"Lisa Steen: The wilderness of the medically unexplained" - GP with cancer misdiagnosed as psych.

[Dolphin]

By now I had gone back to work. There had been a rotation, and I was assigned to a consultant psychiatrist, who made it her mission to rehabilitate me back to work.

 

[Dolphin]

I still knew there was something wrong, but it seemed so fruitless going to see specialists. It was so humiliating, feeling like a goldfish with no voice. Watching doctors’ faces glaze over at the multitude of symptoms. Trying to fit it all in with work and looking after my family.

 

[Dolphin]

I decided it would have to wait for clinical events to become more diagnosable. I had tried as hard as I felt reasonably possible. It is also taboo to discuss one’s own health in any depth at work, and I was so exasperated by it all that I felt I would cry if anyone were too sympathetic—which doctors might then interpret as a psychiatric symptom.

 

[Dolphin]

I do not know how long I’ll live. It probably won’t be for many weeks. But right now I am glad to be alive, I am grateful for the expensive drug which is holding back the cancer. I am angry at being left in the medically unexplained wilderness and I did not like the way my colleagues looked at me, when they believed me to have health anxiety.

 

[Dolphin]

If anyone of the doctors I saw had gone another mile they would’ve stumbled upon it. I almost told them the answer; I repeated over and over my belief of a genetic syndrome linked to the carotid body, something related to it, but they were unable to hear the answer from a patient. They were reluctant to lay their hands on and examine a fellow medic. I was disappointed in finding a very poor appetite for a diagnostic hunt, which may in part be the result of protocolisation and superspecialism. I disliked being unable to order my own tests, and I regret not pulling more strings. I was too embarrassed about my “psychiatric” condition, too confused by not having the whole answer ready.

 

[Dolphin]

Doctors do not like being told what to do, and if you try obliquely they don’t notice. They don’t worry much as they assume you’ll come back. But it is hard getting to appointments when one is working, and just how many times can you come back if it gets worse?