I've been pretty ill for the past... oh... six months or so. By "pretty ill" I mean I am usually physically unable to eat. I have no appetite whatsoever and randomly get nauseas or start puking my guts up even when I haven't eaten anything in the past couple days. I've been mostly surviving by drinking a lot of nutritious stuff and taking vitamins, but I'm still fairly malnourished and extremely fatigued, and every so often I'll get up too fast and nearly faint. Oh, and I've been smoking a particular herb that completely removes the nausea, enabling me to force down some food and not feel totally miserable throughout the day.
I've also had sleeping issues for the past four years. They've been pretty bad in the past six months or so, too. I sleep ridiculous amounts. By "ridiculous" I mean it's not unusual for me to sleep 16-18 hours. And I have nightmares. Four or five a night on a regular basis. The kind that bring every bad memory, every secret terror, to life. The kind I wake up from in a cold sweat, the kind that I can't shake off all day. The herb helps a bit with that too - if I smoke a bit in the morning, the nightmares fade away and I can fade the day.
I haven't been able to get medical treatment for these issues. Part of that is my fault. Or maybe it's my fault. See, I'm used to doctors treating me like shit. I'm used to them misdiagnosing me. I'm used to them ignoring my problems. I'm used to them making me worse. I avoid them every time I possibly can. I'm a certified medic, I'm pretty good at figuring out what I have and how to treat it, so usually I'm okay without doctors.
But then after going to my grandparents house and forgetting several meals and eating ridiculously tiny amounts and then puking every morning (I did not have my helpful herbs at the time) and appearing extremely pale... well, my parents got wind of it, and my mom demanded I see a doctor. And although my mother and I generally speak to each other as equals... she's still my mom and I can't very well disobey her, especially when I know she's worried sick. And especially since she's calling me at stupidly early hours in the morning demanding to know when I'm going to go to the doctor.
Last time I went to the doctor it was to get stitches for a severe, self-inflicted injury. I went to the emergency room in an ambulance, it was slightly dramatic. The doctor spent half an hour talking about how self-injury is "popular" and how people "dramatize" it and "do it for attention" and how "stupid" and "immature" it is. Keep in mind she was speaking to a girl who was extremely shy and scared and ashamed almost to tears, who had been injuring herself in secret since she was 12, who hid it for years, who time and time again hid serious injuries because she was afraid of that precise response.
She did treat me though. At least she did that. The last time I'd gone to get stitches (a year previously - as I said, I avoid doctors), the doctor didn't end up treating the injury at all. He just called my parents (despite that they already knew about the injuries, despite that I was under a psychologist's care, despite that I was with an adult friend at the time) and made my mother leave work to come, and then tried to get me hospitalized against my will.
Anyway. Back to my original story. So I went to the doctor. He gave me a pregnancy test and a UTI test. For some mysterious reason he diagnosed me with a UTI because there were "traces" of bacteria in my urine. Ignoring the fact that I had none of the symptoms of a UTI. I protested. He insisted. I took the antibiotics he perscribed. I got sicker.
Fastforward a week and I'm at the health center at my school because the antibiotics suck and I have no money to see a doctor. I have no insurance. I can't afford insurance because I have no income. I have no income because I have no job. I have no job because I can't hold a job. I can't hold a job because I'm sick. I'm sick because I can't see the doctor because I have no money, etc. The health center, however, claims it's free. Sorta. I still have to pay for the blood tests. But it should be affordable. Probably. It's affordable because I'm not buying much food.
The problem with cheap/free services is that they tend to have really long waiting lines. So let's fastforward a couple more months. I'm up bright and early for my appointment and - oops, sorry, we have to cancel. See you in a couple more weeks!
So fast forward a couple weeks (one of which had me unintentionally losing 5% of my body weight, the other of which had me having way too much caffeine and trying to pull multipule all-nighters so I wouldn't have nightmares), and I'm finally there for my appointment.
Oops. The doctor went out for an emergency. Let's reschedule... hmm... is April good?
No. April is not good. Unless you want me to finish vomiting up my stomach lining and perhaps start fainting and cracking my head on things.
Fastforward a few more weeks and salvation has arrived. I'm at my grandparents house. They're concerned and generous and decide I'm going to the doctor ASAP and they're paying the bill.
So today, off I trot to the doctor in an excellent mood. The nurse weighs me, is jealous, chats about her daughter who's just a couple weeks older than I, expresses sympathy for me, and of course, asks me all the typical questions. Including, "Are you taking anything to help you with your symptoms?" And I, somewhat apologetically, say, "Marijuana."
"Oh yes, that can definitely help." Smiles all around and, wow, am I actually speaking to a medical professional who's treating me like... a person? Someone with a brain?
Ten minutes later the doctor comes in. First thing she does is glare at me. Second thing she does it snap, "You shouldn't smoke pot."
Um. Um. Thanks for your opinion? (No, I didn't say that. As snarky as I am on the internet, I am actually incredibly polite in real life.)
Then she lectures me. Talks about how it kills my brain and lungs and so on and so forth. I'm getting a little twitchy because she's looking at me all angry and like I'm the stupidest person she's ever met. Also, it's totally irrelevant and really none of her business. Finally she says something I HAVE to respond to: "No doctor would tell you that marijuana has medical merit."
This isn't a post about marijuana. But it is a fact that marijuana has medical merit. The question is whether the potential harms outweigh the benefits, and the morality of drug use. The American College of Physicians published a 41 page report outlining the medical merits of marijuana and recommending that it be legalized and perscribed. Obviously, the doctor was incorrect. So I said (politely and far more calmly than her), "Well, different people have different opinions about it... I disagree with you - I've researched it and I've spoken to other doctors about it who do believe it has medical benefits." I said it rather firmly, hoping she'd get the hint and like... move on to the relevant things, like, treating me.
Eventually she did ask me about my symptoms. Response to my sleeping issues: "I can't help you. Stop smoking pot."
Er. I've had these sleeping problems for the past four years. I started smoking pot in late September.
Her diagnosis: It's probably an ulcer. I should see a gastronologist. And get tubes up my butt and down my throat. And a MRI and an ultrasound.
What'd she base that off? Two symptoms. Nausea and loss of appetite. Which could be a result of various common vitamin deficiencies. Which could be the result of, say, hypothyroidism, which both my mother and my aunt have.
Oh, and she wrote "insomnia" as one of my symptoms, even after I very clearly said that I have hypersomnia, that I sleep too much.
I had to insist, repeatedly, on getting a test for my thyroid function. She wasn't even going to bother to try and rule out other possibilities - not even possibilities that could be ruled out by a very simple blood test.
Right. I think I'll rule out hypothyroidism first. And then potassium and zinc. And maybe a dozen other causes. Actually, there's probably about fifty things that come BEFORE an ulcer, since I don't even have the most common symptom of an ulcer - stomach pain.
This is only about the fiftieth time I've seen a doctor - trained for at least eight years, typically already in practice for 10-30 - make a rapid diagnosis based on one or two symptoms, misdiagnose the condition as one that is totally unrelated, and spout completely incorrect information. What on earth is wrong with doctors? Does their training teach them to act like arrogant gods? Are they told to only listen to specific symptoms and ignore others? To invent their own symptoms out of the blue? To angrily lecture their patients about their use of marijuana and tell them outright lies? To make patients feel uncomfortable about volunteering any sort of information, because it will be dismissed?
Kind of makes me lose some faith in humanity. Power, apparently, corrupts us all.
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My mom had Lupus and was misdiagnosised with having "bad nerves" The problem kept coming up so she went to a .rheumatologist . got a test and told her it was just topical Lupus. The rheumatologist waited 3 months before sending out the letter that said my mom's lupus had turned into the bad lupus that gets in your organs and destroys your insides. We got into the hospital and the "Doctor" put a deepline catheter in an artery instead of a vein causing my mom to have a stroke, inquire an emergency breathing tube, and go into a coma. I am really sorry that you are having these problems. I really don't see why Doctors go to school...because I could wear a white coat and diagnosis someone probably better than any doctor I have gone to. I wonder why they go through this much school to be so rude. Next time don't tell them you smoke pot because frankly it is none of their business. They will just keep blabbing on about it. I wish I could help you out. I will try to look up some stuff on the things you are talking about. I am sure you have probably done this, but I really hate to see someone suffer in the way you are because I had to watch it before because of Doctors' incompetance and I am sick of it.
I am here to inform and help:
http://www.progressiveu.org/032913-lupus-uncureable-wait-what
Love comments? I do too!
Doctors now are trained to treat people like people, but in the earlier days nobody questioned them and they were looked upon with honor and envy. I think some doctors still feel that sort of influence, and I guess the rest are just plain assholes.
I guess I just got lucky. My doctor is nice, and I couldnt ever picture her acting like that because someone smokes pot.
F*** Religion. Read more here:
http://www.progressiveu.org/020528-f-religion
I am sorry that you have had such bad experiences with doctors. I have seen many bad ones and many more good ones. I would never say that you were right or wrong, but from my experience I go sometimes get irritated with the medic thing. See, I am also a medic and I only trained for emergency situations. That training only lasted less than a year. I also studied to be an LPN, and I am currently training for RN. I would never try to compare my training to the intense training of a doctor. I would also never presume that the doctor is always right.
As far as the pot, doctors are obligated to say things like that. Doctors have been sued by people who have said, "My doctor never told me to quit smoking because it was bad for my health." or "My doctor never told me that being overweight would have adverse effects on my health." It's totally ridiculous, but I completely understand.
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Respectfully,
Adam
I am certainly not comparing my medic training to that of a doctor, I just mentioned that to explain how I've managed to avoid seeing them. :)
I'm pretty sure a doctor is not obligated to say ANYTHING about marijuana, especially since it's completely irrelevant. She is not my doctor anyway. She is required to give me CORRECT information, yet she told me utter bullshit about marijuana. Claiming it has no medical benefits when the ACP says otherwise? Lecturing me about it at all when it has nothing to do with my symptoms? Not shutting up about it the second I politely disagreed? Blaming symptoms I've had for years on marijuana use? Judging me like that? Even if she WAS required to say anything, she could've just said, "By the way, in case you weren't aware of it, some doctors think marijuana might have negative effects on some people." It's pretty sad that she apparently hasn't even glanced at the research done by the major physician organizations in the past five or ten years. :(
And I do agree, research shows that there are medicinal benefits to marijuana. However, it is still illegal and to condone it would only serve to open themselves up to legal issues. Unfortunately in this litigious world, that's why they feel obligated to say something. I do hope, however, that you can find a way to get through this medical condition safely and get better. Years and years of dealing with this takes a huge toll physically and mentally. I can't even begin to understand how you must feel.
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Respectfully,
Adam
PUAA Directors Assistant
It's not entirely illegal. Doctors can perscribe and recommend it. I don't mind if she said SOMETHING, as long as it wasn't totally incorrect information.
She's one of the doctors thaat believe the JUST SAY NO people instead of the majority other physicians. My doctor gave me a lecture when I was 17 after my mom took me in because I came home drunk. "Are you smoking pot too?" I don't lie. From the perspective of a transplant doctor, I do understand. He didn't go into the bs that most do. He just said since I didn't know where it was grown, it could make me sick since my immunity is compromised.
-Sonja :)
"Democracy works only when you vote. When you don't take the time to vote for the candidate you find the least offensive, you run the risk of electing the candidate you find the most offensive."
Many of my residents at the AIDS foster care home have a prescription for something called Marinol (seriously), which is the part of the weed that gives you the munchies and settles the stomach. It's to combat the wasting they experience. I've always thought that the state could save a lot of money by giving them straight up weed. Those little pills are super expensive, and the residents are all on Medicare or Medicaid. It's silly.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
Whoa what a story. i may have learned to hate doctors, which i'm sure wasn't your point, but alas. My long-gone girlfriend used to tell me about her dream to become a doctor. i could always tell she simply wanted to be well-off.
What do you think is the solution?
Changing the system from within by entering the medical field (if you have money for undergraduate and medical school)? Or making a note to self to whisper-- 'just look at this asshole'-- when you pass a doctor on the street?
Every organism's heartbeat holds a universe of beauty at http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/green-underbelly
Very few people have the money to go to medical school. That's why when med students graduate, they have huge debts to pay off.
~C
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I think many doctors truly do enter the profession wanting to help. I'm not sure what the solution would be because I don't know enough about what precisely causes that attitude - are they taught it in med school? Does it show up later? Do other doctors teach them that attitude? Is it payback for being treated like shit as a student/intern?
And, already going into social work with a similar goal. :p
Contributing my perspective as a mentor [sporadically] for premeds in a major med regional ed center.
Medicine is an art, not a science: the more one learns about med practice, the more one should realize that the body of knowledge is impossibly wide, added to from all parts of the world at all hours of the day and night. The art part comes from the realization that just because one course of treatment has worked for one patient, it is no guarantee whatever that it will work for another. That is simpy because every individual is her own unique biophysiological system of some 60 trillion cells working in one specific way -- her own --- and in no other, a a whole.
If I were Kiota's physician, I would listen to her as carefully as I possibly could and encourage her to tell me all she could --- by creating an environment that is safe for her and --- MOST OF ALL --- respectful of her. After all, she's lived inside her body for all of her life, and listens to it, and can tell me lots of things I need to know to be of service to her, since I'd just have met her as a patient. What I'm able to offer her in the way of healing would be secondary. In fact, I would be delighted that Ki is proactive enough to have studied lots of medical topics and would offer me her insights --- as compared to a patient who would just come in to me and sit there like a lump and say "Fix Me."
Sure, I would've had a lot of experience in the areas she talks of, with other patients; and she hasn't that experience, so I'd work by measuring her information against what I know from my practical experience. But, in the case of many physicians, they consider themselves to be members of an elite group, knowing arcana that no one esle does who is not a group member, and they transform their failure to listen into an asset: after all, I know better than you do, and you have to do what I say, or you will continue being sick. Now just shut up and listen to me. That is poison for a shy person, indeed, for anyone. Misdiagnoses and unhelpful advice follow.
And of course this MD is wrong. Marijuana IS legal for medical purposes by prescription, in at least one state, California. It is legal because for some patients it has been found to have beneficial, healing effects --- and that state recognizes this legally. But it is hard to confuse someone with facts from the proletariat, if she wakes up in the morning, puts on her stethoscope, gets into her Mercedes and looks in the mirror and says, "Good morning, God!"
You'll make a great doctor!
Marijuana may be legalized in California, but it's still illegal in the United States. That is why the "legal" growers get busted by the DEA and stuff and they still get in trouble.
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Respectfully,
Adam L. Labonoski
PUAA Directors Assistant
Marijuana isn't totally legal across the US. I'm trying to get a perscription and I live in Washington. :)
I think Brad should be a doctor too. O: Brad, thinking of going back to college sometime? :p
*bows to applause*
But really I need to be humble here. The Torah proverb reads: Thou shalt not putteth thine horse before thy cart." New England translation: in order for me to go BACK to college, I first have to leave it, methinks. Doubtful that's gonna happen soon.
It turns out that I have all the students I can handle. One of them is through an internship at Harvard Med, degreed, licensed, and now working on the staffs of eight hospitals in Portland, Maine. The other one is blazing new trails in the science/art of psychotropic drugs and personal somatic physiopsychology, and in the art/science of documentary award-wining film photography, in some kind of experimental college out in the woods north of Portland, Oregon.
One of the two of them is at the wrong Portland --- so at the moment that makes me bicoastal.
Doubtful I wanna put two more years into my own med degree. It's lots more fun this way. I get to travel a whole lot.
Who wants to stay in a lab all day? Your nose wrinkles and your fingers shrivel.
"To be on the wire is life. Everything else is just waiting." :Joe Gideon
That really sucks. If there was bacteria in your urine, you did need antibiotics, but you are supposed to eat with them, which pretty much makes them irrelevant with your other symptoms. I've been in and out of doctors' offices and hospitals constantly since I was 14. I can give you a few pointers.
Try to make a longer appointment. Tell them you need a physical. That is worth an hour of of their time devoted to YOU and what you want to discuss.
Keep a diary of all symptoms a week before your appointment, along with all questions. I usually do some research beforehand to make suggestions.
Don't lie. It doesn't do any good. If smoking herb makes you feel better at all, keep doing it until you get a real solution.
BE VERY FIRM. Doctors are caught off guard when you are firm with them, especially when you keep pushing issues you want to, but you have to do it, sometimes even rudely. Eventually, they listened. Doctors don't understand that you know YOUR body better than any number of years in the field of medicine.
Best of luck. Not all doctors are like that, but it seems as though most are from what I hear.
-Sonja :)
"Democracy works only when you vote. When you don't take the time to vote for the candidate you find the least offensive, you run the risk of electing the candidate you find the most offensive."
There were "trace" amounts of bacteria. I certainly did not have a UTI. The doctor admitted it could be due to a a minor lab error but he perscribed me antibiotics anyway. I did take them with food. Got sicker anyway. Clearly did not have a UTI. :(
Of course the doc is going to cite a lab error [somebody ELSE screwed the pooch, not them] and of course the pt. gets a prescription. Ki is lucky to get out of there with less than a dozen.
Ever talked to a drug salesman [I mean, a PRESCRIPTION one lol] ?? ?? He places as many free samples as he can with as many MD's as he can. Afterwards, he lives or dies on commissions on orders placed by docs. Docs are human [sometimes.] They drive gas guzzlers and spoil their kids and go to conventions in Hawaii and the Bahamas. There is a need for income. A BIG need.
Connect the dots. As Deep Throat said in the days and nights of Watergate, follow the money.
[No, not THAT deep throat, the political one.]
"To be on the wire is life. Everything else is just waiting." :Joe Gideon
I agree completly with your opinion on doctors. While my problems arnt nearly as aweful and life affecting as yours are, I have several things that, despite years of doctor visits, have never been helped. It took my doctor 6 years before doing anything about my severe cramping during my period. Other problems are stil yet to be solved.
Perhaps its because they see to many patients, they become uncaring over time. We become patients, not people. I like to thing the best about them, but really, I hate going to the doctors office.
There is a joke in medical schools that a friend of mine (a doctor) once told me. It helps me keep the whole "doctor god complex" in perspective. The joke is really very simple.
C=MD
TTFN,
percivale
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I once went to an urgent care doctor with a wildy fluctuating temperature (between 63 and 102 degrees), severe whole body aches, vertigo, EXTREME fatigue, a migraine, and a very stiff neck. This was in the middle of June, not exactly flu season. After being asked a million times what I was "on," the doctor finally said I had a virus and I should wait it out. My partner told him I had been like that for over a week (I was delirious and not able to speak for myself).
I was sicker than I had ever been before and really wondering if I might have been dying. It felt that way. They refused to run any tests. I can only guess this was because I had no insurance, and this clinic had a 50% off policy for the uninsured. When I checked in, the desk lady pulled out a special RED pen and wrote "NO INSURANCE" at the top of my chart in big letters. And she circled it.
When I paid my bill, I included a note about my treatment there and that I had been told to wait out Lyme Disease and that when someone presents with crazy flu-like or meningitis-like symptoms in the middle of summer in Minnesota, AND that patient has just told you they recently vacationed in Mass., you always test for Lyme Disease. I got a letter from the West Health legal department stating that their doctor had made a good call because I didn't have a rash (but 20-30% of patients never get the rash or get the rash out of sequence). $200 to be accused of being high and to be told I should wait it out. And he wasn't even right.
Anyway, I waited three more days, didn't get any better, and went to my regular doctor. He immediately ran blood tests and found I had Lyme Disease. He also ran a bunch of other tests to rule out any other bug-born illnesses. Then in my follow-up appointments throughout the year, he didn't list any of the Lyme disease related check ups (joints and such) in my chart so he didn't have to charge me for it. He was very sensitive to the fact that I had no insurance.
There are good doctors out there. The bad ones make me angry. I guess it's true of any profession, though.
http://www.progressiveu.org/blog/ediblewoman
...
...what the fuck.
*speechless*