St Mary S Neurosurgery — Health facility in Huntington

ALL reviews about St Mary S Neurosurgery

• Lillian

  Added 2016.04.01

  I think that the staff and nurses at SMNS are very nice. And I think my doctor is a good person in general. Prior to my back condition, I was a nurse and a small business owner, but I have not been able to work because of my debilitating bilateral sacroiliac joint dysfunction and sacroilitis. It took over a year of seeing different doctors to even get a correct diagnosis. The past two years of my life have been spent in intense pain. The majority of that time has been spent in bed or sitting in a recliner chair, because walking has been and still is extremely painful and debilitating. My husband has cooked, cleaned and taken care of me for almost two years now while he has worked a full-time job. My back pops and crunches with any movement, deep breaths, twist, even leg movement in bed/chair, and when it pops, extreme sharp pain shoots down into my lower back, gluteal area, groin and down into my thighs, knees and side of my ankle. It literally feels like bones grinding together with each pop/crunch. After having my first phase of Ifuse surgery at SMNS, I feel that my doctor is just not very interested in my condition. I get the impression that he would rather do a more challenging surgery (to him) over mine, even though my condition is disabling me. I also do not feel that he thinks that it is as painful as it is, because to him, it was not major enough and I just feel that he pacified me at my last office visit. I was the one to suggest ideas why I may be still having problems on the side of my first procedure or that maybe I needed to have physical therapy, etc. (Before surgery, I was just given a sheet for exercises to do on my own time and taught how to walk correctly with a walker by PT). So, at the last post up appt with him, he just sat there and listened, and once I stopped talking, he wrote me orders for the suggestions that I made and scheduled me to see his NP in six weeks. I have a friend who has had the same procedure as mine in another state, and when she compared her story and my experience with my first surgery and the weeks after, her comment was, “oh wow, you are not getting good healthcare there”. I am still pretty young with a poor quality of life and I feel like my quality of life does not have his interest or is even a concern of his at all. I still have a long way to go and even more surgery. I am his first patient at SMNS that has to have both SI Joints fused (according to what his NP told me and so she was not able to answer all of my questions because my condition is different and new to her). And also according to another nurse, he has just fused 3-4 others that just needed one side done, not both sides like me. Furthermore, at my most recent post up appt, I was told by him that I should not have any pain and he seemed appalled when I mentioned how much pain control that I have needed and been given by my family doctor. I am so thankful to my family doctor for his sympathy and action (my surgeon has never offered to treat my pain or give me ideas of a better way to treat it), and I just feel that I do not have an advocate in him and that he is comparing me to the last patients whose conditions were different than mine. Everyone knows that no person or patient is the same. I should have probably seen a red flag at our very first appointment because he came right out and told me that he did not make money off of my surgery because it was still very new. We were discussing the chances that my insurance company may not pay. He told me that he made money on bigger surgeries. Are we patients just a paycheck? I want to be clear that I do not think that he did a bad job with my surgery. I think that his skills as a surgeon are good overall. But, I feel that beyond surgery, he does not want to get any more deeper into what else may be going on. I want him to take care of me until the end of my final surgery, not just cut on me and wish me the best of luck.