Hi.

I saw the frustrated with doctor's post, and decidied to pop in from the Parkinson's Forum. I too went through frustrations with my doctors. It seems that when things don't go easy for them, they pull the "it's all in your head, or you are having anxiety attacks". My primary care doctor tried that with me when I first developed an obvious tremor in my right hand. He put me on Toporal and something else to calm me down. My normal BP was at the time around 120/70. It never went up, and it never went down. On the Toporal, it dropped to 110/60 and I felt tired. The tremors and the stiffness never went away.

Eventually I ended up was a neurologist who diagnosed focal dystonia as the problem. He did this in about what seemed like 30 seconds into the 12 minute consultation. He handed me a printout off of the dystonia foundation website, and told me the only treatment is botox. I put the brakes on then and said "wait one minute before we jump to that" so he ran some tests to confirm and put me Klonopin, which did nothing for the spams, tremors, stiffness, and rigidity. He was also miffed because I questioned his initial diagnosis.

After this guy messed up too many reports back to my PD, I got a referral over to the Lahey Clinic where they have a top notch neurology department. My current neurologist works with me to find the best treatment program, and so far we're both doing well.

Out of all this, I've discovered that unless the patient pushes issues and questions quick answers, then nothing will be done to solve the problem. Unfortunately we have to be our own health advocates, and we have to push. I mean push hard to get the right answers. Eventually you'll get there, but it can be a rough road in the process.

One of the biggest things that can help is getting into a teaching hospital instead of the local clinic. My PD told me this when I suggested I go into Lahey Clinic for this. He said there they will spend the time with the patients rather than pushing them through the turnstiles, I mean drs. cubicles, every 12 minutes. He went on to say that the local clinic doctors really don't have the time to deal with the more complicated things that don't fit the "normal" buckets that they can put there resources into for the quick diagnosis to push out as many patients as possible.

So good luck to you here. Welcome to NeurTalk, and hopefully you'll find a doctor that can help.

John