Cyn, if anyone could bottle that exact information you gave and sell it, they’d be rich in no time. There are web sites now that claim to do this, sites that turn up at the top of Google if you search on any MD’s name. They claim to collect ratings from patients. I sent in a positive review of a good female doctor I know to one of them. I kept finding such sites when trying to select an endo’ recently, and also when searching for Dr. Badri’s full name. But so far I haven’t seen any input from patients. You have to pay before they let you see a doctor’s ratings. But I don’t know if there’s any information reported under a given name, so I’m not inclined to buy.
Not to exacerbate things, but if you have to argue with people whether you’re fat or not… you’re probally fat.
Fuck you.
Inky
That’s insane. Not only is it not reasonable to think the OP is “fat” given the stats she told us, but the doc was using that idea to distract from what was really going on.
Non sequiter much?
The issue is, THE DOCTOR WAS NOT LISTENING TO HER. If inky had not gotten a second opinion, who knows where she would be. Her weight was not the issue. The excrutiating pain was.
Heh, forget about the patients, the vast majority of them don’t know jack diddly about the mechanics and possibilities of treatment available to them.
Talk to the nurses, if you can get honest reviews from them you will have a scary good site. Hey…I have web hosting space…hmmm.
I am in red. Think I am FAT now?? That is the last time that I will discuss my weight.
Anyway. Had my follow up with a wonderful doc today - if you’re in Marin or SF, consider Dr. Nona Cunningham. She said we needed more tests because the ultrasound was inconclusive. Her thoughts were that she’d LOVE to do the surgery because she loves to make people feel better, but she’s not so sure what exactly the cause is yet.
Next step - bone density test Thursday. Then an abdominal CT scan, blood work for diabetes, Lipid panel, anemia, urinalysis AND a colonoscopy.
Turns out that my history of being premature, being born with almost no enamel on my teeth and lots of health issues when smaller, the bout of skin cancer early last year, the sudden discovery of diabetes on both sides of my family (I had previously thought it only on my paternal side, but now know my aunt and my mom’s mom had it) and the polyps found in my mom’s colonoscopy which are the sort that if not caught would turn cancerous, and the recent learning that when my mom’s mom died at home, they had to do an autopsy and opened her stomach and found it FILLED with polyps…all this leads Dr Nona to think that perhaps it is my uterus because she felt me today and I screamed, but that my intestines and other things may be involved.
If all these other tests turn clear, then she will do a laparoscopy to try to determine if it’s endometriosis of a particular type.
So no immediate LAVH, which I had prayed desperately for and thought the cysts and fibroids would indicate. But bless her for being more thorough and wanting to make absolutely sure. Hell, this lady is better than my GP!!!
Now my only regret is that we’re moving at the end of the month to LA (okay Beverly Hills, but only BHPO), and I’ll have to find another doc that I feel safe with and can relate to. But, as Dr Nona said, at least we would have all this background work done so they wouldn’t have to start the entire procedure all over again.
Problem: last two weeks, every time I eat, I feel like throwing up. Could be psychological, but really, I don’t think so. It’s pretty awful. And the pain is not dissipating. My partner went into the appointment with me and asked if Dr. Nona could prescribe some kind of pain medication, but she didn’t want to until she knew the root of the problem - well, fair enough, but in the mean time, spending days and days and days at a level 8 of pain WHILE trying to pack and move AND with a bad back to begin with - I am exhausted by 7pm and can barely get out of bed by 10. I am crying in pain, curled up with a heating pad, taking it out on my partner, and sex is totally out of the question. Which I feel badly about.
So…that’s where the tale is at this time. Thanks for everyone’s support and suggestions and I’ll keep everyone informed. Maybe even a new pit thread - this one about IDENTITY THEFT. Yeah, imagine moving, pain, tests, and IDENTITY THEFT.
I am my own soap opera that I cannot change channels from.
Be well everyone.
Inky.
I respect the reasons anyone has for why they don’t feel comfortable with any doctor because that’s a highly personal thing and it should be. At the same time I’m not really sure this argument holds water.
Most doctors that treat mental illness aren’t mentally ill and thus can’t ever experience what it is like to be mentally ill. Same for doctors who treat any number of serious perspective-changing disorders.
Ah Martin Hyde- but the perspective changed, in this case, is about one’s own perception of oneself as a woman.
Look, I’ll admit, I can sympathise with the urology and andrology patients having circumcisions and orchidectomies and prostatectomies. I can make the right noises and avoid pissing them off, but on the level where it affects their sense of being a man I’m at something of a loss. I don’t know what “being a man” feels like, I don’t know what exactly it entails, I imagine they have a better idea.
Everyone can imagine what losing a sense of self from a disfiguring skin disorder or feeling your personality fall apart from major mental illness might be like, when you’re talking about gender identity, it’s harder to empathise if you lack the right frame of reference.
I’ve said before, some men are wonderful Ob/Gyn, some women are terrible, but balancing it up, the women, in general, seem better.
Part of this may be to do with the specialty itself- Gynae is mostly out-patient work with a few day case surgeries, emergencies are rare, so the hours are good. It’s also not exactly rocket science (compared to, say, neurology) and gives a nice mix of medicine and surgery. Your patients (except Gynae oncology) usually survive, and you get paid a LOT of money. Can you see how these factors might attract certain people to the specialty who actually have very little empathy or regard for women?
Obstetrics has lousy hours, lots of emergencies, people (meaning pregnant women, babies and new mothers) die, one lawsuit and you’re ruined and you have to be really, really good at it because you don’t have the time or the room to make errors…which is why it attracts less of the sort of peoplewho get into Gynae for the wrong reasons.
OOOOOOOH I so love hating this kind of thing…
age 15. height 5’5". curves that make JLo look like a flattened beanpole; I often wonder about women who complain that men stare at their boobs… after all, those men are at least staring at their front. Tiny wristbones. Doc takes a look at a table listing “healthy weight range by height and bone size” and tells me to lose weight, puts me on a “veggies only” diet. I stand up. He sees my ass for the first time.
After a loud gasp that made the three females in the room ask “are you ok?”, the doctor said “I think I better recheck that calculation”. He then proceeds to measure me like he’s fitting me for a pantsuit and pinch several spots.
Wrist, tiny.
Hip, large.
Thigh and arm, unpinchable. No muscle definition but the caliper just can’t grasp anything.
Feet, tiny.
Belly, slightly pinchable. Back of the ribs, unpinchable.
Sits back down, stares at the tables, stares at me, asks me to walk around the room (while he unbuttons his coat and drapes himself over the chair like he’s in a bar’s terrace checking the gals), sits back up and exclaims “shitty tables are all wrong, you don’t fit them at all; ifI look at leg length plus hip size you’re underweight but if I look at total length and wrist size you’re overweight. Simply be careful you don’t gain any more jeans sizes, you’re juuuuuuust fine…”
For the last 20 years he’s been at the head of the movement to get rid of those tables (they were just the BMI calculation without the actual calculator), and instead take a look into things like loose/tight, age, general shape, etc.
Most Spanish doctors say that if you’re going to use BMI you should substract 5kg from your weight for every decade past your 20s (myself and the OP are in our 20s so minus 12lb); you also have to consider things like “does she have an actual hip, or is she one of those women whose hip can’t be found without neon signs? Charlie Brown face?”
People are not cookies, please don’t try to “cut me into shape”.
Hey Inky! Did you hear the one about the woman who traded in her menstrual cycle for a Honda?! heh…love that one…
Drdeth has a point, and it’s not just on the top of his head. But that said, I’ve liked exactly 1 of the male doctors I’ve had (yeah, the urologist). The rest of them treated me like a little kid or like a moron. Chicks are cooler, in my opinion, because by the time they have their MD they’re done with the petty competetive bullshit and just wanna relieve a little suffering. The boys often forget to outgrow it.
Thanks, Inigo. I am willing to conceed that perhaps my recent experience somehwat colored my vehemence, but - it has been a recurring problem - for me, in my life - with male gynecolegists.
Don’t get me wrong - I think women docs sometimes don’t do the best job either - my GP is a woman, and I don’t like her at all (she does what she’s supposed to, but barely), and should’ve changed docs a while ago, but the convenience of the clinic and her ability to also do my pelvics and keep me up with my other meds was just too tempting a proposition.
I now realize, with this impending move, that I will have to get a new dentist, doc, gyno, dermatologist, likely psychologist (they prescribe, right?) and Og knows what else. I hate this thought. I don’t mind the occasional appointment, but it seems like the past year has been one long appointment fillled by periods (not those kind) of pain between. The five hour marathon sessions with my dentist (but hey, these suckers turned out FABULOUS!!! See 
$30K buys you nice fake enamel), the skin cancer and the second incision turning septic, the root canals, strep throat…I’ve been on antibiotics so much this year i am seriously afraid that I may develop a tolerance…
At any rate - off to get the bone density test.
OH - I almost forgeot to mention to everyone: the director of the clinic called yesterday after I received my bill and was about to call and tell them to shove it up their…well, she called and said the billing person had mentioned I’d had a bad episode and asked me to walk her through the appointment, which I did. She was outraged. She asked me to write it up just as I told her and CC it to two others and fax it to her, which I am this morning. Huh. Nice!
Inky in red.
Inky–there’s your problem right there! If you would stop dressing like a hootchie mama, none of this would be happening! (I kid, I kid).
Dr. Nona does sound like a marked improvement, but I dont’ like that she is not giving you something for this pain. The diagnostics are in the progress, there is no reason for you to be at a 8/10 on a daily basis like this. Even if she gives you Tylenol #3s-something.
And no, most psychologists don’t prescribe–they usually have a psychiatrist that they can refer to for meds.
It sounds like your life is quite stressful now, which can make the pain worse. Try very hard to go easy on yourself right now–get plenty of rest, underachieve for awhile, if possible.
Hope this works out for you. Yay on the clinic manager–definetly write it all up(keep copies, date it and sign it).
Yep, or if something is “routine” for you, your GP may be willing to write scrips for you as well.