When you ask a person if they have any chronic illnesses, it might be construed as disrespectful when they tell you one of their chronic illnesses is fibromyalgia and you reply with a long drawn out "oookkkkaaayy. Well, do you have any real chronic illnesses?"
Your second fail followed just moments later. After you pointing out how swollen the entire top of my hand was, and telling me to take my rings off before they "get stuck", you go to take my pulse and you grab my affected wrist. As you grab it and start squeezing it, the first indication that you just messed up would have been my body immediately tensing up while I loudly yell "Ouch! Your thumb is really hurting me!". You'd think that at that point, you might have immediately let go and took the ONE step to the side that you'd need to take my pulse on the wrist that isn't in any pain or trauma. I'd think an "Oh gosh! I'm sorry I hurt you" would have quickly followed. I honestly couldn't believe that instead you said "Well that was your wrist. I thought you said your hand hurt. Which is it? Your hand or your wrist?". Are you kidding me?! I told you that origin of the pain was on my hand about 1/4-1/2 of an inch above my wrist. You can clearly see that my hand is swollen from my wrist to my fingers. After all, you pointed out that I needed to have my rings off because my fingers were swelling. Therefore I'd think you'd have the common sense to realize that part of your LARGE thumb was also pushing on the spot of origin on my hand, 1/4-1/2" above my wrist and that my wrist itself also has pain and is also swollen along with the hand, and the fingers.
Now, I thought I was going to a hospital to be diagnosed and treated. I didn't realize that I was going to have to play "baseball" but unfortunately you, Mr. RN, forced me to play. Your third strike with me? Yeah, that would be when you were wrapping my hand and kept disgustingly telling me to hold my hand out straight and to keep my fingers spread apart while you were wrapping. As I was saying "ouch" and gasping from pain taking my breath away as I attempted to hold my fingers apart, I'd think that you'd find a different way for me to position my hand/fingers that wasn't as painful. I'd already told you that moving my fingers in any way caused me excruciating pain. You wanna know something else? I was only 4 classes away from sitting for MY nursing state boards and there was no reason in the world for you to even want me to spread my fingers completely apart while you wrapped my hand. Not my fingers, my hand. Do you see any reason for him to freak out, unwrap, yell at me to keep my fingers spread, and re-wrap my hand?? Because I sure don't!
You, Mr. RN Quinton, made it crystal clear that you don't believe in fibromyalgia and that you had decided that because of my fibromyalgia that you don't believe in, that you were going to be a complete jerk to me and not care about my current pain that I was there to be seen for. I would've thought, after you knowing the doctor was freaking out because my x-ray showed two bones in my hand with pointy calcification spots from an old injury, and many bone fragments floating around in my hand, along with the doctor believing that by hitting the palm of my hand falling into the bath tub that it pushed a pointy bone up and severed tendons and ligaments and him calling to refer me to an ortho right away and telling me that I need surgery, would be a clue to you that I honestly was in pain and this wasn't just some "faker fibromyalgia patient" and that maybe you should've cared whether or not you were hurting me wrapping my hand. (Whew, HUGE run-on sentence but I'm kind of mad and snarky right now and I don't care enough to want to go correct my bad grammer.) Anyway Mr. RN Quinton, that was your third strike and you were out!
You, Mr. RN Quinton, are a total DHAC (doesn't have a clue). You, Mr. RN Quinton, are one of the reasons why I put together my Living With Chronic Pain seminar in the first place. You, Mr. RN Quinton, are why I'm going to call the hospital and attempt to book my seminar in their facility, to present to their staff. Also, you're lucky Mr. RN Quinton, that I absolutely can't stand even the thought of confrontation. Had that not been the case, I would have completely unloaded on you tonight and it wouldn't have been pleasant. One more rude, disrespectful move by you tonight would have pushed me over the edge and I wouldn't have been very polite, friendly, or professional. I had a complete arsenal of words circulating in my head that wasn't very nice!
