Stephanie’s Journey Continues

After her trip to Tulsa in October, Stephanie met with Dr. Babb for her virtual post-op. During that appointment, Dr. Babb asked her to have a local gynecologist run a test for him. Stephanie scheduled an appointment for December 11th with a local OBGYN who was recommended by her primary care doctor. However, her symptoms got worse over Thanksgiving week, and she ended up at Urgent Care on Black Friday. You may not know this, but urgent care facilities, as well as emergency rooms, are notorious in the chronic pain world for not helping, and gaslighting patients.

The Urgent Care Stephanie went to was the exact opposite. They were hesitant at first, unsure *if* they could help, though they wanted to if they could. They were able to figure out that they could run the test Stephanie needed. She kept the appointment on December 11th because she would have liked to get set up with a local gynecologist and wanted someone local who could run follow up tests as needed.

She should have walked out, but the appointment started well enough, albeit 45 minutes late. Dr. took notes on her experience & her symptoms, and then left the room to see if he could access the results of the swab she had done at the Urgent Care within the same medical system on Black Friday.

He came back and reported there were no results, and it was clear *his* assumption was that meant it was negative because “yeast tests come back really quickly” and “if it were an STI a skin swab could come back negative once it reached a certain degree of healing”. If you think that’s bad… it got worse.

Then he started in on the fact that Stephanie shouldn’t have kept her ovaries when she had her hysterectomy & endometriosis excision surgery because “estrogen causes endometriosis and if you don’t remove the ovaries, endometriosis will definitely recur”. And “they can’t excise endometriosis from around the bowel or nerves”. In reality, there are doctors who can and do, and with an expert endometriosis surgeon like Stephanie had, it’s something like a 20% recurrence rate. For more information, check out the Nancy’s Nook Endometriosis Education group on Facebook as well as the iCareBetter list of vetted endometriosis surgeons.

She & her husband left, and went across the parking lot to the Urgent Care, where they talked to the nice nurse who did her swabs on Black Friday who confirmed that the test results are not in yet, and yes, they will call her when they are. So, Stephanie went home empty handed, and she still doesn’t have a local gynecologist she can trust. She’s *thisclose* to throwing in the towel & going back to Tulsa to see Dr. Corey Babb but she has one more card to play with a provider he recommended who is five hours away, one way. She’s just sick of being gaslit, but her journey continues.