It has been 5 months since my surgery and I still cannot believe what an awful experience it was. I was brought to the hospital by ambulance early on a Sunday morning with awful stomach pains. Within 10 minutes I was told that my Gallbladder needed to come out right away. I then went on to have several tests done and I was admitted around 1pm. I was told that my surgery would be in the early evening hours. Around 6pm a nurse came and told me that she did not know when my surgery would be because there was only one OR open on the weekends and it was already booked, my surgery had been pushed back until sometime late that evening. That turned into the next morning, then the afternoon, then evening and finally I went down to the OR at 11pm on Monday night. Since they did not know when my surgery was going to be, they would not let me eat. I went 2 days with no food! I spoke with my assigned Dr briefly on Sunday evening and did not see him again before the surgery. Now comes the scary part, I never saw him again after. Nobody came to tell my family how the surgery went, the doctor never came back at any point after to make sure I was alright. I got back to my room around 2am, when I woke up the next morning the nurses were rushing to get me out. They said that I needed to be released before my doctor came back on for his shift or he would be upset because they were expected to have a certain ""turnaround time"". At no point did anyone tell me what to expect with my surgery or what steps I should take to care for myself when I got home - what to eat, how much time I should take off from work, etc. Instead I got a packet of papers that included information like ' What do to if you need to put your parent in a nursing home'. After a week I was still in severe pain and there was a lump that had formed under my scar. I called my surgeon several times and asked if he would see me and each time I was told that he was too busy and I needed to wait for my scheduled follow up the next week. I went to my primary doctor who thought that something might be wrong and sent me for a CAT scan, which led to another MRI. When I finally got to see the surgeon the next week he told me that I had been having some issues because there had been some complications during my surgery so it was going to take me longer to heal than most people would. I could not believe that this kind of information had been kept from me. When I went to the hospital to talk to the administrators about my experience I was completely blown off. I should have know something was wrong when the first office they sat me in had a desk COVERED in huge binders full of patient complaints all from the past year. They told me that my surgery had taken so long to schedule because they had made the decision that it was more cost effective to keep people in the hospital and waiting in line for surgery than to open up one of the other OR's. Which of course makes sense because my insurance had to pay for me to stay an extra day so they don't care, they are getting their money either way. I do have insurance but I have a high deductable, $3000, a couple weeks after I got home they sent me a bill and said that it needed to be paid in full within 30 days. I called to talk to them about it and the woman I spoke with was incredible rude. When I talked to her about a payment plan they said that they would not take less than $300 a month. I explained to her that this was a completely unexpected expense and there was no way I could pay that, she pretty much hung up on me. I told her that all I could pay was 150 a month and I started making payments, after the third month I got a letter saying that they had turned me over to a collection agency. I now carry a card next in my wallet next to my drivers license that says ""In case of an emergency please do not take me to WakeMed"". Since this experience I have been amazed at all of the horror stories that people have been telling me about this hospital.
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