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The Importance of Being My Own Medical Advocate

A Bad Diagnosis, A Lying Technician

Rachella Angel Page
7 min readApr 28, 2023
Photo by Simran Sood on Unsplash

I’ve often heard stories about people in the medical field being dishonest. I just didn’t think it would happen to me.

For the past year, I’ve been feeling extremely nauseous. It’s been to the point where I had to choose between pain or feeling like I was going to be sick for 24 hours after. This left me in a situation where I couldn’t take the medication I needed for my lower back and lymphedema pains.

I made an appointment with a medical assistant to address this, as my new doctor’s office books four months out for new patients.

She sent me to get medical imaging testing done.

I know the drill, don’t eat or drink after midnight, no smoking. It sucked, but I could live with it.

What is an Emptying Study?

An emptying study consists of two parts. You’re in an imaging testing room for both parts. The first part is that you drink a cup of water that has radioactive substances in it.

You then sit against one part of the machine where the other part sits a foot or two away from it. Think of the machine like a clamp shell or bookends, only massive panels on either side.

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Rachella Angel Page
Rachella Angel Page

Written by Rachella Angel Page

Lifestyle and creative non-fiction writer. Wife. Momma of two dogs: Maxwell and Lady. Obsessed with road trips, poetry and Kickstart. IG: @pagesofrachella

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