Only anecdotal, but when I need an appointment with my doctor I can call and get one for the next day, if it’s urgent he can usually work me in the same day for ten minutes or so. My daughters doctor is a bit slower, she (daughter) will usually have to wait 3 or even 4 days. When I was in bed with severe back pain my doctor made a homevisit at 3 pm, I called and told him that I couldn’t stand, and so couldn’t come to his office, at 8 am.
My doctor isn’t unusual in Denmark.
And yes, I’m sorry for you, Sampiro, but I’m looking forward to the next instalment.
The thing is, you weren’t an asshole. You refused to tolerate an intolerable situation and got results not by shrieking and throwing things but by showing that you were willing to walk away from it and find a new doctor. It’s great that you finally got in to see him, but for heaven’s sake, squeezing you in for an appointment should have been the next step once the doctor decided not to prescribe meds for you without seeing you first. That he didn’t have a problem with leaving you hanging for many weeks without your meds is a sign that, once you’ve got what you need for now, you need a new doctor, and well before the next crisis.
You were treated unprofessionally and I’m impressed with the adult manner with which you handled it.
Here’s an idea, offered hesitantly, having been eviscerated before for offering solutions instead of sympathy. Ask if you can make an appointment six months ahead of time, a week or two before the scripts run out. If they say they can’t make appointments that far ahead, then they are indeed fucktards. Or start looking for that appointment when you know you’re filling your last refill. I’m on anti-seizure meds, and have had that ‘Can’t refill til I see you, even if you’re out of meds and might seize at any moment’ conunndrum. I know now that keeping me in meds is primarily my own lookout, however unfair that is.
So how did the appointment go, Sampiro? Did doc seem contrite at all?
Is that viscera on the floor? Damn. Now I feel sorry for yelling at the dog.
No, not even slightly. He also kept me waiting 2 hours before seeing me.
I have a friend (a black gay man I’ll mention since it’s semi relevant) who believes that gay white guys are caused not by genes or by upbringing but by angry black women who have to reincarnate into white male bodies and that openly gay black guys are caused by white debutantes reincarnating into black male babies. While adding for those who wonder that yes, he’s being facetious of course, I think this is as good an explanation as any and submit my head rolls, "mmm-hmmm"s and “oh hell nos!” of this day into evidence, but eventually we got on with the physical (“lose weight” “stop smoking” and I’m not an unreasonable man, he’s completely right on both, and then he had me lie in a prostate position and took blood and all). I don’t think me and Dr. Kenny will be going fishing together anytime soon, but at least I got the refills.
Of course I now know the Provigil has to have prior authorization even though I’ve had it filled monthly for several years, but at least I’m back on my happy pills. I’d rant on insurance companies except that on a scale of 1-10 I’m not even sure this would be a 1 and it would outdo the “If Tolkien had been written by…”. It’s nice in times of such social upheaval and fragmentation and balkanization that regardless of race, creed, color, religion, socioeconomic class, age, background, ethnicity, national origin, body mass, or Favorite Beatle insurance companies are the great uniter that can make us all forget our differences for the purpose of hate.
You know. It’s been a really long time since I last read a post and laughed right out loud, long, and hard, and then bothered to type the whole phrase “laughed out loud” out in complete words. Twice.
I felt it, baby. Preach on.
Amen.
Did he suggest you buy a pack, throw away two cigs, and so on?
No, I’ll grant him that, he just says ‘quit’. (And I’ll even allow that he once gae me a prescription for/samples of Chantix once, but that’s when all the stories linking it to suicide and global warming and involuntary sex changes came out so I never took it.)
I beg your pardon? I thought that was the OTHER doctor… 
Or worse. I’ve followed this, and could fill several pages with details.
I know of a case where meds were changed with bad effects. Doc delayed seeing patient. Patient knows he is “losing it”. Patient showed up at psych hospital demanding to be seen. Patient was judged mentally unstable, and bodily removed from premises by hospital security. Next morning patient killed a man. Knowing he was in bad shape, (but not about the murder) patient’s mother appealed to doctor. Doctor issued order for police to bring patient in. Meanwhile, patient robs a motorcycle shop and kills two employees. (I sort of knew them, they had worked on my bikes)
Not connecting him with the (three) murders, two policemen are dispatched to bring patient to mental hospital. Police show up at his house, he says “sure, thank you for coming, let me just pack a few things”…comes out of house with a shotgun and mortally wounds both cops, body armor notwithstanding.
For those keeping count, that is 5 people dead in three seperate incidents. There is no doubt whatsoever that the perpitrator’s mental state had everything to do with this. There is no doubt that hospital knew he was in bad shape. There is no doubt that he was telling his doctor that he was in bad shape.
NOTE: In no way am I suggesting that the OP might go off the rails in such a trojectory. Just noting how serious the consequences of doctors blindly following arbitrary protocol, and refusing to improvise when circumstances depart from those envisioned when the protocol was established.
Note also that this case involved a 911 operator sticking to script, and police procedures that contributed to the two cops being killed, but that is a rant for another thread.
For those interested in more details, the patient’s name was John Hyde, and the events happened in Albuquerquerque around August three years ago.
I worked with a mental health agency for years and there were many nightmare stories about this. The ones that were most infuriating were patients who’d done quite well or well enough and the doctors, willy nilly and without explanation, would decide to change their medicines, usually for whatever Miracle Drug Monthly (and I suspect its Lexus driving salesman) was recommending.
Sad but true: for those who watch too many LIFETIME movies about recovery from insanity, there are some people for which that just is not going to happen. For some of the severely mentally ill, especially for the severely schizoaffective, when you find a cocktail that that makes them manageable/non harmful to themselves and others and leaves them remotely happy (i.e. not depressed or totally zombied), don’t worry about miracle cures. Don’t worry about something that’s going to enable them to get a degree in nursing or become a ballet dancer, just keep them manageable, non-harmful, and remotely happy, because for some people that is truly the best you can really hope for. I’ve known doctors who would turn somebody from admittedly a couch potato but a reasonably content one to a far more active and engaged suicidal or homicidal paranoid schizophrenic with a single scrip signature. True story: I once dealt with a guy who went from a funny charming total layabout to a funny charming exhibitionist turned pyromaniac who almost set a crowded apartment building on fire sacrificing to Paula Abdul, Elvis, and Archangel only he could hear (the Archangel’s name was Cadence, Keeper of Time- wonderful imagination and poetic abilities this guy, incidentally) and swore he lived in a world where only some people were real and the rest were reflections [I was one of the real ones so he’d talk to me] in a matter of days after the doctor decided to play Annie Sullivan at the Well of the New Pharmaceuticals.
Off topic a bit, but, the “these kids today and their dad blameded ‘cell-u-lar phones’ they think they can’t live a minute without” sentiments that I and others expressed in another thread remind me of one in this thread. I mentioned Adderall above.
When I was teaching at a college I’ll refer to only as the University of Alabama, there was a big “illegal Adderall” bust and there were also kids going to doctors by the thousands it seemed to get prescriptions for Adderall for everything from ADD to ADHD to scrofula to scurvy to cholera. There was a big apologia about it in the student paper about how “if you’re a college kid today you CAN’T not have Adderall! You’ve got to study all night and then go to classes and some of us even work and then you’ve got to have a social life and aofua dafaj dfoiajdpfjadjdfoj aldj aof aodfj violin music…”. I wasn’t at all surprised by the article- student papers are the place for whining and for editorials that will later make you say “Holy shit, am I still in the same body that typed that?”, but what I couldn’t believe was when I wrote an uncharacteristically concise and to the point rebuttal to it saying, essentially but in politer terms, OH SHUT THE FUCK UP, DO!
I know that no teenager who ever lived got much from a “when I was your age” spiel but I gave a short one anyway because it was relevant: when I was their age I was in college full time, I worked full time and sometimes more than full time. I worked at jobs that were mind numbing, and on my gospel oath the classes were harder then and required a lot more reading, a lot more research time due to no Internet or databases, and the typewriter was even a manual ‘pounder’, so in short it was a helluva lot more time consuming than today, and add to this that I was an undiagnosed NARCOLEPTIC, and that I’m one of the least organized and biggest procrastinators on Earth.* I took no medication for my excessive sleepiness and my sleep disorder whatever and (after a bumpy takeoff) I did well and was usually on the Dean’s List.
And the responses to my response (including a couple by faculty members!) were mostly "Oh but today it’s impossible to go to college without chemical help because things have changed and college is harder! To quote Mr. Downey/Lazarus/Osiris, ‘Miss me with that fuckin’ bullshit!’, Adderall has its uses and I think ADHD/ADD are probably real things but I think it’s also becoming the biggest crock of shit cop-out on Earth. (Read a bio of Lincoln: if he didn’t have ADD nobody who ever lived did- he wore the stovepipe hat in part as a place to keep his legal papers because his office was so chronically disorganized- and he seems to have dealt with it without popping pills and shaking at the Railsplitter Lounge when he should have been studying or doing research.)
*Though I did learn quick the advice that I now literally make my classes say out loud and in unison three times to ensure they remember it [whether they employ it or not]: IF YOU BEGIN NOTHING ELSE EARLY, DO YOUR RESEARCH AS SOON AS POSSIBLE. You can procrastinate absolutely everything else about the paper and even fake knowing what the hell you’re talking about in it and not finish writing it until five minutes before class time and you can still have a reasonable chance of doing well, but put off doing the actual research until the last minute and U.R. FUKKD.
A friend was diagnosed with ADD and Tourettes several years ago, while he was a grown up professor. He’d managed to get through ivy league schools, undergrad and grad, with no medications even though he’d had both disorders all along. He’d just learned how to work through without even knowing he’d had them. Eventually they became unmanageable due to serious stress, and now he takes meds, but he went decades achieving great things on his own.
Sampiro, I’m late to see this thread…so sorry you had to go through all that absolute crazy suckitude. One observation: Lordy, your mind flies so brilliantlly in waking hours, it’s no wonder your body in the required downtime of sleep needs extra rest to keep up. Perhaps you’ve posted here and I missed it: but have you ever had detailed explaination/sleep study of your brain patterns for the narcolepsy?
And, I’m curious, too…are your dreams as detailed and fleshed out as your writing? Yer mind is really a marvel to read here. Thanks, despite your travails.
Thanks for the laughter. I’m here to say I feel your pain re the refills. I’m a nurse and I can’t get my Rx filled. Here’s the deal: the doc gave it to me at my visit last fall, but told me to finish my current script. Well, dummy me, in cleaning off the fridge noted that the script was from '08, so I threw it out, completely forgetting it was a dosage change for my Synthroid, and that I’d need it soon. My pills ran out. And I entered hell.
I called my doc’s office on a Wednesday, after confirming with the pharmacy that they couldn’t willy-nilly change the dose (I knew that, but all they can say is no, right?). The X-ville office can’t handle this matter, I have to call the Y-town office instead. I call. Y-town office is closed on Wednesdays (and somehow I think X-ville office knew that), but I can leave a voicemail for Felicity or Cindy (not their real names). I leave a message for Cindy, even though her voicemail asks me 3 times to “fax the Rx renewal form to this office at this number”. I don’t have a renewal number or form. I NEED A NEW SCRIPT. I can’t have the pharmacy call it in for me, because they only do renewals.
I wait a day. Don’t hear back from Cindy (or Felicity), so I call my Dad (an MD) and explain to him and get a 3 months supply. I swear I don’t know how laypeople do it. Thing is, I’m not 100% sure that I got my new dosage right–I think the script said .125, but it may have said .110. Since Cindy hasn’t bothered to call me back yet (we’re on day 3), I suppose I’ll never know… And of course, our health insurance ran out* and I had to pay full price for the med. We have started on COBRA, but in IL, they cancel you and then reinstate you, once you meet “approval”. Approval from whom eludes me, but there it is. :rolleyes:
I’m due to see him again in 2 months for a different matter. I will have to wait to get my script then, I suppose.
It’s aggravating and annoying and bad medicine. I shouldn’t be determining my own dosage like that, but like you, I fear the changes that occur when I am off my Synthroid (extreme fatigue, weight gain, constipation to end all constipation to name a few) for even a few days.
I look forward to socialized medicine–in fact, I can’t wait. It’s got to be better than this.
*TH is out of work.
Agreed and agreed.
Why are you so hard on yourself for suffering the side-effects of medication withdrawal, as a result of mindboggling obstinancy on your doctor’s part, and provoking him into doing something about it by displaying those side effects?
I mean, if he’s not going to listen to you when you’re being civil and medicated, maybe he needs firsthand experience.
Laughed so hard at the gruesome Victorian baby comment. Thank god you’re not one of the many departing old-school posters.
Sampiro, are you willing to drive to Auburn to see a doctor?
Have you tried over-the-counter Prilosec? I switched from Protonix to Prilosec a few years ago when Protonix went off Kaiser’s formulary in Northern California and started costing me a lot more, and found it worked just as well for me. You might want to give it a try, if you haven’t. At least then you might not have acid reflux on top of all your other problems.
Thanks for the tip! Prilosec was actually one of the meds that BCBS said I hadn’t failed on and should give a try; what they didn’t know is that I’d tried it, and while it was great for a month or so, after that I had to take it at doses above the recommended dosage- at its worst, I had to take at least four pills a day -to keep everything quiet. It wound up being just as expensive to go through the OTC stuff like candy as it was to get a 'scrip for something.
Saw my regular doc today for an unrelated problem, and walked out with a scrip and some samples for Nexium, which BCBS was actually correct about me not having tried. Considering that the vomiting from the untreated reflux had started about a week ago, it’s nice to have something in hand that the tightwads may actually cover. Crossing fingers it’ll work.
Now to figure out how to pay for my 20% of the MRI the doc wants…