September 19, 2017
I finally gave up on trying to be treated appropriately by Boston Medical Center for the urogenital pain that I had had for almost a year. I called Planned Parenthood and was referred to another medical office which is not affiliated with Boston Medical Center. I am now receiving appropriate medical treatment for the problem, which turned out to be something which could have been cured months and months ago. Before giving up on Boston Medical Center for that problem, I had declined the regimen of three medications which would have paralyzed my reproductive system while not treating the low-grade, nonsexually-contracted-or-related infection, which was the last treatment recommended by the hospital. I'd been subsequently horribly degraded at another appointment that I tried to have there, from which I walked away. I contacted Patient Advocacy and I was then sent a letter from the office manager from the department where I'd been degraded, saying that I was a bad patient and couldn't have appointments and wouldn't be answered by physicians at the obstetrics/urogynecology department. I spent months not having my phone calls returned by Patient Advocacy before I decided that I didn't need to continue to ask to be mistreated. All of the doctors who failed to solve the problem at Boston Medical Center are female.
Being homeless since the beginning of the summer of 2017 has meant that I have walked a lot. I spent the entire summer also carrying a bag that weighed at least 25 pounds on my back all day, every day. There aren't enough lockers for every homeless person, so people who don't have lockers have to carry all of their things around with them all day, every day.
I finally was given a locker a couple of weeks ago. Unfortunately, I have developed some pain in one of my knees. I also saw that the bump on the front of that knee is more pronounced than the bump on the front of the other knee. This morning, I decided not to forestall medical treatment for it, and I went to what used to be called Urgent Care and is now called Fast Track at Boston Medical Center. Although I was somewhat wary of returning to Boston Medical Center for physical treatment for anything, the hospital is near the Pine Street Inn and I also knew that I wouldn't have to have a previously scheduled appointment to be treated.
When my name was called in the waiting room, there was an immediate, loud cough by a male patient in the waiting room.
When I was brought to a room in the Emergency Room, where they're treating some patients who don't have emergency conditions because it's not busy, a male doctor who was sitting at a computer at the nurses' station, began to repeatedly and loudly clear his throat. He harassed me during the entire time that I was at the Emergency Room this morning.
He is not the doctor who treated my knee, who was nice to me and who sent me for X-rays. When I was in the X-ray waiting room, the technician walked into the waiting room, saw me, turned around, went into the hallway, and coughed into his elbow. I don't know if he was harassing me or not.
When I was in the X-ray room and had to change into a hospital gown so that I could have the X-ray, there was some coughing from outside the room. I don't know if it was harassment or not.
My X-rays were normal; there's no fracture, and there's no sign of osteoporosis. My current diagnosis is Osgood-Schlatter.
When I left the Emergency Room and walked to a women's rest room, I was followed into the restroom by a male security guard. He took the trash can and propped the door to the restroom open, while saying loudly "I'm not following you in here. We have to keep the front door propped open because there are people who are drug addicts who shoot up in the stalls. We have to prop the front doors open for the men's and women's restrooms."
I stood there and said nothing while he said all of this; it is not often that I am totally speechless. I walked past those restrooms almost two hours ago, and the front doors to both of them were closed. The front doors to both of them were also closed when I walked to the women's restroom a few minutes ago. The security guard suddenly remembered that the doors are supposed to be open while I was walking to the women's restroom?
There was a puddle of water in front of the toilet in the only stall that didn't already have a person in it, so when the security guard finished his speech about why the front door to the restroom had to be open and he walked away, I looked at the stall, looked at the hallway that was a few feet from the stall, where several people per minute were walking briskly past, and decided that there has to be somewhere that I can pee that will be at least marginally less degrading.
There is a mini Caution cone outside that women's restroom, and a Wet Floor sign outside the men's restroom that's across from it.
Today is not the first time since 2010 that I have had to pee for an hour or a couple of hours because I didn't feel that I had access to a safe restroom. Maybe that's why my urogynecological system was weakened enough by August of 2016 for me to have an infection for more than a year.
I wrote the first two pages that I have published today while I was in the Emergency Room, where the Internet doesn't work at people's phones. I couldn't publish them when I wrote them; that's why I have published them now and they have copyright times that are a few minutes before the copyright time for this page.
Copyright L. Kochman, September 19, 2017 @ 9:54 a.m.
