My what a difference a few weeks makes.
Did I mention last time the only way I knew she hadn’t really looked was because I read her op note? The one that propagated to the patient portal?
First and most important: The TRH/BSO will have to be rescheduled. On followup on July 10, she dug in her heels and insisted that my urethra is normal and I have no aberrant pathway/fistula. I have since set an appointment with a second opinion urologist, who by coincidence happens to be in the same practice my original urologist, long since retired, belonged to. I intend to try to get him to examine me and pin a reality anchor in the aberration before I tell him the full story, as I think that telling urologist #1 the truth was part of the problem.
I read the original op note either night of or day after the procedure and saw no reference whatsoever to checking for what we were calling an ectopic urethra (because that’s what it got called in 1995). I went to print it for future reference and to show the second opinion urologist and read it in shock.
My first hint something was very, very wrong was when I went to the portal and saw the op note marked as “unread”. This put up an enormous red flag, as I had read the op note nearly immediately after the procedure and got my information from it. I clicked through to the op note and printed it and was aghast at what I found: There were several references that did not exist in the original to her checking and not finding an ectopic passage. She evidently checked while scoping the bladder from within and at the end checked the vagina to look from without and concluded that the “ectopic urethra” did not exist.
What makes this particularly concerning is the fact that the op note was signed day of, and it should have been impossible to either 1) propagate to the portal unverified, where I could have read it before alterations were made, or 2) get amended after the fact without it showing exactly when it was done. Quibbles to some, but to a medical records veteran these are extremely important points. It is clear on reading that the note was generated by voice recognition as certain discernable errors persist that would have been corrected had the document passed through the tender loving care of an MT/MLS in order to train the algorithm. It was signed, according to the document, day of in the afternoon just a couple hours after the procedure was complete.
So why does this terrify me?
I have this bad fortune of being able to sometimes see when reality changes around me. For example, one time I was talking to a doctor and I literally saw the color of his shirt change from pink to blue. I didn’t even blink. It was just one, and then the other, just like that. To him, it was probably “I put on a pink shirt this morning” and then after “but I put on a blue shirt this morning”, but for me it was a sudden change.
And then there was the time my son’s doctor wrote three physical scripts for his C-II medication (before they changed the rules to allow/force them to do it electronically). He brought the scripts in fresh off the printer and signed them in front of me and my son. The fourth witness to the signatures was the pharmacy tech who received them from me through the drive-through. An hour or so later I got a call from the pharmacy saying I had left them scripts with no signatures. I guess four witnesses wasn’t enough of a reality pin. I told her it was no problem, I would just pick them up and take them to him to be signed again. She got very upset with me, pretending I was accusing her of having altered them. I said no, just let me get him to sign them again and everything will be fine… He was surprised when I came back with the now unsigned scripts and asked for him to sign them again, as he also remembered signing them in front of us.
It’s one thing when the reality shifts are fixable things. It’s another thing entirely when I have spent the last month believing in a version of the op note that suddenly changed with added lines that were not in the original – but I could never in a million years prove it because according to the official record those lines were always there and were signed in officially on the day of the procedure. Saying those statements did not exist when they now do puts me in the position of being a liar. Again.
I have spent decades trying to live with the ramifications of both gaslighting and reality shifting and being called a liar when things are suddenly not what I said they were. This issue of the aberrant anatomy and its surgical implications is too important to have mucked up by something that will destroy my credibility as a historian.
The Mandela effect is a term that came about because millions of people witnessed either the funeral or the news coverage of the funeral of Nelson Mandela that was staged while he was imprisoned. When he was later released and subsequently proven to be alive, it was assumed that those millions of people who “knew” they saw the funeral and coverage of it were suffering from a mass delusion. Most if not all evidence of the funeral was scrubbed from the records after he was proven to be alive, so people trying to “prove” they saw it found no backup for their story. They were “shown to be liars”.
What needs to happen on the second opinion followup is I need him to stick a bloody catheter up the aberrance (at this point I don’t care what people call it, ectopic urethra, fistula, whatever) before I tell him the story. We need a reality anchor to establish that what the urologist found in 1995 was and is real. Then maybe, while the catheter is still in place, the rest of the story will be believable. My mistake was telling the truth before present day urologist #1 looked. She got the firm idea in her head that I was delusional and saw what she wanted to see accordingly. Even to the point of putting it in an official set of medical records. Possibly even to the point of making certain the op note changed from a bland note that did not mention looking to one that made certain to look. I can’t prove anything.
July 23 will be a very important day.
And I remain terrified. Because someone or something is now upping the ante. It isn’t just insignificant changes I see happen and shrug. It is credibility-destroying changes that could have catastrophic surgical consequences. And I am powerless to stop it. This isn’t some psychological thriller novel that will just resolve eventually when a bad guy is identified and the phenomena explained. How I wish that were so. This has been going on for my lifetime. And even talking about it makes me look crazy. It’s as bad as when people publicly declare “I am not suicidal” when they feel their life is under threat and it is possible it will be made to look like a suicide… the “Epstein effect”, I guess. I am NOT crazy. I do NOT lie. And I will do everything I can to keep anchored in reality, even when it changes.
If someone reads this, please pray. I need all the intercession I can get.