Most of this blog was written on 3/20/08, though I've added a few more comments. I've rewritten a few others.
When we moved from beachside to Orlando, I had severe acid reflux, stabbing center chest pain and the right sided lower rib pain which I had mentioned earlier. Slept all the time. I had extreme, unexplained, unrelenting fatigue.
I was so miserable that I sought out a highly recommended Dr. of Internal Medicine. I was still smoking and got the lecture of my life about the cigarettes. He orders a chest x-ray. Chest is clear. He also cannot see a thing wrong with me.
His diagnosis of me ultimately was that my chest pain was caused by panic attacks. He then advises me to see a psychiatrist as he feels I'm addicted to xanax and cigarettes. I realized I was depressed, but there was also something physically very wrong with me . He then tosses me over to his favorite doctor of psychiatry.
I am horrified as I am not believed, nor am I receiving any type of medical care for whatever it is that is causing me the physical pain, but I bravely trek over to see his psychiatrist of choice and it doesn't take me long to realize that she is a physician who is treating me according to information that she must have received from my Internist. She does not seem to be listening to me at all. She writes me a script for lexapro, gives me a lecture about smoking and xanax, then sends me on my way.
I quit smoking cold turkey and stopped taking all medications. I knew I needed a new doctor immediately. I felt humiliated and confused, but more than anything else, I needed good medical care.
About one month after my first appointment, I had chest pains so severe that I actually called the same doctor, hoping he would believe me, and diagnose me with something that could explain my chest pain. He told me to call an ambulance. My husband called one.
In swaggers my Internist ( yikes ), and he informs me that I need a stress test and an overnight stay in the cardiac unit for observation. I agree to the test but I keep pleading with him to try to find a reason for the pain I now have in both lungs. This of course, falls on deaf ears. It's the middle of the night. We are now waiting for a cardiologist.
He arrives and in the middle of the stress test, as he's injecting me with the drug that makes your heart speed up, (adenosine,I believe it was), I start to get a lecture from the cardiologist concerning my smoking history. What in God's holy name is this?? Blame the patients if they dare to experience a medical problem after office hours, class 101?
My husband spends the night with me and after one more chest x-ray (I had two that night), I am released, shakin not stirred, with no diagnosis and the ever present thought that no one would ever know what was wrong with me till they performed an autopsy on my body. These cold, uncaring doctors were so FIRED!
It would be over two more months before I was diagnosed with pulmonary sarcoidosis via a surgery called a right muscle sparing lateral Thoracotomy with right middle lobectomy and thoracic lymphadenectomy, a major, horrifying and extremely dangerous operation.
I will always feel that I could have been diagnosed with a much simpler and much less disfiguring biopsy. Remember, this was performed on me by another group of sterling members of the medical community... JanetG
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