied. And I'm
Speaker:going, okay. But the dude can't walk, and you just want him to not walk.
Speaker:And they were like, it's too dangerous. It's too risky.
Speaker:My dad was upset, but he just kind of took the defeated stance. My mother,
Speaker:I'm sure, was histrionic about it, because obviously, me
Speaker:being me, though, I went full, hey, super.
Speaker:Fuck that noise. This dude can't walk.
Speaker:We have a dear friend who is an emergency room doctor. And I was like,
Speaker:this is bonkers, right? Like they're worried about him
Speaker:being on anticoagulants and having basically a brain bleed or a
Speaker:bleeding episode while doing surgery, which is a valid concern and something
Speaker:they should be concerned about. But he can't walk. And our
Speaker:friend said to me, yeah, well, things think about it this way, if he tries
Speaker:to walk and falls while on any coagulants, he's going to die anyway. I was
Speaker:like, good point. So I,
Speaker:my non clinically trained self went on Dr.
Speaker:Internet and researched the mortality
Speaker:rates of people who come off anticoagulants
Speaker:after getting what's called a drug eluding stent, which is what he had. And they
Speaker:had fairly recently done a study on it. My
Speaker:luck. Thank you. And
Speaker:the study showed that the mortality rate was 7%
Speaker:over a year. So 7% of people who stop
Speaker:taking anticoagulants die after a year of being
Speaker:off the anticoagulants if they have a drug eluting
Speaker:stent pudding. I needed five days. So the
Speaker:study, I think, had been done by the Cleveland Clinic. It was like I felt
Speaker:like somebody had written a manual for me because I'm reading it going, this
Speaker:is literally the protocol we need. And it took me 30 minutes of
Speaker:Internet searching to find it. And all of these very, very smart people
Speaker:who read the New England Journal of
Speaker:Medicine as light reading are telling me that this
Speaker:can't be done. When this literally says it can be done is right
Speaker:here. So my dad's poor cardiologist.
Speaker:He's a great doctor. He was such a nice man. I don't think
Speaker:he realized what he signed up for. But I called him and I was like,
Speaker:can you please check your email? And he's like, sure. You
Speaker:want to tell me why? And I was like, I found the protocol that you're
Speaker:going to use to wean him off of his anticoagulants onto a
Speaker:low molecular weight heparin, and then off of that so that
Speaker:he can have the surgery. And then two days after the surgery, he can put
Speaker:him back on his anticoagulants. And there's just this long pause
Speaker:and he finally goes, you did what?
Speaker:And I was like, yeah, Cleveland Clinic did a study on it. It shows that
Speaker:it's safe. Can you review it and see if you'll sign off on this? Because
Speaker:I need you to sign off on this. And he's like, yeah, okay.
Speaker:You could tell part of him was like really happy that this existed because it
Speaker:did mean that there was a path forward. And the other part of him was
Speaker:like, God damn it. Like, why? Who are you, and how
Speaker:does this happen? So he read it, and he called my dad, not
Speaker:me. He said, this will actually work. So I need to admit you
Speaker:four days early, and if they'll sign off on it, I need to admit
Speaker:you four days early, and then we'll do the transition. That way you'll be hospitalized.
Speaker:Should there be any indication of clot, we'll put you back on three days after
Speaker:the surgery. So he said, you'll do the surgery. He said, I'm signing off on
Speaker:the surgery. Everybody else has to sign. Sign off on the surgery. And I swear
Speaker:to God, he says, I would send your daughter to handle that. Got
Speaker:it. No problem. So we get everything in front of the board's. Board looks at
Speaker:it, and the board says, all right, if the cardiologist is fine with it, we're
Speaker:fine with it. Send him in. So a couple weeks later, they booked the
Speaker:surgery. They admitted him a couple days early.
Speaker:I very distinctly remember showing up on the day
Speaker:that they were going to do the surgery. It's a couple surgeries. The first
Speaker:surgery, they put in a temporary drain
Speaker:that they literally just, like, insert. Like, you can actually see it to drain
Speaker:off fluid that they then measure to make, you know, to see how much
Speaker:fluid they're taking off. There's, you know, you're allowed to get up and walk around,
Speaker:but it's. It's only in very specific situations. You. You have to be
Speaker:in certain positions. There's risk of a really severe
Speaker:headache that can be fatal. They insert the drain.
Speaker:Basically, he has a nurse at bedside for, like, the better part of
Speaker:48 hours, because they have to literally count
Speaker:how much is coming out in the process.
Speaker:I don't remember if it was when they did the temporary drain or before the
Speaker:permanent drain. It had to be before the temporary drain. So they
Speaker:basically come in and say, we're canceling the surgery.
Speaker:Like, we had been in the hospital at that point. He had been in the
Speaker:hospital at that point for four days. We had done everything
Speaker:they asked. He was ready. We were all excited because this
Speaker:was finally going to happen. And they said, we're canceling the surgery. And so we
Speaker:said, excuse me, what now? And they said, his
Speaker:platelets are too low. He won't clot. And I was
Speaker:like, okay. He was on an antiplatelet until four days ago.
Speaker:I feel like there are solutions for this. And they said, the interventional
Speaker:radiologist won't do the procedure because his platelets are too low. And I swear to
Speaker:God, somewhere there is video of me walking down a
Speaker:hallway of a
Speaker:neurosurgery wing at Florida Hospital South. That's what
Speaker:it was called at the time, yelling, someone get the man some
Speaker:damn platelets. This is why you have a blood bank. So I
Speaker:called the person who ran the registry, and I was like, I will
Speaker:find him platelets. She was like, how are you going to do that? And I
Speaker:was like, don't ask questions. But either you do it or
Speaker:I'm going to do it, because he's having the surgery today. So his doctor
Speaker:walks in, and I said, can someone get him platelets from the blood bank? And
Speaker:he goes, yeah, why didn't we just get him platelets from the blood bank? And
Speaker:I'm like, I should not be the one pointing these things out.
Speaker:So they go, get him platelets. Someone get the man some damn
Speaker:platelets. The nurse, who is very sweet and who to this day is one of
Speaker:my favorite nurses he's ever had, went over to my dad because at that point,
Speaker:he had been NPO for, like, literally 28 hours or something.
Speaker:And she was like, can I get you something to eat, since they're not going
Speaker:to do the surgery today? And I was like, I swear to God, if you
Speaker:put anything in that man's mouth. She just kind of, like, backs out
Speaker:slowly. And I gave her a big hug and apologized to her later,
Speaker:but she was like, I get it. I get it. I do. I just. I
Speaker:had to take care of my patient. And I was like, I will take care
Speaker:of your patient. Trust me. Anyway, so they went and gave
Speaker:him platelets.
Speaker:45 minutes later, his platelet numbers are fine. We go down
Speaker:to talk to the interventional radiologist. Interventional radiologist
Speaker:says, oh, you're the troublemaker. And I was like, nice
Speaker:to meet you. You're gonna do it, right? And so he walks us through the
Speaker:procedure. After the procedure, he said it was the easiest one that he had ever
Speaker:done, that it just worked perfectly. And I was like,
Speaker:mm. Mostly I was like, because you are scared into
Speaker:precision. Anyway, he had the drain in place
Speaker:for, like, 12 hours before they were like, all right, we're going to get up
Speaker:and walk now. He walked down the hallway like there were no problems.
Speaker:Like, he had not been bedridden for five years. It wasn't bedridden, but it was
Speaker:close. It was like watching his whole life come back. And so they were like,
Speaker:okay, this is a good sign. We're gonna do two more test drains and then
Speaker:we'll put in the full drain. Great, awesome. They put in the full drain,
Speaker:discharged him basically from like an outpatient unit, which was
Speaker:kind of wild. They put in the permanent drain and I think they only monitored
Speaker:him for like an hour. And then he was sent home like it was, it's
Speaker:quote unquote brain surgery. But it was actually like really,
Speaker:for all intents and purposes, minimal surgery. My
Speaker:dad was left handed. Both of my parents were left handed. Somehow they got three
Speaker:right handed and one fully ambidextrous kid. Guess which one is fully
Speaker:ambidextrous. No left handed children among them, however. But
Speaker:his neurosurgeon comes in fairly shortly before
Speaker:the initial drain, the temporary drain placement, and goes,
Speaker:larry, are you left handed? And he goes, yeah.
Speaker:And the doctor goes, oh shit. Like, it's just
Speaker:not. Of all the things that could come up, that's not the one you want.
Speaker:So it turns out that 20% of left
Speaker:handed people have their language functions for
Speaker:lack. I don't know what the actual word is. I don't remember it in the
Speaker:opposite side of the brain. Right brained people almost always have it on the
Speaker:same side. 20% of left handed people have it on the opposite side. And if
Speaker:you don't check first, you could accidentally leave
Speaker:somebody without speech if
Speaker:they're in the 20%. So they had to take him before they did the surgery
Speaker:and do like a last minute test that tells them what side has his language
Speaker:functions. Of course he was in the 20%. Of course he fucking was.
Speaker:So thank God they checked. Just know that
Speaker:your neurosurgeon saying oh shit before he cuts
Speaker:into your head is not an experience you want to have at
Speaker:all. Full stop. They discharge him. And I just have this
Speaker:very distinct memory of looking up from
Speaker:whatever my phone, my computer, whatever I was looking at. And my dad, who had
Speaker:been all but in a wheelchair for several years, is
Speaker:standing in front of me, thumbs looped through his belt loops,
Speaker:the way he had stood his whole. Like every time that I
Speaker:remember seeing him stand, this was the stance. And I had not seen it in
Speaker:so long that I had forgotten that it was the way he did it. They
Speaker:say, all right doc, you're ready to go. And they try to pull up a
Speaker:wheelchair and this man looks at me and goes, oh, no, no, no.
Speaker:He's like, I've been in one of those for several years. No, no, I'm walking.
Speaker:And so I have video. I still to this day have the video. Of him
Speaker:walking out of the hospital. And he walked just like normal. You would never
Speaker:know that Five days before, he literally was not able to get his feet under
Speaker:him. It was just like, get the fluid off the brain. And
Speaker:then all of a sudden, everything returned. He had some muscle atrophy issues because he
Speaker:hadn't used them in so long that his stamina wasn't great. But his ability
Speaker:to stand up, his ability to walk, his. All of it. The
Speaker:surgeries that they did, I think each took 20 minutes. Like, it was that
Speaker:fast. It sounded scary. Cause it was brain surgery, but it really
Speaker:was just like inserting a tube above the brain that drains
Speaker:things off the brain. And then the other end of the tube went into the
Speaker:stomach to drain off the rest of the fluid. Anyway, so he had,
Speaker:like a. He had like, a bump. Like, they. They shaved half of his head.
Speaker:And we said, like, can't you shave his whole head? And they were like,
Speaker:we're doctors, not barbers, so, no, you have to do the other side. And I
Speaker:was like, okay, fine, whatever. So he did go home and appropriately shave the rest
Speaker:of his head. So he didn't have hair. Like, he didn't have much hair to
Speaker:begin with, but you. There was a difference. You could tell. And there was a
Speaker:scar there, obviously, because they had just cut into it. And it wasn't even that
Speaker:bad a scar, but it was a scar. It was noticeable. And it probably. Like,
Speaker:we probably didn't want to tell people that he had been in a bar fight.
Speaker:So we just decided that maybe. And they were like, you can go back to
Speaker:seeing patients in a week. Like, there's no. You know, he was. They're like, if
Speaker:you feel fine, there's not really a recovery period here. Just
Speaker:don't overdo it. Don't do more than you would have done before.
Speaker:And so, like, a week later, he was back to seeing patients. But he wore
Speaker:a hat. He got like this, like, I don't know, like, page boy hat thing.
Speaker:And he wore that. And it was. It was kind of cute. But he didn't
Speaker:take the hat off just because he didn't. I don't know that a lot of
Speaker:people want to see their psychiatrist with a giant scar on his brain. And
Speaker:so he would see his patients. He could type better. He was able to
Speaker:get up and hand charts back to people. He would do dishes
Speaker:at home. It was like all this little stuff that, like, everybody's, like,
Speaker:not pleased about doing that. He was, like, so happy to be able to do
Speaker:again. But anyway, so every time he saw patients, he wore a hat. And for
Speaker:the most part, nobody said anything about it. And sometimes people would come in and
Speaker:say, I like your hat. He would say, thanks, I like it, too. It was
Speaker:probably a month after he went back to work, maybe not even.
Speaker:This woman comes in, and she does not
Speaker:stop crying the whole time. And it's the psychiatrist's office that happens
Speaker:sometimes. Every word out of her mouth is like a gulp of air as
Speaker:she's trying to tell us what's happening. And I couldn't get very
Speaker:much out of her before she went in for her actual visit. And so I
Speaker:tried to do her intake, and I was able to get most of the things
Speaker:I needed out of her for her intake, but she was just so, so emotional.
Speaker:And it turned out that she had just left her neurosurgeon's office,
Speaker:and she had horrific, horrific
Speaker:pain in her neck that was caused by,
Speaker:I want to say, some sort of pinched nerve or
Speaker:something that had to be surgically relieved. The only way that the pain was
Speaker:going to go away was surgical relief. The problem was
Speaker:that she had severe cardiac issues,
Speaker:fairly recent cardiac intervention, and was on
Speaker:anticoagulants. And she had gone to a bunch of doctors, and all of them
Speaker:said they wouldn't do the surgery because it was too high risk because she was
Speaker:on anticoagulants. And so I walk into his office. I
Speaker:put the chart down. I had gotten her story prior. I put the chart down,
Speaker:and I looked at him, and I was like, you're not gonna believe what this
Speaker:woman's story is. And he says, I mean, I believe you, but do you want
Speaker:to tell me? I was like, okay, fine. So I explained that she's in severe
Speaker:pain all the time. She went to, like, her last hope
Speaker:doctor, and the doctor said he wouldn't do the surgery because it was too high
Speaker:risk because she was on anticoagulants. And I was like, I didn't tell
Speaker:her, but I think you should. And he was like, oh, no, I'm going
Speaker:to handle this. And so she walks in and sits down,
Speaker:and I will never. He looks at her, and he
Speaker:says, I'm gonna do something that I don't do. I'm gonna take
Speaker:off my hat. And he takes off his hat, and you see this giant
Speaker:scar. And she kind of. She kind of reacts a little bit to it, but
Speaker:she's still crying, tearful. And he says,
Speaker:I recently had a procedure to put a stent in to
Speaker:drain fluid off my brain because I was Having trouble walking. And it really was.
Speaker:It got to the point where either somebody fixed this, or I don't wanna live
Speaker:anymore because I can't live my life like this anymore. And when I got to
Speaker:the finish line to have the procedure, they told me no. For
Speaker:very similar reasons. You ended up here because
Speaker:I have the research, the documentation, and the
Speaker:doctors who will do it. I'm gonna go talk to my team. I'm gonna go
Speaker:give them some marching orders. Your doctors are playing defensive medicine and protecting
Speaker:themselves and not doing the right thing for you. That's not okay. And we're
Speaker:gonna get this straightened out. And she said, but I came to you because I'm
Speaker:depressed. I didn't come to you. I have pain. And he goes,
Speaker:what's the difference? Would you be depressed if you didn't have pain? Would you be
Speaker:depressed if you didn't just get told no by the 10th person? And she goes,
Speaker:no, probably not. And he goes, that's not a depression.
Speaker:That's a reasonable reaction. People are not helping you, and you need help.
Speaker:So he walks out his new trick walking. And he says,
Speaker:I need this doctor on the phone, this doctor on the phone, this doctor on
Speaker:the phone. I need this imaging for her so I can send it over to
Speaker:them. I need these three things done, and I need
Speaker:the documentation that you got from the Cleveland Clinic. We put it
Speaker:all together. We sent her to his doctors. She came
Speaker:back a week later, before she had even had
Speaker:anything done, before she had even had anything done. And she was like a different
Speaker:person. And he said, you look like a totally different person. Like, did
Speaker:they figure out. You know, did they figure out anything? And she goes, well, no.
Speaker:I mean, I'm going to get scheduled for surgery, but I feel so much better.
Speaker:And he says, so the pain's better? And she goes, oh, no, no, the pain's
Speaker:still terrible. But, like, there's a chance I'm gonna get
Speaker:to live my life again. Like, that's genuinely all I care about. It would have
Speaker:been really easy for him to say, well,
Speaker:we have to listen to my colleagues. My colleagues say that they can't
Speaker:safely do the surgery. But he had been there a month before,
Speaker:a month before. Like, how does that happen? How does this. This person end up
Speaker:in his office literally a month after we did that? And he
Speaker:had resigned to the fact that if this didn't get fixed, his life was over
Speaker:and he was miserable. She came back a totally different person. Not
Speaker:because he did anything. He did do things. He set the
Speaker:whole thing in Motion. And he did a heroic amount just because he happened to
Speaker:have the access and the ability to do those heroic things. But he didn't
Speaker:physically do anything. The only thing he actually did for her,
Speaker:aside from coordinating some of these things that other people would not coordinate, is
Speaker:listen. And by listening, gave her back the hope
Speaker:that she had lost by talking to this other guy the day before
Speaker:who had taken away her last shred of hope that this would actually get
Speaker:better. She did end up having the
Speaker:surgery. I wanna say he actually put her on a tricyclic antidepressant
Speaker:before that. Not for the depression, but because it also has efficacy for pain.
Speaker:And that was the first thing, the first pain medicine that actually helped her. But
Speaker:I also don't know that it had anything to do with the medication. I think
Speaker:it had everything to do with the fact that she felt like somebody actually gave
Speaker:a shit, which is sorely lacking in a lot of things that we do currently.
Speaker:She came back, I want to say within six months, she had surgery.
Speaker:Within seven or eight, she was back to living her life,
Speaker:happy as a clam. She kept coming back.
Speaker:And like, psychiatrists don't usually treat happy people.
Speaker:It's like once people are back to baseline, they usually tell you to
Speaker:get bent and leave nicely. But she
Speaker:didn't. She was like. She loved coming in just to say hi.
Speaker:And we really weren't doing anything for her at that point. But our office
Speaker:represented the turning point between having absolutely
Speaker:no hope, wandering into the office for the one person in the
Speaker:world that literally had the skills, the provider, the understanding,
Speaker:and the know how to get this done. For her, all he had
Speaker:to do is take off his hat. So when all else fails, take off your
Speaker:hat
Speaker:for this week's small talk again, remember, this is something we do every week. My
Speaker:kids are in a tooth losing phase and
Speaker:not because anybody's knocking them out, which is both great. And, I don't know,
Speaker:it does look a little bit of a disappointment, but it's fine. And for some
Speaker:reason, when one of them loses a tooth, they're two years
Speaker:apart. When one of them loses a tooth, the other one loses one within, like
Speaker:a day. It's just been, like, constant. And so it
Speaker:does look like we are letting them punch each other in the mouth because of
Speaker:the number of missing teeth between the two of them. But it's just the way
Speaker:it's working. My youngest lost a tooth that we knew was going to
Speaker:come out because she had been messing with it nonstop and talking about it nonstop
Speaker:for, like, Two days. But that same night, actually,
Speaker:after I went to bed, my oldest lost a tooth that had been kind of
Speaker:bugging her for a while, but she's less fixated on
Speaker:things. And so neither of us realized that she was getting ready to lose tooth.
Speaker:So we had prepped the appropriate things for
Speaker:the initial tooth losing, and then the
Speaker:secondary tooth losing had to happen without me
Speaker:because I was already asleep, and I didn't know what happened. My husband did.
Speaker:I did not. So my oldest comes down the next day,
Speaker:and she says, mom, look. And she shows me that she lost a tooth. And
Speaker:I was like, oh, that's so cool. Did the tooth fairy come? And she
Speaker:says, yeah, tooth fairy came. I was like, awesome. Then she
Speaker:came in later. She goes, I don't know. I think the tooth fairy must have
Speaker:found out about my tooth late because she
Speaker:only left me $1.75. And I was like, was she supposed
Speaker:to leave you a different amount? And she goes, well, usually I get $2.
Speaker:She'll leave me $1.75. And I was like,
Speaker:maybe that's what people are getting for tooth that day. I don't know.
Speaker:Is it a problem? And she goes, no. I'm glad she brought me stuff. But,
Speaker:you know, it was just weird. I don't know. It felt like maybe she ran
Speaker:out or something. And I was like, okay. So that part
Speaker:comes out of her mouth, and I just happened to. She was standing next to
Speaker:my desk, and I just happened to kind of turn and look at her as
Speaker:she said it. She was fidgeting with something in her hands, and that part
Speaker:comes out of her mouth, and then there's just this, like, fleeting thought
Speaker:that you can see pop across her head, her brain. She looks at
Speaker:me and goes, wait, is the tooth fairy even real? It was like getting
Speaker:punched in the stomach, and I was not prepared.
Speaker:I was not ready. I'm usually, like. I usually have a speech
Speaker:plan for all of these, like, seminal life moments, and I was not there.
Speaker:I did not think we were going there from. I got shorted a quarter.
Speaker:Like, that is not what I thought was happening. And I'm
Speaker:usually, like, really good on my feet. And I just went,
Speaker:what? And she goes, I don't know. It's just kind of weird that I only
Speaker:got $1.75. I don't know. And I went, that doesn't seem
Speaker:like a reason for somebody to not be real. She just kind of gave up
Speaker:on it very quickly and walked out. And I was like, oh, my God, we're
Speaker:there. We're there. We have deductive reasoning skills, and we're
Speaker:using them. And I was not prepared, and I don't know what to do. Oh,
Speaker:God. Christmas is only a couple of months away. I'm
Speaker:Jewish. I don't know how to handle this. If she figures that out,
Speaker:my entire life is over. She is officially too old. I
Speaker:can no longer be her mother. Oh, God. I
Speaker:genuinely felt like I got punched in the stomach. I went up to my husband
Speaker:and not knowing if the kids were any or shadow at all, I said, hey,
Speaker:did the tooth Fairy give her $1.75?
Speaker:And he goes, yeah, that's what the tooth fairy had.
Speaker:And I was like, okay, so if you could just let the
Speaker:tooth fairy know that the non round amount
Speaker:got some little wheels turning and we might have a
Speaker:situation now. And I got to see the same thing go across my
Speaker:husband's face that I had just experienced. And he was like, no, no, no, no,
Speaker:no, no, no, no. We're not ready. I will say
Speaker:that we have kept them. She's older than she should be,
Speaker:but they're still homeschooled and they aren't around a
Speaker:lot of children who will crush their dreams. And so it doesn't come up very
Speaker:often. We've gotten them for longer than I think most
Speaker:families do. But I was not prepared. And I swear to God, it was like
Speaker:watching the innocents just, like, escape from her little brain. And I was just
Speaker:like, oh, no. I wasn't ready for the reasoning
Speaker:skills. Take them back. I don't want them. I've dealt with the height. I've
Speaker:dealt with the sassiness. I've dealt with the edge. I've dealt with the eye
Speaker:rolling. I was. I did not sign on
Speaker:for deductive reasoning skills. We are not ready
Speaker:for that. Take them back and bring me back my little
Speaker:squish baby. So if you need me, I'm gonna go cry in the corner and
Speaker:sing Sunrise Sunset while I figure out how to,
Speaker:I don't know, turn back time. Cause I'm not ready. I'm
Speaker:not ready. Thanks for being here, guys. Have a good day. Love you. Mean
Speaker:it.
Speaker:Oh, he's back. And he just licked my entire arm
Speaker:from my wrist to my elbow. He
Speaker:dragged his tongue across it.
