Welcome back here Lynn. Rather than add my past tales of woe to your story, I'd like to point out that you can learn and profit from this horrible experience so that it doesn't happen again.

What follows in the rest of this reply is more or less from the book, "Sick and Tired of Feeling Sick and Tired: Living with Invisible Chronic Illness" (Amazon link http://www.amazon.com/Sick-Tired-Fee...5396164&sr=1-3 ).

We need the help and support of our family, friends, and medical staff. It's difficult to get and keep that help and support when we're in pain, frightened, sick and tired of it all, at the end of our rope, and faced with what appears to be lack of sympathy, empathy, caring, or competence.

Please understand that I'm not assigning fault or blame. Who knows what kind of day/week/month/year that medical office had before taking such cruel and unfeeling action with a suffering patient who relied on them for help? You have no access to the history of others and can't change their pasts, but you do have access to yourself.

Billye's post is the key. Have you identified why your neuro and his or her office staff reacted to you as they did and what you could have done differently? Were you ever discourteous? Loud? Argumentative? Verbally abusive? Unappreciative? Acting like you were right and that they were wrong and uncaring or incompetent to boot? To put a positive spin on this, what could you have done differently to get a different outcome and to empower yourself to get the most from those who care for you?

Again, this isn't blame. My wife and I had a similar experience unsuccessfully trying to get an prompt appointment with our infant son's pediatrician when he had a temperature and couldn't hold food down. We learned that doctors take the side of their office staff, even when that staff was rude and thoughtless.

I don't know that we could have handled that particular incident better, but we did the best we could to ensure that never happened again with subsequent physicians. It's not only out of our self interest. Medical staff have a stressful job and catch a lot of flack. We are now generous with thank you notes, letters of commendation, and gifts of candy, home baked cookies, or flowers with sincere notes of appreciation where justified. Acts of acknowledgment and appreciation go a long way to helping caregivers do a better job.

I hope I'm not out of line or preachy here in trying to give a practical solution. None of us should have to go through what you are going through, and you shouldn't go through this again.