What a difference a doctor makes!

Quick recap on BR's bladder issues.

BR has been having a lot of bladder pain, cramping, and urine leakage from his urethra despite having a suprapubic catheter. We saw a urologist last Wednesday who refused to do anything for BR other than deflate the catheter balloon down to 10cc, and that was at my suggestion. She insisted on a whole bunch of tests that were going to take weeks to execute.

Last Friday, BR's urinary tract infection (UTI), which the urologist has diagnosed but did not treat, had flared up so badly that we couldn't wait any longer, and called the urologist to see if the urine culture had come back. The office was closed. No warning. No notice. No antibiotics for BR. We asked the answering service to please page the doctor, but they didn't hold out much hope.

We decided to call the other urologist on BR's referral to see if they could help. The office was closed, but the scheduler was able to get BR an appointment for Monday morning. We jumped at the chance to cut ties with the first urologist, but that still didn't fix the immediate problem.

As a last resort, we got an emergency appointment with BR's primary care clinic. His doctor there had prescribed antibiotics in the past even before getting a culture -- using the test to validate treatment, rather than delay it. Unfortunately, BR's doctor was also on vacation, and the doctor covering his patients saw the referral in the records and wanted to contact the urologist before doing anything. We told his nurse that the urologist was the worst doctor ever, and we shouldn't hold our breath waiting to hear from her. Two hours later as the office was getting ready to close, they finally gave up waiting and decided to do their own urinalysis. The doctor gave us a Cipro prescription, and we were on our way.

BR's bladder pain and cramping improved over the weekend, but the leaking didn't.

This morning, we saw the new urologist. He took BR's full medical history and listened to the problems we were having. He recommended a cystoscopy as the best way to figure out what's going on inside BR's bladder. We agreed and scheduled one for early next week. He also recommended trying one of the medications that can control bladder spasms. Without hesitation, he gave us a four weeks supply of Enablex from his stash of samples and told us to start taking them right away. If the problem was gone by next week, he'd still do the cystoscopy just to validate the results.

I'll say it again. What a difference a doctor makes! I took great pleasure calling the first urologist to cancel all the tests and follow-up appointment. Worst. Doctor. Ever.