Oops!

Here's the screw-up I talked about in the last post. There were two doctors who saw me at Silver Lake.

Dr. Ralph Ciccone is a pulmonologist. Dr. John McCarthy* might have gone to medical school. Dr. Ciccone's instructions upon my discharge were as follows:
"I reviewed his chart from Columbia Presbyterian. He is on a tapering course of steroids [Prednisone]. I would continue this. He is currently being tapered down from his 80 mg per day from April 2nd. This will be tapered to 60 mg for a week, then to 40 mg for a week, then for 20 mg for a week and the patient will need ongoing taper after that."

Take a look at the Med List they sent me home with (actually, it's only a partial list). I was released on May 4th; Dr. McCarthy had me off Prednisone completely two days after discharge! Thank G-d for good ol' Dr. Katzenelenbogen. When I asked him about it, he said it didn't make any sense to him. He was totally uncomfortable having me go off the Prednisone cold turkey. He refused to allow it until I spoke to a pulmonologist. Without going into all the gory details here, suffice it to say that not only am I still on Prednisone now, more than four months later, I'm still on the same dosage. Had I followed McCarthy's schedule, I might not be here blogging. Can you imagine? I would have survived the vent and the infections and the MRSA and the C-Diff and the trach, only to meet my demise at the hands of a neanderthal doctor? Sheesh...what a jerk!
* Yes, it's his real name!