I was asked to share my most recent rude and ignorant comment made by a main-stream doctor about Lyme Disease. Surely, others will chime in with their own personal encounters with these hurtful medical practitioners. . .
I took my mother for a follow-up office visit with her primary care MD. It was a rather lengthy appointment (2 1/2 hours). I suffererd a hot flash in waiting room and went outside, leaned up against the building to cool off.
The building's exterior was made of old wooden clapboard shingles.
I felt something crawling, and to my horror, I turned around to see thousands of little, fast, red-shelled bugs !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As I ran back into the office, the doctor and my mother were exiting. I explained to the doctor that he had a severe bug infestation. He said "Bugs are harmless, I don't like to kill bugs."
I said "Doctor, bugs spread the most diseases." He said "No, humans do." I said "No, mosquitos do. And because of a tick bite, I now suffer from chronic Neuro-Lyme."
This is his reply to me. . . Get ready for it. . .
"I have never seen a human-being get infected with syphillis from a bug bite."
Ugh, thanks doc for the constant ammunition to keep me focused on my advocacy work towards Lyme patient standard of care.
P.S. This doctor is also an Oncologist. (scary)
P.S.S. I identified the bugs as a being red chigger mites.
I saw a pain doctor who said there were people wearing tinfoil hats to keep alien radio broadcasts out of their head who were behaving with more sense than I was because I admitted to using alternative medicine.
Because this doctor specialized in treating the pain of people with fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome, I made the mistake of thinking he would be friendly to alternative medicine, and told him about some of the alternative treatments I was using.
He had the right to disagree with what I was doing. He didn't have the right to insult me with the tinfoil hat and similar comments. I had no interest in paying for his time while he went on a 20-minute rant about the idiocy and riskiness of alternative medicine.
When he demanded that I stop my alternative treatments, I told him that if he was concerned about the safety of those treatments, he could share those concerns with my primary doctor, whom he respected, and who was aware of the big picture of my medical issues. He like that idea, said there would be benefit in "clearing the air," and clearly thought he would get my doctor to help him browbeat "sense" into me with more rude, abusive behavior.
What he didn't know, and what I was counting on, was the my primary doctor is a staunch supporter of alternative medicine, and of my use of it. Her response to his letter politely but assertively made clear that she had confidence in the efficacy and safety of treatments I was using.
At my next office visit, he didn't bring up the issue again, other than to ask if I was still continuing those treatments. I told him that since he had demonstrated he couldn't discuss alternative medicine in a civil way, I wasn't going to talk about it with him any more. As the months and years passed, I came to have a decent rapport with this doctor, but I'll never assume that a provider is friendly to holistic medicine again without some kind of concrete evidence.
Doctor Number 2:
Posted by GVS (Member # 48913) on :
Doctor Number 2: YOU ARE DEPRESSED
Posted by GVS (Member # 48913) on :
Doctor Number 2:
Posted by hiker53 (Member # 6046) on :
Doctor #1--There are no ticks in Illinois
Doctor #2--you are depressed (This MD has since had his license suspended for substance abuse and coming to work on drugs)
Doctor #3 (after a year of antibiotics)--You don't have Lyme anymore. And you don't believe in western medicine. Duh--I was in his office to get my seizure meds, so I think I believe in western medicine.
etc. etc.
Posted by GVS (Member # 48913) on :
Doctor Number 2: YOU ARE DEPRESSED
When I first got sick I saw a psychologist who specialized in using mindfulness as a "cure" (his term) for people with FM and CFIIDS.
Things came to a head between us during a session when I pointed out that I had lab tests showing an assortment of digestive and immune system problems that readily explained my symptoms, that mindfulness' ability to reduce the intensity of some symptoms some of the time in no way approached a cure for these conditions, and that doctors were much more willing to dispense psychiatric diagnoses than say the words "I don't know."
His response was to become flustered and exasperated, and to say, with complete certainty, that according to the MMPI "YOU ARE DEPRESSED," as if my being depressed said everything that needed to be said about my situation.
I said there would be something wrong with me if I wasn't depressed about living the way I had to live. We stopped working together.
Posted by GVS (Member # 48913) on :
Doctor Number 3: You are using whatever minor discomfort you may be experiencing as an excuse not to do things you don't want to do.
Said by my family doctor, the same doctor who gave me allergy shots all the way through elementary school, when I told him, as a high school sophmore, that my headaches had gotten bad enough that I couldn't keep my grades up, and that I felt too bad to be able to do social things with other kids.
No apparent physical problem? At least not one understood by him? Then clearly I had an emotional problem.
After this doctor's unhelpfulness, I gave up on medicine and doctors for many years. What I didn't understand was that good doctors were out there, it was my responsibility as a patient to find one.
Another learning experience. Instead of giving me credit for my difficult daily struggle, this doctor blamed me for what was happening.
My family wasn't perfect, but they saw me struggling, and knew the headaches were real. Nobody in my family ever went to see that doctor again.
Posted by Robin123 (Member # 9197) on :
Our previous doctor records often get passed around from one doctor to the next. This is a problem when records are saying discordant things about us.
I found out when I asked if I could speed up records transmission - this was before the age of the internet - by getting them myself and taking them to the new office.
In so doing, I looked at them and was puzzled by the phrase "Undetermined amount of functional overlay." I soon found out it meant that my complaints might be operating as a means to get something else, like sympathy, or get out of doing other things.
I complained and wrote a cover letter for my file, saying I was not trying to get anything, or get out of anything, that I was ill, etc.
Just want to bring this to people's attention, re when doctors ask for records from unsympathetic previous doctors.
Posted by Keebler (Member # 12673) on :
- Eye-opening, Robin. Along that same line as : "Undetermined amount of functional overlay." is another code that harms so many patients:
"DIFFICULT PATIENTS" - "code" to basically "ignore a patient from now on.
You need to know if this is written on the inside front flap of your medical chart (or, gulp, now on your medical computer file).
& HOW DOCTORS THINK -
Posted by MissVictoria (Member # 45232) on :
quote:Originally posted by GVS: doctors were much more willing to dispense psychiatric diagnoses than say the words "I don't know."
That just explained why so many doctors treat patients this way. They are getting around admitting that they don't know what is wrong with the patient - because it makes them look bad and incompetent. It's horrible.
Posted by Robin123 (Member # 9197) on :
Well...I don't let doctors get away with this anymore and I encourage more folks to speak up and let the doctors know they're incorrect and to listen and learn more before passing any judgment.
I bring Lyme brochures, I educate the staff, etc.
I also found out that if I talk to doctors more personally, as in you, your family, your pets, your friends and acquaintances etc could get these infections. Wouldn't you like to know how to protect before you have to get them? Try doing something like that and see what happens.
Posted by aklnwlf (Member # 5960) on :
Doctor #I lost count:
Rheumatologist at the Mayo in JAX said I was obese and if I'd lose weight I'd feel better.
Posted by bullmastiffluvr (Member # 50250) on :
Cardiologist said well good luck finding out what is causing these symptoms(orthostatic hypotension’ tachy Brady and 3 leaking valves! But your heart is fine, and I won’t see you anymore because you lost your insurance that I take.
Posted by GVS (Member # 48913) on :
When doctors talk down to me, or talk to me in a disrespectful way as though my feelings don't matter, I tell them that I don't work with doctors who aren't kind, walk out of their office without paying, fill out a customer service form addressed to their supervisor that includes exactly what they said, word for word, and make it clear on the form that the that their unkind, unnecessary comments are the reason I will no longer be spending my healthcare dollars at their practice.
I also point out that the fact that the doctor has the letters M.D. after his name doesn't give him the right to talk down to me, and that being treated in a respectful way, as though I matter, by people I deal with is just as important a part of my healing as anything I put in my mouth.
Then I ask, " Why isn't Dr. X aware of this? What happened to "do no harm?"
After being mistreated by more than a few doctors, I've gotten in the habit of leaving my phone in my pocket, in record mode, during the office visit, so there is objective proof of what was said, and attaching that recording as an audio file to the email I send to their supervisor, the email that contains the customer service form. I ask for the form before seeing the doctor, along with the name and email address of the doctor who heads the department, or the doctor who runs the practice, or the doctor who is in charge around here.
Doctors who mistreat me don't get a second chance to do so, they don't get paid, and I see that they are held accountable for their behavior.
Being sick is hard enough without being disrespected for it, especially when that disrespect is often a smokescreen that's being used to cover up diagnostic incompetence.
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