In another effort to emulate Jackson Browne, this post is written as I sit in a UCHealth cafeteria, minutes before my doctor’s appointment. Help us all.

And I write this in haste and frustration, keeping the tone just like that to show you how vulnerable and confused we can be at times.

She Works Hard For the Money

I finally left UCHealth, and I am beyond proud of the decision. Aside from the crumbling pool of debt my family is diving into because hey, we still like to party, we are spending more time together, learning about one another, teaching each other, and most importantly, strengthening our ability to communicate with each other, an attribute not every family possesses, trust me I know from several near-death experiences.

As I left UCHealth, I realized I had sacrificed not only my brain and soul to the corporate world, but as I held on to their string they tied secretly around my wrinkling neck, my children became victim to their precise attention to business detail – in fact, my girls continue to suffer due to their faultiness and inability to staff and train their people properly.

Don’t misunderstand me – they are the BEST hospital in Colorado. Let that sink in, let it scare you, let it make you ponder where in the hell you can go for life-saving care. And get this, the errors they made weren’t even during stressful procedures to help them survive – they occurred with preventative procedures: vaccines to be specific.

It Must Be Exhausting Always Rooting Against the Anti-Vaxxer

We have anti-vaxxers in our family, whom we have tormented with facts upon facts of real news and scientific backing, only to receive a response that was dull and uninformed. I cheer for and have taken in vaccines since the dawn of my creation, repeating the cycle for my kids, and suggesting the same for employees (my former children). As a scientist, I support innovation and safety, both of which vaccines offer.

So it amazed me when my daughters both became casualties of medical errors, or rather, vaccination errors, or if we want to put it in laymen’s terms: errors due to a lack of corporate attention to the actual problem in healthcare. Staffing, training, and prioritizing the patient are actually not on the top of the list as much as the business matters as healthcare is a business and has been for over 50 years.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot

The first instance – the oldest was given an expired Polio vaccine. The system allowed the medical assistant to pull an expired Polio vaccine out of the fridge, then they paid no mind to making said employee scan this into the electronic medical record, thus no alarms went off like we won Showcase Showdown on the Price is Right, and insert expired vaccine into Carmella’s arm. A few weeks later I get a call, “Your child was given an expired vaccination, we don’t know what to do, but our pharmacist scoured documents and said to revaccinate.

Hell to the motha, effin’ no, my friend. Nope. Not going to get another expired vaccine, not going to listen.

The worst part? I pondered the information, slept on it for a month or two, and finally mustered up the courage to revaccinate. When I went to schedule it, the staff knew nothing of the situation, the phone call regarding the error had not been documented in her chart, her chart was showing complete vaccination of Polio, all looked well in the UCHealth patient portal.

I then did detective work, which I got my hand slapped for since I was not supposed to view my family member’s chart other than by using the patient portal. But you know what? With my Nancy Drew sleuthing skills, I found the note about the phone call, something even the doctor could not pull up. I guided them to the note and requested it be patient-facing. They agreed, claimed they fixed it, but the information is still nowhere to be found in the chart other than a little blip no one would read unless they were taking the chart in like a juicy, promiscuous novel about how some lady murdered her husband and married a goat instead (aka living her best life).

She still hasn’t gotten revaccinated. Not sure if she ever will. And in the back of my mind I seriously hope she doesn’t die from Polio. Because it would be my fault.

The second error: I took both my children in for their routine exams, in which three vaccines were administered to both of them before my very eyes. No scanning of the vaccine information in the computer, they had called me back in the car because they had forgotten to have me sign a document regarding the event. Nothing else. The children acted normal that night, not expressing the typical symptoms one experiences after getting shot up with the mRNA version of COVID.

A few weeks later I got a note saying my kids were due for vaccines, the same ones they received in the room the day we were trapped for two hours waiting for various doctors. I became suspicious, what do you mean they are due for the COVID vaccine? They already got it.

I once again performed the illegal Hardy Boys task and looked in their chart. What I found was inexplicable, egregious, and scary – they hadn’t documented the three vaccines, only one.

But she got three shots?

I messaged the doctor, this cannot be, please help me dissect and correct. PLEASE HELP.

The doctor’s response? Do them all over again. Revaccinate to cover her ass, not mine, not my children’s, HER ASS.

She’s an ass, alright.

Where Have All the Good Docs Gone?

And now here I sit, wondering what in the hell to do. I went to another doctor, I told her my horror stories, she manipulated me to get them revaccinated, and then ended up missing the vaccination at the end of the appointment.

Apparently my child will be getting Hepatitis and COVID all at the same time. Get ready.

I am an empathetic, chance-giver, but this is where I draw the line. I go into debt more to support your kush, physician lifestyle, only to have you mess up and be nonchalant about the resolution. 100% not ok, people. Go back to school and get yourself back into debt because what you are doing is not cutting it. And UCHealth? Spend some dollars to staff your offices, shut down the offices for a week to train your people, create better systems, PAY ATTENTION TO YOUR PATIENTS, even if they aren’t dying of some fascinating, complicated disease, because we know those are the ones you want, not us boring preventative kids who you can treat like a heroin addict, pinning us with needles whenever you see fit.

Mama Bear is on the loose, better hide yo’ kids.