Hi Everyone, need your opinion I know its been awhile
 

I know its been so long that most of you may have forgotten me or just plain don't remember me. I'm Lynn from the old forum and have severe small fiber peripheral neuropathy. I've tried vitamins and the whole bit and am now on Duragesic patches which have helped somewhat better than anything else I've tried.

I had this little episode this past weekend I never want to relive. My previous Neurologist got to where he didn't talk or discuss anything with me period when I went to see him so I asked for a referral to another doctor in that same clinic who I'd heard good things about. I got this ugly letter in the mail stating "that neither he nor any of his staff would not treat me and that I had 30 days to get my medical records and find another doctor". He didn't even do the courtesy of helping me find another doctor. So here I am depending on my primary care physician to find a Pain Clinic in Kingsport, TN.

Anyway back to the weekend. My aforementioned Neuro's staff had 1 month to get my records prepared and sent to the new Pain doctor or clinic. I had an appointment last week and no records were sent to that office. The new docs hands were tied and the old doctor of course would not help at all even as a courtesy until I could seen the new doctor. So here I am without pain patches for 6 days until the new appointment. My attending doesn't believe in Pain Medication, I got no help from the other 2 docs. So guess what I sweated, felt bugs crawling on me and had to basically go through my own private little hell until I could go get my patches at the appointed time. By Mon. morning the drugs were out of my system but I was in so much body-wide pain that my husband had to drive me to my appointment. The pain was to the point that I could hardly walk. I have never been so humiliated and treated so badly by so called "doctors" in my life. Have any of you had a similar situation or could there me something I could do to remedy this situation not happening to another individual. It was all because a medical records department didn't do their job and sent my records to the new docs office and then I had to go through withdrawal symptoms. Had I know ahead al this would have happened I would have checked myself in somewhere but the hospitals in my area will not give drugs out in ER's so I probably would have been in a similar situation but just in the hospital.

Just because of drug addicts abusing drugs a person with chronic pain had to go through this situation.

If this situation were to re-occur which I certainly hope it doesn't what should I do or what would any of you do.

Thanks
((((((HUGS Lynn)

Sorry about the tirade I hope after a much needed vacation next week to join all of you again.

Grrrr @ Doctors
 

Some doctors are arrogant pr!cks. Can you file a complaint? And try to shop around for a doctor that meets *your* needs? I'm not fully awake yet so I'll have to ponder this and see what comes to me. Lawsuit does come to mind though.

I'm so sorry you had to go through this. Not like you don't have enough to contend with without this kind of petty crap. :hug:

Barbara

If It Were Me?
 

I would go pick up those 'records' personally and take them with me to the new doc at my appointment. Sign them out and say good bye! I'd first copy it all, and prepare a letter of 'correction' should there be any misconstruable information made by that doc in the files.
Once you see what they have...you may want to report the doc to the State Medical Boards-but first see the new doc, talk to your pain doc as well about the situation and get their take on things overall. IN the meantime, you have copies of the key records and will be better prepared.
Some docs are akin to dogs [no offense to any dogs out there], they are like many people, filled with pre-conceptions and biases. Those things work against us in chronic pain.
Good luck - and go GET EM! - Crossing my fingers for you - j

OK now, I'm confused..
 

I understand that for some reason you were not content to see the old doctor, but I'm not clear on why you got the letter. For what reason did the doctor send you the letter telling you that neither he nor his staff would treat you. Why, what's the reason??

Billye

Unfortunately, there probably isn't anything you can do that will compensate fully for what you went through being in pain. Admin staff doing their own thing on their own time is par for the course in any industry and deadlines are consistently missed--they typically have an office mgr and the Dr's don't have direct oversight. You can't really pin this one on the Doc.

Best advice is to focus on getting what you need with the new Doc and maybe continuing to compile your med records from this guy periodically so if you're ever in a pinch, you'll have them.

You probably had the doc running interference on you
with the records problem.
I would have gone down to the office with the letter in hand and demand a copy of all my records...... NOW! -- "I'll WAIT!"
and not leave the office until you had them in your hands,
even if it was a 2 hour wait.
They probably would have also asked a fee for them and you'd have to pay.
Upon examination of the records, any inconsistencies should be
corrected by letter demanding that the letter be included
in your permanent record file.
Then place a copy of the letter in the records that you now have,
before you take them to your new doc.

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.

Hi Lynn

Glad to see you back with us but not under such horrific conditions.

I can only say that I hope you sort this out so that it is most unlikely to ever happen again. I can only guess what being starved even for a short while of fentanyl must be like.

Let us know what you intend to do and keep us up to date with all your problems.

Best wishes from an old pal :)
Tony

Hi Lynn,

Good to see you here and sorry you have had such a horrendous experience. It might be a good idea to collect copies of all of your records. Your painful story really reminds all chronic pain patients that this is a good idea. I am almost up to date on mine, but need to fill in from one doc. Of course, even walking in with all of your records is not good enough for some - I know a psychiatrist who insists on getting records delivered from the source. But it is about the best we can do right now.

I hope you will be able to move on and get a good start with the new doc. That was one pretty big trauma you went through and I am glad you came here to talk about it. Hopefully you have been talking to those around you with whom you feel comfortable. While you do not want to keep focusing on these events, you do need to monitor yourself to see if you get recurring and intrusive problems . . . usually it's the memory of such events that will do this. You should also watch for behavior that may be driven by fear and/or anxiety related to all this . . . that usually takes the form of avoidance.

rafi

Hi All,
 

Hi everyone for your support. I seemed to have started off with complaints but who are you to go to. Most of my family are non-supportive since they don't understand about chronic pain and that sometimes you do what you have to do to survive.

Silverlady and David the reason was not given why he "fired me" as his patient. I assume he got insulted when I wanted another doctor's service and not his. Several little incidents happened in the office to the effect that did not trust him anymore. On my disability claim it showed I had consistently normal reflexes of my arms and legs and have been examined by other doctors and they consistently found that my reflexes of legs and arms and ankles were either barely there or absent. I questioned him about that as he did only one reflex test on me when I was a new patient and no more but he had posted in my chart with each visit normal reflexes when he didn't even do reflex tests on me. The day I questioned this he did test my reflexes and left bruises on me where he was so rough. On the EMG's he jammed the needles painfully in my legs. I began to think the man was mad at me for questioning his authority or he is a sadist. Also when I would go for visits he would avoid me or if I spoke to him he was very sarcastic and unfriendly to me. As far as the letter incident I think he got angry with me due to the fact that questioned his authority the fact he was falsifying records saying I had normal reflexes when he didn't even do that test on me. He didn't think that I would get wind of the fact that he'd never done thoses tests on me. It is my word against his though in a "doctor's are God's situation". Even the legal systems seem to side with the big Almighty doctors. Not that all doctors are like this but I sure got the doozy of the bunch. Once I was off the patches I would have loved to have stayed drug free but I was in so much pain and we're going on a vacation starting Fri. so I gave in but that doesn't me that I won't try other alternative treatments eventually. I'm not to sure about this new doc but he is going to do an MRI of my spine. I have degenerative disc disease from neck to tailbone. I mentioned to the previous doctor abou this and suggested maybe he should do an MRI of my spine to rule out problems there but he never did that. I do respect the new doctor for trying to get to the root of the problem.


Thanks all for your kind words. (Nida, Hurty, Dahlek, Jarrette) Many thanks

Tony its good to see an old friend. Hope you got my letter I sent to you yesterday. :)

To Rfinney
 

Hi Richard,

Its been a really long time since we've chatted. I appreciate you stopping by and giving your opinion. It was one of these situations that should have been avoided. I went for my appointment thinking everything was in order as the medical records department said they had sent records to the new doctor. There was either a miscommunication or something to that effect. Thankfully the situation is remedied, I got my pain patches and am scheduled for an MRI after vacation to hopefully get to the root of the problem.

EMG's have shown small fiber peripheral neuropathy of multiple nerves. The pain has moved from my feet to the thigh area and from the hands to the arms and part of one shoulder. I take a slew of vitamins, etc. B-12 and have been faithful to do so.

Take Care and hope you are doing well.

Your friend Lynn:)

To Tony
 

Hi Tony,

I like your new picture and have noticed you changed your name. I have a weird design on my avatar and one day will put my picture on there when I get all "prettied up" HAHA ;)

How is Iris getting along? I hope very well. I know its been a lont time since I'd spoken with either one of you. I went through a bad bout with depression early in the spring but am doing lots better now except for the episode with the pain doctors. That was an uncalled for situation.

Hope to chat with you soon.

Smiles and Hugs to an old friend:) Lynn

Hi there Lynn:

You have been treated horribly. No doubt about it. While I cannot relate in the same way, I did have a bizarre experience with a former dermatologist of mine. I had gone to him exactly 20 years ago for a cyst on my back. He was about 35 or 37 back then.

So fast forward 20 years, which makes him all of 57 and he is still in practice near my neighborhood.
I had a small cyst on the side of my nose, and because I did not want to have a small anything on the side of my nose, I went to see him. He looked exactly the same.

I went into his examining room and I expected to be told to hop on the table. I was told to sit on a chair. I did so. I then looked directly at him and said "well, hi there, I remember you, it's been about twenty years, you took a small cyst off of my back". He looked at me blankly and said "So???"

Talk about a lack of social skills. I then said "well, I have a thing on the side of my nose, can you please tell me what I can do to get rid of this thing. He came over, looked at my nose, (and he did not prepare me for anything he was about to do, like swabbing it with alcohol or anything like that). He didn't even tell me what he was going to do. He just went over to this gadget, picked it up, (it looked like a soldering iron), turns out it's some kind of cauterizing tool or something like that...and without warning me, he just started to slice off the thing on the side of my nose. The first time he did it I said "what??? what??, and he just did it again. Burned just a bit but his mannerisms and method of dealing with a patient, well, forget it.

When he finished he told me "it will form a scab, and in a few days, the scab will fall off. You're finished, you can leave". That was it.

I walked out into the waiting room and saw many patients. I have no idea if they knew his personality, or dare I say "lack of personality"

To me, this guy was aspergers. That's all I can say. Just my opinion.

But I never went to him again. Never. I found a much kinder much nicer dermatologist who specializes in skin cancer and he took a thing off of my hand. He's the guy who asked me if I wanted to take off all my clothes so he could do a full body examination. I almost choked.

What a difference in personalities though.

I hope you have a much better experience in the future, believe me.

Melody

Lynn, I think you may want to think about why you go, or keep going, to doctors when they treat you badly. Did I understand you to say that your regular primary care doctor wouldn't help you because he doesn't believe in pain medicines? He let you go through withdrawal? You don't need to be a patient of someone who would treat you so callously. And withdrawal can be so dangerous, surely your ER would have helped you with this. And you seemed to have gone to your old neurologist long after he treated you badly. Maybe you should give yourself a good talking to: you are worth much more than this. You need to find some doctors who will treat you like the valuable person you are. And don't stick around if they treat you bad! I don't mean to be on your case, but the way you were treated was so appalling. I don't want that ever to happen to you again. I really think you need a more sympatico primary doctor who respects you more.

Hi
 

What was done to you was cruel and wrong, and just plain sad.
Please get that MRI done,you know it always seems like attending
Drs.... need to feel some pain. I hope you have better luck and
those records or your's,there was no excuse for that. Sue

Well, it sounds like you are better off rid of that "doctor". Your PCP refusing pain relief medication is another issue. To me, pain relief is a basic human right, and a basic part of what our founding fathers and subsequent patriots fought for. I hope you can convince your PCP to change his mind.


Here in California, all patients have a right to any and all of their medical records.

This is what I found for Virginia: http://hpi.georgetown.edu/privacy/stateguides/va/va.pdf

It sounds like a bit of a hassle, but if you fill out the proper paperwork, they MUST provide the records at reasonable cost. Good luck.

Hello Lynn52, it has been a long while since we have heard from you, i am sorry it had to be under those circumstances.

Don't worry there are plenty of those type doctors around, even here down under, you wouldn't believe some of the arrogant pigs i have come across since the start of my PN, these people have a cheek to call themselves doctors.

I had never had one problem with doc's before this, i think it must be the nature of this disease, it probably get's the better of them too, i assume they just want to hear their patients say " i am lot better since ...rar,rar " , but of course unfortunately this doesn't happen to majority of PN patients.
Anyway i hope everything works out for the better
all the best
Brian :)

Does this doc work out of a hospital? If so I would write a complaint letter to them or higher up. I know it won't take away your pain and what you have been through and I'm so sorry. Its mentally and physically draining. I know I have told my docs I have went for second opinions and most of them seemed like that was ok and the thing to do. I wrote on another thread and at the pain clinic I was at no pain relief meds. Also other ones and I think even like Mayo didn't use any meds none not even like Lyrica I could be wrong though. I do know CC only used the anti depressents. I think what works for one doesn't for another. So maybe finding a pain clinic or setting up a program for you of the meds, but other rehabilitation. As for support is there a friend or maybe a support group in your area?I hope your feeling better