This is a post about me and my doctor. However, as weird as this may be it starts off with the story of my migraines but bear with me, we WILL get to the actual message of this blog…just hang in there and trust me.
Besides everything else that is going on with me, I also suffer from Chronic Migraines. I don’t know why this is…does anyone ever know what causes a migraine? Well, seriously, I guess some people can tell you what triggers theirs but I am not so sure anyone really knows what causes them.
Or even how they feel or how they present.
My migraines happen about 4 days a week. My neuro was very conservative
and gave me 15 Fioricet pills a month. That’s one every two days or estimating a month containing just 15 migraines. With 4 headache days a week, my month has about 20 migraines. This caused me to hoard meds because I was always so afraid I’d run out JUST when I needed it. He also prescribed compazine for the accompanying nausea.
Still with me, because now we are at the heart of the matter…I told
you we’d get there right?
Now here comes the rant (because you knew there WAS one right?) I had to
choose a primary care doctor so I picked one I didn’t know simply because all the ones I DID know either didn’t take my insurance or weren’t taking new patients. So I picked a guy I didn’t know but who was in a practice and could see me in a closeby office on Wednesdays (the day I can get a ride.)
Well, yesterday I saw him. While I was in the hospital, my treating psychiatrists and doctors (yes, GPs) prescribed a couple new things (Abilify, Remeron) and changed a few things (Klonopin to Xanax and upped the Fioricet/Compazine cocktail to one time a day when needed.)
So here I am, going to see Dr. Pompous Ass. He didn’t get this name until yesterday but boy, he earned it. I get why he said what he did by the way. My rant is more about his attitude. Dick.
Anyway, I gave his nurse all my paperwork with all my new meds. Dr. PA walks in and says, “I don’t want to deal with all of your meds. I only want to deal with your regular meds. Your shrink can deal with your happy pills.” Then he started listing them.
After feeling like the biggest hypochondriac EVAH or at least a simulated medicine cabinet for the entire Israeli army, he concludes he won’t deal with my Lamictal, Compazine, Fioricet, or Remeron.
Well, for your information, Dr. Pompous Ass, the Lamictal is for seizures, the Compazine/Fioricet cocktail is for unrelenting headaches that I actually came to YOU for several months ago despite the fact my neuro had at ONE time prescribed the combo for a post lumbar headache I got. And…the Remeron, it’s not for depression, you ass, like I told you, and like I have asked you for for months, it’s prescribed so I can sleep longer than 2 hours at a time.
Idiot.
I am not even sure he put these back on the list but he treated me like I was a head case (okay, I am but I don’t need to be treated like one) and was actually rude. Scott was there and he thought the dr. was a pompous ass too.
I mean I get why he’d want my shrink to handle the cocktail of happy meds I am
on (I counted, I am on four altogether so its not like I am on some ungodly number) and that was fine. I am NOT fine that he won’t deal with the others so…
We broke up.
I haven’t told him yet since I have to see my new doctor first and that won’t be until August 27.
Don’t burn the bridge that renews your meds, right?
On August 27, Evan and I are changing to a really nice doctor who is a woman
(yeah!) and who also has a specialization in pediatrics as well as family meds. This should be really good for Evan since she’ll be able to understand the autism and how that affects him. I think that will be a win win for him and for me. I am not sure how she’ll handle my head case but I am confident that it HAS to be better than what I am getting now and even if it’s the same…I KNOW it can’t get worse.
The whole thing pisses me off but I don’t have a great rapport OR history with Dr. Pompous Ass so changing now is the right time. Also, this doctor is affiliated with the hospital I go to and I plan to hook her up with my shrink with a release so they can share information. As long as she deals with all of my OTHER meds I have NO issue at all with her passing the pipe of my happy meds to my shrink.
I just want what I need and what has been prescribed to be respected and
handled properly. I want to be respected and treated with dignity and not treated like I am asking for something that I am not actually holding paperwork to show you it has been prescribed for me.
Let’s hope this works.
Look At The Flowers Lizzie 
Good move, from the sound of it. You need a doc who treats the whole person. All those meds interact and if he/she is not aware you’re taking them, you can get into a real mess. Which is the last thing you need.
I fired a nephrologist for being a pompous ass and refusing to confer with the PCP who had been treating me for 12 years and who does pay attention to all of it. I found out later he wasn’t even board certified in nephrology so all his high horse BS about nephrologists knowing more than GPs was seriously bogus because he was a GP himself. Creep. But I found a fabulous female nephrologist who is not only board certified, she’s the chair of her department at Vanderbilt. So there.
Two things about doctors. Patients are consumers, and if you are not getting good service, shake the dust of that place off your feet and find a better one. The other thing is doctors spend a long time in school and in practice learning their stuff, so it’s best that we who are not MDs not attempt to practice medicine without a license by cherry-picking what we take from what a good MD tells us. They see the whole picture (unlike your recently dumped guy) and we usually don’t. I hope this new one turns out to be one of the good ones.
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One other thing — some doctors see you have a “psych jacket” and color everything you tell them through that lens. If you suspect someone is doing that, call them on it and if there is no change, get the hell out of there. I had a friend whose MD saw her that way and ignored that she had had a heart attack.Fortunately, her shrink’s brother was a cardiologist, she got in to see him and he confirmed it. You’re right about them treating your diagnosis instead of treating YOU.
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I switched to a women’s practice and I told Scott this morning that I hope they have, most of all, compassion.
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