That’s just awful LG. I guess I have been lucky in my journey, my GP is very supportive, medical staff are fabulous and certainly not judgmental. Bendigo Base still haven’t given me an appointment however I have spoken to the Nurse at the Liver Clinic and told her about my generics etc. To say she was excited is an understatement,……everyone I have told about my HepC including workmates have been incredibly supportive….as I said I think I have been very very lucky and it makes me really sad and mad to hear about the way those of you that have been treated badly.

Keep on keeping on!

Yes Chejai! So LG we too are treated appalling
I’m in the music industry as you know and also spent a lot of years at the coal face in classrooms
Also a coastal rural area
So I got dumped ‘on the bench’ in Trials Clinic waiting for the trial that never came. I will never forget the first day I went down that rabbit warren to the clinic located in one of our major public hospitals
The receptionist looked at me and omg I must have turned grey under my usual happy demeanour as she LOUDLY announced so the whole universe could hear ” I saw your name on the list for today WHY ARE YOU HERE!!!” Noice, yup I taught her kids eons ago and she lives locally. Cut to a few weeks ago and I received my sms reminder to attend at the clinic
Of course by then I was already up and running thanks to James and Greg here, so I rang up to ask if seeing I had commenced tx on generics were they happy to monitor me, a reaonable inquiry
The same receptionist upon listening to me responded “you WHAT!!! Oh No No NOOOO!
It spiralled from there into a very strange case of being told “how do you even know what to take blah blah …
Now I have managed in work, produced shows and dealt with many people so I know how to play the passive firm quiet game and held that attitude as I listened to this RECEPTIONIST rant away.
I haven’t ‘sacked’ them, and I didn’t get my script from them which is maybe a power issue, but the shenanigans at the clinic certainly aren’t professional; talk about over familiar!!
Re blood collection
What a disgusting experience LG I have read it twice just to get my head around it. It’s so true what Chejai says we are faced off with all these signs posted about conduct etc but hello please will you behave too when you’re poking around in our arms. It’s rank the treatment you got. My best friend is a path nurse. She would freak out at your experience LG
OKAY so to focus on something good
First bloods done you lucky
Waiting to hear how you go
Keep the posts coming LG I am three days behind you in tx and check in regularly xxxx
Thanks and yes my to add to the bunch [/quote]

Hi Ariel this has happened to me TWICE! where I have been told about a trial and dumped due to unforeseen circumstance on behalf of the Pharma company – I was devastated.

I am wondering if there is something particularly toxic about medical care funded by the government and thus a monopoly. I recall a visit to Cuba where I stayed in a few different hotels, some government run and some privately owned. The difference was like night and day with regards to the service I got. The state employees all looked at me as if I were an inconvenience that they wished would just disappear off the face of the earth. Well, their jobs were guaranteed. They had no incentive to actually do what they were there to do, and a lot of foot dragging took place before they could be bothered. I saw the same thing in other government run places, supermarkets, etc. By contrast, the privately owned places could not have been more helpful. Service with a smile. They wanted customers. They wanted to have jobs to go to. Now, I do not want this to turn into a political issue, I just want to make the point that state medical care is perhaps not offering the correct incentives to encourage service with a smile.

There’s something else too that I want to mention. I think that some medical departments are thought of as more ‘glamorous’ places, or exciting places to work than others. Strangely enough, virology is at the moment an exciting area with many scientific breakthroughs taking place so you would expect it to draw the brightest and the best. While this is in fact happening (eg. the doc), there is a lot of dead wood to get through sitting in high places. The arrival of the DAAs have taken this lot by surprise, just when they had become top authorities in their field. With the DAAs so recently approved, many do not have a lot of experience with them, and so they find themselves in the uncomfortable position of being the supposed expert but they don’t know the answers. I was struck by a recent post by the doc which said something like he had treated more people with hepC using the DAAs than all the other liver docs in Oz put together. So while these other guys have put the years in, and their experience is certainly valuable, there’s this new generation on their heels, just arriving, who know so much more about the use of the DAAs. I have seen this in other fields like technology and it makes for a lot of in-department tension and also a lot of early retirements.

And lastly, another word about what some view as the more ‘unglamorous’ areas in medicine to work, the care of the elderly being one, particularly if dementia is involved. Here you will find the disenfranchised and you will also find those who prey on the vulnerable, the weak and the powerless, especially those who have no family to speak for them. When you get that snotty receptionist or that arrogant consultant you can walk away. But imagine how much worse they could inflict on you if you couldn’t walk away. There is a serious problem with this kind of person in the medical services and it needs to be blown wide open. Thus, what you are doing is important LG, and it has much wider ramifications for all the people currently under the thumb of some sadistic m.f. while society turns a blind eye, as if we won’t all get old some day.

dt

I can imagine what you witness working in the field Sabrecat and probably many people who just shouldn’t be working with the sick and vulnerable as DT so poignantly expressed.
One particular Specialist, I saw 3 times, would ask how I was doing and had I consumed any alcohol since my last visit. I’m always honest, a bit too so probably, and I always told him what I had. I know they ‘assume’ you’re lying and therefore ‘change’ the figure to their own guesstimation – I actually saw this on the paperwork and demanded to know why he was putting different answers to what I was saying. He would then launch into a rant about the damage I was doing and didn’t I want to be alive to raise my son etc., etc.I would end up crying my eyes out as he’d go on about how ‘disgusted he was working in this clinic and seeing how appallingly people treated their bodies. We were all representative of Western societies’ excesses …’
By the 3rd appointment this rant was really fired up and he said that he couldn’t take anymore of the patients he had to deal with in the clinic and was transferring to another area in Gastro. He wanted to know, as I’m sitting and bawling my eyes out, if I was serious about my health and wellbeing. He wanted to know what was my spiritual and moral standpoint, did I want his help because he could refer me to a psychologist who ‘specialised’ in such spiritual dilemmas – i didn’t think I was experiencing any spiritual dilemma but what did I know???
I hadn’t started seeing a Psych at that point, so I asked for more info. He started to write down some details and when he told me the location – a special clinic at his ‘church’ near the city, I told him I couldn’t travel that far. He launched into another spiel about me not being serious about my future etc. Then he looked up my address and realised I was on an island and all the BS involved in getting to the city. He said something else, trying to comfort me and stop me from crying and then suddenly became really cold and withdrew saying, ‘no, I’ve said too much. That’s all you have to go now, goodbye and Good Luck!’

It was extremely bizarre, inappropriate and traumatising because as much as I wanted to report him I was reminded of the last time I made a complaint in another hospital and what was ‘done to me’ to stop me from making it formal.

On the bus journey home as I started to process all that had been said in that session, and previous, and I realised his obvious religious persuasion and his attempt to ‘recruit’ me and the ‘special psychologist’s’ role would have been to ‘brainwash’ me.

Whilst I am a strong woman and have endured a lot in my life, particularly abuse in all forms, and like many when I’m stressed, upset and vulnerable I can’t seem to protect myself at the time. I take awhile to process things, I need to go to my cave with no other incoming stimuli and take it all in. He could see he was about to ‘hook’ me but even if I had of agreed, once I had time to process I would have seen clearly what was happening and bailed.
Yes, DT as you were saying dangerous people working with the vulnerable is a reality and often goes on indefinitely because the victims can’t advocate for themselves.