Injuries after preventive medical checkup – Part VII
During the consultation at Minor & James on Friday, 25th March, I reported the symptoms that I experienced in my mouth: obvious symptoms of a rash, metallic taste in my mouth, and having a bitter taste while touching my gum with my tongue.
Since I had not as yet received the lab results previously ordered by Dr. H., I inquired about them while consulting with Dr. N. I was told that the lab results had come back and no medical problems had been found. Everything had looked fine including a thyroid test. On that day Dr. N. ordered another batch of blood tests including another urine test.
At the lab I requested the same male nurse A. who had drawn blood from me the last time. But this time no other female nurse assisted him. The last time when he had drawn blood from the veins on top of my hand, I had experienced no discomfort. But at this occasion I almost thought that my hand would burst because of an extreme swelling up while having blood drawn. It took A. a long time to draw blood from my vein and after a while my hand started not only to swell up, its color also turned to bluish-red. Nurse A. filled again three small containers, but the last container had hardly blood in it because of a lack of blood flow after a while. He made the remark while pointing to the small container “that does not make it.†At this moment I just was relieved that he released the pressure from my arm. Strictly speaking I hardly could believe that I had to experience such a discomfort during this procedure.
Dr. N. had prescribed medicine for a rash, and after leaving Minor & James, I drove by the pharmacy store at Costco to buy the medicine. I had been told at Dr. N’s office that the medicine wasn’t so expensive. The bottle Nystatin 100,000 Units/Ml SUSP # 240 cost $67.79, which I had to pay out of my own pocket because my insurance didn’t cover these costs. Additionally, each time I visited a physician I had to pay a co-payment of $20.00 and was charged for lab tests that weren’t done at Minor & James. Here I could mention that my monthly insurance wasn’t cheap, which I had to pay out of my own pocket, too.
Since I hardly had bought medicine, I wasn’t knowledgeable about these costs. I just had the feeling that the medicine bought at Costco was a bit pricey. Thus I inquired at the Walgreen’s Pharmacy store how much they would have charged for the same medicine. To my surprise I was told that the cost would have been $50.00. Therefore I decided to talk to a manager at Costco about this price difference, and I actually received a refund.
The following Monday, 28th March, T. from the Redmond water utility department came by my house. He tested my water for its pH value and chlorine content, while he was in my kitchen. The values were okay. Since I had told him that I also had a metallic taste in my mouth, he offered to test the water a little bit more. He called it a plumbing test. He told me that he would be back the next day with a bottle to collect another water sample.
While he was in my kitchen, he took a gulp of the tap water from my kitchen faucet and said that it tasted good to him and that he is drinking it now for the past 25 years. Just to see how the water tasted, I also took a gulp of the tap water. Since the incident on the day of last Thursday I had only used water bought at a grocery store, and I had experienced no problems while using bottled water.
After T. had left, about 10-15 minutes later, I had white foam streaming like tiny bubbles out of my mouth for some time (maybe about a minute). This seemed so weird to me. Since I had taken the medicine starting last Friday, I have had no problems until I drank some tap water. I considered this incident quite strange. Somehow the tap water had an effect in some way on the medicine.
After white foam had poured out of my stomach, I left a message at the Redmond water utility department informing them of this incident, too. The next day T. handed me a print-out of the water quality test results of May 2004 from the Seattle Public Utilities, tested the chlorine content again, and took a water sample of my tap water for further testing.
After this incident I decided to contact another physician to inquire about some other tests, for example an endoscopy.
Here I would like to remind you that the symptoms started with a grayish-black burned nail in January. Slowly some new symptoms appeared: some tingling sensations in my mouth at the beginning of February, and a metallic and bitter taste starting towards the middle-end of March.
Besides having some saliva with a Q-tip extracted from my mouth, I had two other medical exams performed concerning the affected area: examination at the UW dental clinic in February and dental procedure at a dental practice in Bellevue at the beginning of March.