Moan about my useless GP

[sianrecovery]

I know, I should have already changed her - I will.

Today, I went back to her with my glad tidings that T3 was really helping. And that the doc I am paying to treat me for ME as no one in the NHS will suggested my recent history of calcifcations and high blood serum calcium and medualllary sponge kidney means I should get my parathyroid hormone tested. It was normal back in 2008, but it can fluctuate. And that I am out of money and will she please prescribe me lithothyronnine or send me to an endocrinologist.

No. The NHS according to her dont allow the prescribing of T3, (no evidence base) the parathyroid hormone test is expensive and my last blood calcium was normal (after years of abnormal), so no test,no point in sending me to an endo, try swimming for the pain of the calcified shoulder (!), no interest in reading the ME docs letter, and its her job to manage NHS resources (implication - not my time with malingers like you). I point out I know that, I had years working in the NHS, that I have spent everything I have to treat a condition that the NHS has never offered me more than a talking therapy for.

What got me was her absolute lack of interest in what was now working.

It shouldnt have to be this way.

 

[GcMAF Australia]

Sorry to hear this sianrecovery.
But with this website, i feel like it is like an "Arab Spring" for ME/CFS.

 

[Nielk]

It makes one wonder why these GPs went into the medical field to begin with.

 

[sianrecovery]

Possibly the £100,000 a year wage packet for a British GP....

Arab spring for ME/CFSers! Love it! see you on the barracades - we would have to have very short shifts via a rota system, and lots of comfy chairs to sit on - possibly oxygen on hand - but hey - lets do it!

we could let the ultimate weapon loose - aka - Silverblade NcFeegle.

 

[maddietod]

What a great protest! Comfy chairs! Quiet voices! Big signs! Not many people, but changing every hour! Wow. Maybe somebody would be smart enough to ask why we ran a protest that way.

 

[peggy-sue]

It's the "social status" as well as the huge salary.

 

[Nielk]

They sure use thus "social status" to their advantage.

I have met very few doctors that didn't "talk down" at me.

There is something about sitting behind the desk or holding a stethoscope around the neck that make them think that they are "above it all".

If the patient is a female - downgrade even more.
If the patient is a female and has a chronic illness - down another notch (you get ignored)
If the patient is a female, has a chronic illness which can't be explained - down a few more notches (you are like part of the wall)
If the patient is female, has a chronic illness which can't be explained, with a pathetic "fatigue" in the name - you are in the cow manure!!!! (you could be having a brain tumor - it doesn't matter - you are a malingerer, no matter what)

I'm just saying - this has been my personal experience.

 

[peggy-sue]

It's how they're taught at uni. too.

Medics don't socialise with other students - they have their own private medics' bars and clubs.
They don't have their lectures with other students - and the lecture style and content is quite different to science students'. Their practical classes are easier (mostly done for them!)
Medics get spoon-fed facts, which they memorise, parrot fashion, get tested on, then probably forget. They aren't taught how to think, how to research something, how to put things and information together and to gather knowledge.

Vets have to have much higher qualifications to get into uni than medics - but they don't have this system of uni training that they are superior. Vets don't tend to have "god-complexes".

I can understand to some degree, that this attitude in a gp might serve to enhance the placebo effect - but it's not really appropriate nowadays when patients are so much better informed.

 

[meandthecat]

GP's make me so angry; it;s hard to find one that is different, one that listens and shows intelligence. They behave so much like clones that I suspect that their training matches anything the army can manage. Smart kids go in to the machine and highly indoctrinated psyches emerge from the other end. Incapable of deviating from their training and the ideology so powerfully inculcated; they look the same and speak the same.

For any that might have deviant thoughts there is the BMC and the ever present threat a blighted career.

The old doctors are gone, the ones that thought for themselves. GP practices are run by jobsworths more interested in targets and compliance. It must be hell being a young doctor.

OMG i'm feeling sympathy for them. quick pass me the pills....

 

[sianrecovery]

This particular one is a woman in her fifites, who wont make direct eye contact, stares at the computer, talks over me, and smirks with pleasure at each chance to refuse something. Its a PCT pratice, but she runs it pretty much singlehanded - god in her own little space. Enough. I need to take responsibility and start wearily working my way through the local gene pool to find one capable of human feelings.
But on the Arab spring ME protest - cmon guys, could be huge...no, take it back, it might be quite little, but it would be from the heart! Even if we had to leave at half time and couldnt do sustained eye contact. What do we want? Decent treatment. When do we want it? Now! or at the very least, in our lifetimes....probably....

 

[alwayshopeful]

Not any different here in the US. Just went to my GP with the same topic ( my holistic doctor found I needed T3). She said we should never go to the " voo-doo" doctors because they don't know what they are doing. Never mind that they came out of the same med-school system that she did!! Couldn't believe she even said that! Needless to say, I am now looking for a new GP

 

[peggy-sue]

I know this one only too well, sianrecovery.

"and smirks with pleasure at each chance to refuse something"

 

[sianrecovery]

You know Peggy-sue - I really need to give my head a wobble, because I now realise she is health service TYPE I can list the characteristics of. I once had one as a boss, until I refused to be managed by her anymore. The poor old patients didnt have the choice.
Key Characteristics - do tell me if it rings a bell, and I will outline a new disorder for the DSM V:

1. Passive aggressive body language, also highly defensive - keeps body angled away from the patient (preferably with a desk between) and eyes on the computer screen

2. Smirks mirthlessly frequently as a means of suggesting in a uncomplainable about way the patient is talking bullshit (or 'bollocks' as we Brits have it)

3. Feels deeply threatened by any signs of independent thought or action on the part of the patient, and does their best to disparage them

4. Obtains emotional gratification from the exercise of power

5. Divides patient groups into 'deserving' and 'undeserving'; rations access to treatment for the latter

6. Feels they have no more to learn, and that their expertise should remain unquestioned at all times

7. Is fundamentally a hollow, empty personality awash on a sea of fear kept at bay by control over others.

8. Has a strong sense of entitlement to an income that exceeds the national average by many times over.


Sound familar?

 

[peggy-sue]

oh yes, indeedy!
What really got me was when I asked him to just lay his cards on the table and tell me what he thought it (ME; ME/CFS; CFS/ME, whatever) was. Is it "all in the head", or is it an organic disease with external cause.

He launched into great long ramblings about mind-body stuff and refused, point blank, to answer, all the while telling me he was answering.
(I could tell he'd been watching nurse chalder's nasty little videos on how to flannel patients. I've watched them too.)

Does he really think I'm that stupid? I think that is almost worse than the denial of my disability.

 

[sianrecovery]

nurse chalder is unknown to me, will google and have a (bitter) laugh at

 

[garcia]

A topic I am very interested in!
Get this, Freddy Patel, the disgraced pathologist who performed the post-mortem on Ian Tomlinson has just been struck off.
I mention him, because in his summary Rev Robert Lloyd-Richards, chair of the fitness to practice committee told Patel he had:

• an "unwarranted confidence" in his own ability
• "a deep-seated attitudinal problem"
• "lacked insight"
• and had a "rigid mind-set"

I had to laugh when I saw this on the news. Do any of those qualities sound familiar to you dear ME-patient? Of course, as we know they are the standard characteristics of most gps.

 

[peggy-sue]

Nurse Trudie Chalder got some unwarranted promotion to "professor" by the psychobabblers. She has no qualifications to justify it, she was just the right sort of toady in the right place at the right time.

Ok, I've just done a search and found them - thanks to Dolphin here.

PART 1:

PART 2:

PART 3:

PART 4:

 

[Marlène]

This is the best thread lately!

 

[Valentijn]

Ah, those are classics! I love how their standard ME/CFS patient is an employed student that stays up late and drinks a fair bit. Hilarious stuff

 

[justy]

'We're trying to tell them it's a psychological problem. They're trying to tell us it's a physical problem.'

From part two.

You got to laugh!