Two posts in one day? Well, yes, but only because something happened that made me feel good… not just good but powerful!
Weeks ago I had an unpleasant run-in with my new primary care provider. I won’t share her name but I will say I am seen by the VA Medical Center. She was assigned to me last year when my doctor of 5 years left the VA to go back to private practice. She was an angel! The new doctor I had only seen once before and I had found her brusque but tolerable. When I saw her weeks ago, she was antagonistic and quite the bully. She accused me of things that were patently untrue and didn’t listen to my concerns. Her only concern was to get me to follow her choice of treatments. She didn’t care about my concerns for side effects or my belief in natural treatments in conjunction with medical interventions. Her treatment that day, when I was quite sick, left me in tears that night and for weeks, I’ve fretted about taking action because I knew I could not see her again.
With the VA, we are assigned a doctor, we don’t get to choose them and in the decade plus of being seen, I’ve never needed to request a change of provider and never needed to make a complaint. So, this was new to me. However, my anxiety tends to keep me from doing a number of things I need to do at times when they are confrontational. My anxiety whispers that no one will believe me, that it will be a fight to get what I’m asking for (no matter how minor), and those thoughts keep me awake at night. Sometimes, I have to wait until I am in the frame of mind to be able to fight a battle.
Here’s the thing: usually it’s not a battle. The battle is actually pushing the anxiety back far enough to be able to tackle what ends up being minute in nature or easy. Today when I had the right frame of mind to send an email to the appropriate people to request a new doctor, it only took a few hours to get a call back. I even had to let it go to voicemail then steel myself for calling back. So I did…
It was an easy call. Yes, I sweated profusely, as I tend to do when I’m anxious, but I remained calm and pleasant and every single one of my concerns was addressed in my favor.
So, today: I won and my anxiety lost. No more fearing at night, worrying how the conversation will go because now, the conversation is over and I was taken care of. I feel quite powerful now!
This was also a lesson about how the VA will work to take care of veterans. I felt very powerless in the face of such a large organization but I had forgotten: the VA is here to serve ME. Not the other way around. Veterans, if you are facing problems with your medical care, please calmly and politely contact the patient advocate or send a message through IRIS on your own behalf.