Emergency Gives Scientist A Peek At What It’s Like to Be A Patient.

Since 1988, Felicia Stamey has worked at the Center for Disease Control. Currently, she serves as the Deputy Branch Chief, Health Scientist in the Measles, Mumps, Rubella, and Herpes Virus Laboratory Branch. As you can imagine, it is a job that focuses on keeping people healthy and preventing serious childhood diseases.

As a person who practices what she preaches and takes great care of her own personal health, Stamey was alarmed to recently find herself on the receiving end of medical care — in an emergency situation.

After spending a perfect weekend with her family, Stamey woke up at 1:00 am on a Monday morning in intense pain.

She says, “The pain was similar to [childbirth] contractions yet much worse and never subsided. The pain was generally all around my lower abdomen, not just the right side where the appendix is. I began vomiting every 15-30 minutes and passed out…more like blacked out…twice as I tried to get to the restroom to vomit. I had low-grade fever and really felt like something had exploded in my lower abdomen. I have a high threshold for pain, I even gave birth naturally with one of my children yet this pain was intolerable. I couldn’t get relief or comfort so we went to the ER.”

As a patient, Felicia experienced first hand how excruciating it can be to wait. She and her husband spent over an hour in the ER before she finally made it through triage and into a holding room.

Once she made it into a room, she says, “I had a very nice nurse who immediately gave me IV’s, morphine and medicine for nausea.”

Even though it sounds funny, Stamey found herself praying for something to actually be wrong. She says she just couldn’t imagine being in that much pain over something simple like gas.

Of course something was wrong. Very wrong. Felicia’s appendix was four times normal size and doctors were frankly surprised it had not burst.

While waiting for a diagnosis, Stamey’s medical expertise kicked in and she says that being in the healthcare business was not necessarily an asset in this case because she found herself over-analyzing the situation and trying to self-diagnose.

She also says, “I expect prompt treatment and good bedside behavior from nurses and doctors. It is difficult to put your life in the hands of doctors and surgeons you are not familiar with. I would normally research my choice of doctors and ask for referrals but in this case I had no choice. The general surgeon on staff was it unless I wanted to die.”

However, she also feels that her career in healthcare means that she got excellent care. She says her care team figured out she was knowledgeable when she could pronounce all of the medications and asked for a specific nausea medication to counteract the anesthesia.

She says, “I had low sodium, potassium and chloride and we spoke openly about that being a ‘normal’ issue for me and we decided together that IV’s of each was critical.”

On the other hand, Stamey says, “Honestly I was in so much pain I didn’t care what they had to do to me to get me pain free. I tried not to act like I knew it all, but I requested to see the CT scan and they said ‘no’ and then before I left I asked if I could take my appendix home with me and that was a flat out no!”

Stamey says that she doesn’t think she had any particular epiphanies about the healthcare provider/patient relationship from her experience except to note that she would have to be dying to go back to the ER.

The wait was frustrating and she felt that sending her home at 8 pm, just 5 hours after her 3 pm surgery when she still had a significantly low blood pressure reading indicated that there is sometimes a lack of empathy in the healthcare provider/patient dynamic.

Stamey did offer this piece of advice to fellow members of the healthcare industry, “You know your own body, listen to your gut instinct. When something isn’t normal trust your feeling and seek immediate medical attention. Sometimes we as healthcare professionals self-diagnose and try to treat ourselves; this is not good in an emergency situation.”