And as I say this I can envision the therapist or doctor writing as I speak and then over ten years later getting the records and saying out loud to myself, where did they even get that sh** from cause I know I never said that?
That's not even true. That's not the way it happened. And at times even laughing cause the errors are so gross. Lawsuit type stuff... In the past seven years I've pulled records for myself when I went through a custody battle, a two year battle, those were therapy records from when I walked into a mental health clinic in my mid twenties to reach out for help for trauma issues and anxiety issues, mainly from my youth.
No one referred me. No one sent me. I walked in ON MY OWN to finally get help for these issues. When I was younger I was forced into therapy by my mother, my brother and I both, to deal with her alcoholism that she was getting help for and because when we were little we used to fight which siblings do, then in my early teens depression issues from getting severely bullied in the 7th grade, severely bullied till I ran with a different crowd.
It helped when I was little but then as a teen it didn't help because I wasn't ready for it to help. In my twenties I reached a point of readiness and after five years of therapy including trauma group therapy and one-on-one, and dialectical behavioral therapy I no longer suffer with depression issues since my late twenties - we're talking over ten years now, ten to 15.
The records for myself that I was outraged about were from my twenties. Now mind you I don't have a history of alcohol or drug abuse. I was in therapy to only deal with TRAUMA. First of all, I had a therapist once tell me I was a "martyr" when talking to her about something I was going through. Yes, nice therapist. But at the time I saw that as tough love, but then later after I read her thoughts in her notes I was like, wtf, if I had only known I would have filed a complaint against her and asked for new therapist.
That's what she was getting paid for and what I was there for was to listen to ME TALK about my TRAUMA issues and things that I continued to struggle with because of my youth years. I was trying to work through that to reach the point I'm at today - of inner peace. She was a disgusting vile human to call a patient a "martyr." Then more recently I've pulled records for a son who suffered a head injury at age 12. He's now in his twenties.
He was also in therapy when he was younger for things that we experienced thanks to his father's family and his father. That's all I'll say on that. But going through these records I realized this...it's like the "telephone game" when talking to therapists, or doctors - in office and the hospital - medical and psych. I can remember being taught the telephone game at school as a child.
Everyone sat in a circle and passed the same information on given to one child, then that child whispered the information to the next, and the next and so on till it reached the end of the circle then the last child said what was heard and it was NEVER the correct information given by the teacher to the first child. Well this is 100 times worse because we're talking about people's lives and what's written in black and white can affect someone's life medically and socially.
Decisions can be made on someone's life based on inaccurate gross errors because clinicians and doctors and social workers don't LISTEN. My lesson after reading through some very disappointing and disheartening things is to periodically check my records in the future for health issues mainly for myself because I'm passed therapy. There will be no more of those types of records for me.
And to now also pass on this advice to anyone out there going through therapy or trying to get help with a medical issue that no one can figure out - pull your records periodically to make sure they're LISTENING to you and the information they're putting in your chart is accurate and truthful and CORRECT. And if it's not have it corrected ASAP and file complaint with whomever you need to file that complaint with.
My son, it took over ten years to finally get a dx for neurological issues he experienced after his head injury and that would have been avoided if people LISTENED to us when he was younger and so much heartache and hardship in his life and our life as a family would have been avoided if we received the help we needed and deserved!!! And now we can't get those years back.
We have to accept "it is what it is" and God's will be done no matter what and "everything happens for a reason" but my son didn't deserve to go through everything he went through when we were reaching out for help. The errors are horrific, some things completely out of left field made up, some important facts left out. It makes me both angry and devastatingly sad.
I cried many tears in the recent days and it takes a lot to make me cry. I'm not a crier but this was sad stuff. Now I'm making a list of all the places I plan on filing complaints with and attempting to update records, and to tell the story of how he was failed and how they need to LISTEN to patients and their families...
That's all for now... This has been on my mind since last week and I'm a little behind with my ecards. Trying to be funny when you've got a lot on your mind can be hard, or trying to be creative, but I do have an ecard coming up this week that I was supposed to post last week so I'll get to it maybe tomorrow.
So again, check your records and make sure they're "listening" and accurately recording what you tell them, whether medically or psych...
With Love,
Carmen
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