Sorry if this comes off as a doctor bashing thread but I just had a terrible appointment and really just must vent!! So, besides the sarc, it appears I have some endocrine issues as well, not sure if they are related or not.
After waiting two months to get into this highly recommend endocrinologist, I wait TWO hours in the waiting room before getting called back by nurse ratchet! No niceties, just where is your bag of medication. I handed her a nicely typed list with the drug name, dose, how often I took it and at what time, etc. She proceeded to tell me that office policy was to BRING all bottles of medications to your appointment. I asked her what the point of that was when I had a nice, handy 100% correct sheet typed up for her? She just growled.
Ok, off the the blood pressure and pulse and she asked me why my pulse was so high, I told her I have sarc which causes tachycardia and she responds saying well, its just too high for my age-I ask her just how high it was, 103, I told her that's not a big deal for me, could we just please move on or it was going to go higher!
Sit in exam room another 30 minutes. I'm good and cranky by now. Doc walks in, introduces himself and asks what can he do for me? I asked him if he read the nice, typed up, bullet point summary I had the nurse put in my file and he simple says no, well that was obvious. So, I tell him some past blood work has shown my thyroid to be low, parathyroid to be high, dhea and growth hormone to be almost non existent, and all my female hormones are out of whack.
He looks at me, pulls out a small lap top computer and says I have to pick one complaint. WHAT? One complaint so he can type it into his little computer and it will spit out a list of questions for him to ask me. Umm, I want to ask him if he can't think for himself but I just smile.
So, he starts asking me the computer generated questions. Go thorough the fatigue, lack of sex drive and a few others. Arrive at are you constipated or do you have diarrhea, I said YES. He said pick one, I said it depends on the day, I have IBS and he would have known that had he read my little medical history I so nicely put together for him. He asks again, I tell him again, depends on the day, he starts to get angry-so, I tell him in all glorious detail that for the last 36 hours, I have had painful, explosive diarrhea at least 40 times that has burned my ass raw, despite popping lomotil like pez but previous to that, I hadn't had a bowel movement in about 5 days-next question please!
Am I intolerant to heat or cold, yes, pick one, crap, here we go again. I told him I go from shivering cold to sweating hot in .2 seconds, he literally rolls his eyes. This goes on for almost an hour. Loads of fun, if I could answer with a yes or no, it would greatly help him-I guess I am a bad patient because my symptoms don't fall into yes or no answers.
Oh yeah, when he first walked in, he asked why my eyes were so red, I told him my uvieitis is flaring, he says it looks pretty bad, I say it is, he asks whats its from-again, could you have taken 1 minute to read my medical history??
He than says his girl is going to draw some blood and he will call me in a week or so to go over the results. Ok. The hospital will be calling me to schedule an adrenal function test in the next couple of days. Ok. Make an appointment for 2 months.
Hmm, that really could have gone a little better!
Add to the discussion