Igor, you phrased much better than what I was going to say, which is that many doctors treat their patients based on what is statistically beneficial or politically correct.
I have never had any of the family or personal history of things that increase my risk of breast cancer so my risk factors are low-average. However, my doctor’s practice has a standard policy of making their patients get annual mammograms. I defy that by doing them only every second or third year.
I’ve had similar situations to Ambivalid’s, where the doctor’s don’t listen and just recommend treatment based on statistics. That really pisses me off. In his case, he knows his own body. A lot of medicine is also common sense. The doctor can’t feel what you feel in your body, so there are times when it’s better to do what your body tells you instead of what your doctor tells you. I do try to communicate with them fully, but I have occasionally encountered doctors who don’t like to be questioned. Sometimes it’s easier just to nod and smile and then throw the prescription/lab order away when you get home.
I recently learned about Dr. induced dementia. My ex wife had been steadily going down hill for the past year. Diagnosis Alzheimer’s disease. About 3 months ago it got so bad the kids had to put her in a convalescent home. She didn’t know any of us anymore, she never knew where she was at, it was bad. I insisted they take her off of all meds and just manage her blood pressure which was not being managed properly and needed a new drug. I researched the drugs she was on and two of them she should have never been on at all. Within one week she was back to normal and is doing fine right now. She has mild dementia but is only noticeable when she is trying to figure out something mechanical or on her computer.
I got the same story about wisdom teeth as a kid, and said No thanks, I’ll wait. When I was 75, I had to have one pulled. I was under general anasthetic for 35 minutes while the oral surgeon, to his credit, worked diligently to get the root disentangled from nerves around it. After three years, the little bit of nerve damage is still there, just a bit of numbness in the lip near the extraction, which doesn’t affect my lifestyle, but a less conscientious surgeon could have made a real mess of it and left me with a speech impediment. He could have done it under local anasthetic, but he said neither one of us would have much fun, so general would be advised. I’m glad he felt free to take his time and do a proper job without me squirming in the chair for a half hour.
As always, statistics fall apart at the individual. When doctors give recommendations based on statistical predictions, there will always be examples of when an individual is the outlier. That’s neither unexpected or makes the advice in error.
My case: I had a doctor refuse to give me statins in my 20s, despite a genetic mutation associated with high LDL and low HDL, high LDL blood tests, and a strong family history of early heart disease. No amount of diet would overcome this mutation. I had to find another doctor who didn’t go by the “women are protected until menopause” old fashioned thinking. So I ignored one doctor’s advice to my benefit by finding another doctor who understood more current thinking on treating risk for heart disease.
I am very careful about what I take and often seem to know more about drug interactions than my physician.
Fired the previous doctor because he just kept prescribing more drugs. When I pointed out the side effects of one, he simply said he would prescribe another one to deal with the side effects. Then I’m looking and find it would be a very bad thing to combine that ‘drug just for side effects’ with something else I’m already taking.
Then the man, who weighed considerably more than me, prescribed me diet pills. Which had serious, vicious side effects for me and I refused to take them anymore. His answer? Another prescription for those side effects.
Fuck that nonsense. Fired his ass.
New doctor keeps wanting me to take this and that, got mad at me about it, but hey, it is my body and I’m already on 5 different drugs, that is my absolute limit.
Yes. About five years ago I had a CBC done and my bad cholesterol was at an unacceptable level. I reluctantly went on a statin drug. Within a month I had strange muscle pains in my legs as well as a completely bald spot on my head about the size of an egg. I went off the med and lowered my cholesterol on my own via exercise and a slight diet change.
The hair grew back and the leg aches were gone within a week after stopping the statin.
Just out of curiosity, did you report this side effect to your doctor and what did they say? Muscle pains are a well known side affect with statins that most doctors tell you to report, so you can change drugs or try a different approach.
Wait, what? This is a side effect of taking statin drugs? Damn. After I had been on statin drugs for awhile I developed two completely bald spots just above and behind my temples, about 1" X 1" each. I spoke with my dermatologist about them, and she prescribed steroid cream, but it had no effect.
I just remembered another one. This is semi-related to the complaint in my OP but not exactly. Evidently, due to the urinary, bladder and kidney dysfunction typically found in people with a spinal cord injury, such people are “required” to have a very invasive test called urodynamics performed once a year. This is a test that checks to see how well the urethra and bladder (and kidneys) are doing their respective jobs.
Well the first time I heard of this test, it was from my physiatrist who was recommending that I get one, due to the fact that I’ve never had one before. So he referred me to a urologist for an appointment. What he did not do, however, was explain exactly what this test entailed.
I didn’t find out what the test actually entailed until I got to the appointment and had the test explained to me in detail. For those that aren’t familiar, which is hopefully most of you ;), urodynamics requires a catheter to be inserted in the urethra as well as another catheter inserted into your rectum. :eek: And apparently this test was going to take longer than 30 minutes, with several doctors, etc. in the room.
When I found out these details, I just started laughing. NO WAY IN HELL was I having such a “procedure” performed on me. Not when there wasn’t even an actual need for it. I could have been persuaded if I had been given an actual reason for the test beyond, “well this is standard testing for spinal cord injured patients”. Fuck that. I had never had any issue whatsoever that would necessitate that test. And no need was every really expressed to me from a medical professional. All my bloodwork, all my ultrasounds and all other tests came back with flying colors.
My doctor point blank refused to give me any valium for my occasional panic attacks, even though they were they only thing I’d ever tried that actually helped. He suggested counselling. I told him I’d tried it and it hadn’t worked. He suggested CBT. I told him I’d tried it several times and it didn’t work. He suggested anti-depressants. I told him I’d tried several and they’d either done nothing at all or made the attacks more frequent. He wouldn’t budge. He seemed utterly convinced that it was simply impossible for anyone to use valium responsibly, without getting addicted, so I left his office with nothing.
I get my valium from a dealer now. I’ve been taking them for several years, always at the absolute lowest dose (nothing for a regular attack, 2mg for a bad one, and 4mg for a really bad one but they only happen once in a blue moon). I can go weeks without having any and don’t feel any ill effects whatsoever, and I no longer worry about panic attacks because I know I’ve got something to help me deal with them when they occur.
All that said, I’d never recommend this course of action to anyone else. Valium is fiendishly addictive. If you’re not absolutely positively 110% sure you can use it responsibly then you really shouldn’t use it at all. 99 times out of a hundred, that doctor would probably have been absolutely right. He just wasn’t right about me.
That is exactly where my spot was. I have a lot of hair, so at first I didn’t even notice it. What was bizarre about it was that there was not one hair left in that area. When I say bald, I mean BALD! My scalp was completely smooth and white. A huge contrast to my black hair. It took a while to grow back, too.
Yes. I did tell my doctor about it. She supported my decision to go off of the statin and do it on my own. I’ll be getting my cholesterol checked again this month. My doctor told me that it could also be genetic because my diet is healthy, for the most part.
LOL ditto =) I had the scratch testing done when I was 11 or 12 [turns out I am just really sensitive to strep in addition to some mild allergies to nonfoods] and effectively we were instructed to empty my room of all fabrics, wrap the mattress in plastic and add a huge single room air purifier and clean every day. Nope, Not going to live in a hospital room. I kept the cats, the antique oriental rugs, the draperies and the large comfy bed and simply dealt with the chronic noseblowing. We preferred me living like a normal human instead of a ‘girl in a bubble’ sort of deal. TO this day, I would rather blow my nose a couple times an hour to taking an antihistamine every day. I have enough damned pills to hork down morning and evening to add yet another.
I had to get my rearmost upper left molar removed [cracked it in such a way that it was unable to be repaired] and I was amazed at how easy it was - my dentist numbed the hell out of the area, stuck a tool in my mouth, sort of wiggled the tooth around a bit and popped it out. Definitely nothing like the movies showed [you know, huge pliers, reaching in and yanking]
I dislike endos, my PCP who is also diabetic was able to get me under control after I fired my damned endo. Look, I am fat. I know I am fat. I am physically unable to do land based exercise, while I can do water based physio, the nearest pool I can use for free is 25 miles away [the military base] and at the time we had ONE car. My husband works 50 miles away in Hartford. What the frell does he want me to do? Drive hubbs to work so I can have the car 3 days a week to go to the pool to work out. Not freaking happening. With one income in one of the most expensive states we were just barely hanging on. Then the medications… oy.:dubious::rolleyes:
I also have a cardiologist. My PCP got my malignant hypertension under control [3 months of tweaking meds. Yuck.] but we use a cardiologist to fine tune it. So back to the handsful of pills I hork down. One of them had been a statin. I happen to love grapefruit, I am sort of funny that way. And yes, I happen to like cranberry juice too. So I look at my numbers and make the decision to go off the statin. I tell my PCP - I go every 3 months and have bloodwork, so he notes that we need to watch my blood panels. I also keep a food diary, have for years, it helps me fine tune my diet for diabetes. So a year goes past, and my numbers are good and I have an appointment with the cardiologist who has a hissy fit when he sees my food diary [while milk, butter, eggs, whole fat cheese, meat, BACON!!!] and then about blows his top when I mention that I haven’t been taking the statin. I tell him that my PCP has been monitoring the situation and my numbers are good. He tells me he has ‘higher standards’ for the numbers and orders a very specific set of tests and says to expect to get statins prescribed. So I never heard back from him … just my PCP getting his copy of the bloodwork. Seems my cardiologist has worse numbers than I do and he is anal about his diet and runs marathons for fun. :eek::smack:
My PCP is my PCP because he is the first doctor who actually LISTENED to me, and we discuss my health. He trusts me because I research what I have, and show up with printed articles and my digests of the information. I research drugs, treatments and side effects. He realizes that I have taken the time to actually understand what is going on in my body, and has developed [over 14 years] a level of trust in me that is unprecedented because he has monitored me for so long. If I feel the need to drop something [like we decided I needed to tweak my BP meds because I had lost 100 pounds and the level I was taking was starting to make it too low to function properly - sit up, stand up, grey out] we work together to deal with problems. He is fine with me dumping the endo because he understands I am not a cookie cutter sort of patient [and she was really screwing me up … with her I never had an A1C lower than 8 and my PCP and I have had 6 years of 5.7-5.8 results.]
If we are including dentists, I’ve been through a couple of dentists that push optional cosmetic orthodontics as critical to long term health and try to upsell procedures. I am now very happy with a dentist that keeps my teeth maintained, honestly explains to me the options, and doesn’t claim that my jaw will suddenly misalign, atrophy, and self-fracture if I don’t accept their long-term expensive implant replacement and upgrade plan (actual claim from actual dentist).
This reminds me of my Dr. induced drug overdose I had when I was a kid. I came into the world with JRA in the early/mid 1960’s when even the medical community thought that arthritis was just a disease of the elderly. The only treatment they could come up with was to dose me up with baby aspirin. They gradually increased the doses as my mom reported whether or not it seemed to be helping, until I was around 5 years old and was popping 8 pills three times a day.
The day after the night I had hallucinations (aural and visual) my mom stopped giving them to me.
I disobeyed my doctor all the time when I was younger, and it worked out well. For example, he once forbade me from playing Dungeons and Dragons, so I just hid all my books in my backpack and played with my friends at lunch. It was great.
These days, my doctor isn’t my father, so there’s a lot less opportunity for disobedience.
