Please, God, the end of the doctor saga
Sunday, 30 July 2006 02:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
carose59"What's the Matter? Cat Got Your Crotch?"*
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I was watching Grey's Anatomy, the one where the fat woman has the the enormous tumor, and it's pretty much assumed that she doesn't deserve to live anymore, she's just this fat, stupid woman who didn't go to the doctor quickly enough so she must want to die, so she deserves to die. She's fat. She's stupid. (It's the same thing, you know. You have to be stupid to be fat; if you weren't stupid, you wouldn't be fat.) (I'm not eating the Sara Lee French chocolate cheesecake for dinner, I just had a little of it before I figure out what to do about dinner.)
I've been having doctor problems, as I believe I've said. I've had to assume the position (i.e., get up in the stirrups) twice since the last time I wrote about this, which was July eleventh, and while I've finally got something approaching a satisfactory diagnosis/explanation of what's going on, all in all I'm not happy.
First I went to see my actual doctor, whom I've always liked. But his examination was cursory at best, and his solution was to give me a prescription for doxepin, which is an antihistamine that's mostly used as an anti-depressant, but which he was giving me for the itching I was having.
It kind of worked—the itching wasn't as bad. The only problem was, it made me so dizzy I was sick for literally twenty-four hours. (That's reason two that I wasn't thrilled with my doctor: he told me if they were too strong, I could break the pills in half. That's excellent advice, when the pills are not, in fact, capsules. And they only come in capsules. How much attention are we paying here?)
(This is my regular doctor! This is the doctor I've had for over ten years! And his concern for me, his concern that a patient who has always had problems with medications being too strong, is—minimal at best.)
Then, when I called in for a different solution, he wrote me a prescription for a salve. Which sounded fine, until I looked it up and found out that it was the same stuff that was in the pill. Because I'm not a doctor, because I—honestly, I don't think I have all the answers, I don't necessarily think I know what I'm taking about—I called my pharmacy and asked the pharmacist about this. I laid it all out for her and asked, "Am I crazy, or does it seem like a bad idea for someone who has had this reaction to the pill to use this cream?"
And she paused, and then very diplomatically said, "Well, you're not crazy."
So I called my doctor's office back, explained this, and got a call back. Try some benedryl.
Jesus-fucking-Christ.
I'm trying so hard to think this isn't because I'm fat (and therefore stupid and undeserving of quality care). Or because I'm crazy (and therefore nothing I say can be trusted). (My doctor seems obsessed by my regularity, in spite of the fact that I'm very regular. I should be using some kind of fiber stuff. When I tell him I'm perfectly regular, he—doesn't seem to believe me. Everybody lies? I don't, not to my doctor. But I don't feel believed.
This last doctor's visit, yesterday, cost nearly five times what a visit to my own doctor cost. I saw my mother's GP, who's in his seventies and doesn't bother with insurance companies, and I don't blame him a bit. If I could afford it, I'd see him all the time. He gave me a real exam. He gave me something that should help (and does seem to be helping). He told me that if this doesn't work, I should see a specialist.
He acknowledged that I'm having a real problem. It was a fucking miracle. I didn't feel like a hypochondriac, and I didn't feel like crying when I left.
I'm trying to exercise and take off some weight, and I'm trying to learn to love my body. I've scheduled both a colonoscopy and a talk with a cardiologist, and I'm hoping for an upper GI after that because I want to find out if anything is wrong, I want to stop worrying for a while, at least about my health.
On a related note, I'd like to tell you what happened today. During my lost day, I got a phone call from a doctor's office saying that the doctor had a scheduling conflict and saying I'd need to reschedule from early August to the twenty-third. I said sure, no problem.
Today, I called to see if I could get my colonoscopy moved up any because I didn't want to wait any longer than I had to. I confused the hell out of the poor woman doing the scheduling because it wasn't their office who had called, it was the cardiologist's office.
Friends don't let friends make doctors' appointments stoned to the gills.
*Porter, Payback
-:- -:- -:-
I was watching Grey's Anatomy, the one where the fat woman has the the enormous tumor, and it's pretty much assumed that she doesn't deserve to live anymore, she's just this fat, stupid woman who didn't go to the doctor quickly enough so she must want to die, so she deserves to die. She's fat. She's stupid. (It's the same thing, you know. You have to be stupid to be fat; if you weren't stupid, you wouldn't be fat.) (I'm not eating the Sara Lee French chocolate cheesecake for dinner, I just had a little of it before I figure out what to do about dinner.)
I've been having doctor problems, as I believe I've said. I've had to assume the position (i.e., get up in the stirrups) twice since the last time I wrote about this, which was July eleventh, and while I've finally got something approaching a satisfactory diagnosis/explanation of what's going on, all in all I'm not happy.
First I went to see my actual doctor, whom I've always liked. But his examination was cursory at best, and his solution was to give me a prescription for doxepin, which is an antihistamine that's mostly used as an anti-depressant, but which he was giving me for the itching I was having.
It kind of worked—the itching wasn't as bad. The only problem was, it made me so dizzy I was sick for literally twenty-four hours. (That's reason two that I wasn't thrilled with my doctor: he told me if they were too strong, I could break the pills in half. That's excellent advice, when the pills are not, in fact, capsules. And they only come in capsules. How much attention are we paying here?)
(This is my regular doctor! This is the doctor I've had for over ten years! And his concern for me, his concern that a patient who has always had problems with medications being too strong, is—minimal at best.)
Then, when I called in for a different solution, he wrote me a prescription for a salve. Which sounded fine, until I looked it up and found out that it was the same stuff that was in the pill. Because I'm not a doctor, because I—honestly, I don't think I have all the answers, I don't necessarily think I know what I'm taking about—I called my pharmacy and asked the pharmacist about this. I laid it all out for her and asked, "Am I crazy, or does it seem like a bad idea for someone who has had this reaction to the pill to use this cream?"
And she paused, and then very diplomatically said, "Well, you're not crazy."
So I called my doctor's office back, explained this, and got a call back. Try some benedryl.
Jesus-fucking-Christ.
I'm trying so hard to think this isn't because I'm fat (and therefore stupid and undeserving of quality care). Or because I'm crazy (and therefore nothing I say can be trusted). (My doctor seems obsessed by my regularity, in spite of the fact that I'm very regular. I should be using some kind of fiber stuff. When I tell him I'm perfectly regular, he—doesn't seem to believe me. Everybody lies? I don't, not to my doctor. But I don't feel believed.
This last doctor's visit, yesterday, cost nearly five times what a visit to my own doctor cost. I saw my mother's GP, who's in his seventies and doesn't bother with insurance companies, and I don't blame him a bit. If I could afford it, I'd see him all the time. He gave me a real exam. He gave me something that should help (and does seem to be helping). He told me that if this doesn't work, I should see a specialist.
He acknowledged that I'm having a real problem. It was a fucking miracle. I didn't feel like a hypochondriac, and I didn't feel like crying when I left.
I'm trying to exercise and take off some weight, and I'm trying to learn to love my body. I've scheduled both a colonoscopy and a talk with a cardiologist, and I'm hoping for an upper GI after that because I want to find out if anything is wrong, I want to stop worrying for a while, at least about my health.
On a related note, I'd like to tell you what happened today. During my lost day, I got a phone call from a doctor's office saying that the doctor had a scheduling conflict and saying I'd need to reschedule from early August to the twenty-third. I said sure, no problem.
Today, I called to see if I could get my colonoscopy moved up any because I didn't want to wait any longer than I had to. I confused the hell out of the poor woman doing the scheduling because it wasn't their office who had called, it was the cardiologist's office.
Friends don't let friends make doctors' appointments stoned to the gills.
*Porter, Payback