Yes, that’s exactly what I had to do. My mom was recently diagnosed with multiple myeloma – a cancer of the blood that destroys bone…

We’re coping…just. But the part that disturbed me, almost as much as the diagnosis, was the lack of someone being in charge of the ‘patient.’ What do I mean? Here’s what happened… 
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My mom was in horrible pain. Her PCP at the time gave her some pain meds, but that was all. We then took her to a pain clinic in an effort to find out what was wrong. Initially, she had a compression fracture of the spine. We were making an effort to limit her movements so she wouldn’t make it worse. But it did get worse…a lot worse.

Ultimately, we took her to another PCP who said take her to the hospital. My mom wanted to go to the hospital that had all of her previous info. That’s where we found out she had cancer.

At first, we didn’t believe it – there’s no cancer in our family. They said the cancer had caused her to be anemic. I explained that she, her sister and I (I’m the daughter) were all somewhat anemic all our lives. But my mom continued to have problems. They had to give her blood transfusions because her blood count was low. And the original PCP was back on her case (He was associated with that hospital; not the new PCP).

A few days later, they gave her two more transfusions. Then I remembered something. I asked, "Mom, weren’t you taking high blood pressure medication at one time? You’re not still taking it, are you?"

Well, as the patient, she was taking whatever they gave her. I had her ask the nurse who responded basically saying ok, if you don’t want them anymore, we won’t give them to you.

Can you believe it – they were still giving her high blood pressure medicine to lower her blood pressure even as they gave her blood transfusions to increase her low blood count!!!!! What if I hadn’t asked??? What if I hadn’t remembered??? (Oh by the way -- now that she's off those meds, her blood pressure is a normal 126 over 70. Seems she never had high blood pressure!)

Makes you wonder how anyone gets out alive…