Sanity check [f:f]

[torquill]

Thank goodness for the weekly dinner/TV/sanity evening. I feel better now.

I saw the internist (Dr. Ferguson) today. In short: he managed to decide within two minutes or so that I was wasting his time, and so proceeded to waste mine. So, even though he's wisely determined that my breathing problems stem from a mundane anxiety disorder, he appreciates the fact that I seem rather worked up over it, so he checked my ears and throat and ordered a blood panel. Oh, and he wants a chest xray just to make extra sure that there's nothing obstructing my lungs, 'cause, y'know, I was so worried about the whole thing.

Doctors like him are why I stopped trying to find out what the hell was going on with me.

I seem to have settled down enough that I no longer have the urge to punch something ("people with anxiety often have the sensation of being short of breath" GAAAAH) but I'm still angry. I'll chew it over to decide what I want to tell Dr. Kono about all this, since Dr. Ferguson would be able to see my note as well. I also have to decide whether I want to do the fasting blood panel, since I'm guessing not much has changed since I had everything done five years ago. (I have a stack of test results including liver, thyroid, blood sugar, and all the other tests he ordered today, plus many others he hadn't. All perfectly normal.)

I've discovered that I still don't have the guts to say "bullshit" to a doctor's face. Though I came pretty damn close this time.

On the bright side, I'm at the end of the day without anything worse than a scratchy throat. Given that it feels like strep, that's no small feat. It'll flare up again in the middle of the night, but I feel pretty confident that I'll be able to whup it... I just hope it doesn't take more than the 40 grams of vitamin C and several doses of yin chiao I took today. If it doesn't get any worse, I'm unlikely to be contagious. If it does, I'm taking a train to Davis tomorrow and skipping my weekend plans. Sigh. (There's motivation to get better!)

Comments

[supersniffles.livejournal.com]

Nothing worse than a doctor who won't take you seriously.
My former internist took 2 years to send me to an endocrinologist for my PCOS, even though she agreed with me on my very first visit that that's what it sounded like I had.
I had to cry to get her to do anything. Which is why she's no longer my doctor.
Good Luck!!!!

[luna-torquill.livejournal.com]

Fortunately, Dr. Kono seems to think that I'm a zebra, not a horse (yes, Dr. Ferguson pulled that tired old saw on me too), which was why she sent me to the internist, who's supposed to be the clever one. She seemed to consider Dr. Ferguson to be a detour to try to pick up more ideas, so hopefully she and I can still keep moving on this.

[firestrike.livejournal.com]

"Are you in first-year medical school?

[foogod.livejournal.com]

There was a program I caught the end of on NPR a little bit back talking with a doctor who had quite a bit to say (and had apparently written a book) about people in his profession that jump to conclusions or dismiss people too easily. One story he had was from his own experience as an internist. There was a woman who he saw regularly who complained of chest pains. He prescribed antacids, but it didn't help, but ultimately he started to get so annoyed over the woman's constant complaints that he labelled her in his mind as a "complainer", and didn't really try to investigate much further.

A while later she was brought into the emergency room with severe heart complications, and apparently died on the operating table. It turns out the chest pains were a symptom of a serious heart defect, and could have been repaired if he'd only listened to her earlier and tried harder to figure out what was wrong.

Another story which I didn't hear but rumaki75 tells me he was recounting before I got there was about a woman who, when she turned 20 or so, found that all of a sudden her food was repulsive to her, and developed serious problems with eating. She went to a few doctors, and was diagnosed as anorexic, and sent off to various anorexia support groups and such to work through it.

She went on like that for a long time, fighting food down and trying to "get better". It wasn't until many years later that she actually saw a doctor who thought to do some additional tests, and discovered she wasn't anorexic at all. She was celiac.

All those years, people assumed it was a psychological disorder, so they were trying to get her to eat a lot of calorie-dense foods, full of carbohydrates, and her only real problem was that all the stuff everybody was telling her to eat was stuff she was actually allergic to. And she suffered through this for years of her life before somebody thought to even check.

Unfortunately, I don't remember the guy's name or the book now..

What i can find on this forum ? I new here

[(Anonymous)]

Hey people. Best canadina pharmacy here:
http://tramadol0.forum2go.nl/