I can only imagine if there are others like me that have been sick on and off for many years the negative impact on their lives for lack of a diagnosis. It is incomprehensible in the 21st century that medicine appears so disorganized and operating in the dark ages. How can one tell various Drs how sick they have been for years and the Drs only go by what the labs are saying and ignore the walking lab that sits in front of them. If a diagnosis is a mystery at minimum Drs should look/listen to the patient and take what they are saying as having greater value than a lab created based on statistics from a sample group. My complaints have varied only sightly over the years, the main symptoms have not changed other than in frequency and/or intensity.
Good grief, we are individuals not robots, after a period of time Drs need to stop treating us like a statistic and start treating us as individuals. If an individual still presents for years then good grief start considering the possibility that this individual is not like the masses and may not fit neatly into the statistical lab averages. I have fought being ill for years, it has had a horrible impact on my life and is about to take a turn for the worse again (I'm no longer at the cliff's edge I am in free fall to the canyon floor and all I can hope for is a diagnosis so I can maybe have a soft landing instead of the impending hard crash to the bottom. That only ends well in the Acme comics). I know I am not alone in this experience but I am heart broken at the impact wrong diagnosis or no diagnosis (this is the one where they send you off and with no answer, maybe some new supplements and ask you to come back six months later hoping you report a miraculous recovery) has on a life and all the lives that life impacts.
Too many of us have been hard workers, participated fully in life to be relegated to the sidelines of life without much hope of getting answers but with the strength we have left we still seek answers that will fix these bodies that we in layman terms know are not functioning correctly. If they were functioning correctly we would not spend precious energy, time and funds seeking answers and Dr hopping. In my job we have performance appraisals, I believe Drs should also receive performance appraisals from patients, not from peers or medical boards who want to stoke each others egos, and they should be reviewed independently not to harass a Dr but to get through to them when they are missing the mark in their service to their patients. The results should be public not hidden or swept under a rug (in my opinion that is no better than priests who are hidden away after harming children only dealt with by the internal corporation that is the Catholic church). They are dealing with the public, the public should know the Drs record. I'm not suggesting that Drs are perfect and that honest mistakes are not made but there are Drs out there that have done harm and they should be vetted and removed from any chance of harming another person.
Every time a patient has lab work done the patient should receive a copy of that lab whether they ask for it or understand it, they paid for it they should get the results in hard copy or electronic. Let the patient make the decision not the DRs office. If you paid for a college education would you be ok at the end if the school just called you and said you graduated but gave you no physical proof, no certificate for you to use later in years as proof is that ever acceptable. This calling a patient and verbally telling them over the phone everything is ok is a pitiful and lazy practice. Most patients with chronic illness have no idea how helpful it might be years later to have those lab results for comparison.
Speaking of lab results, many of us know that government bodies are notoriously inefficient and fund sucking black holes, good grief CDC, of all the billions you spend on studies on mice how friggen much would it cost for you to make sure that lab ranges for various tests are standardized and verified to be consistent and up to date with current research. Instead many people go undiagnosed because Drs rely on labs as if they are the ultimate indication of a persons health when it appears the measuring stick that are lab ranges is a moving target. How is that even good science. I reviewed my mom's recent blood results last night, I have know idea who the lab is but is was the typical complete metabolic panel that is run by nearly all labs and yet between the two of us I dont think any of the lab ranges matched. That seem irresponsible, a hemoglobin test is a hemoglobin test, why in the the hell are the lab ranges different. So where I am out of range which might serve as diagnostically useful, her results were not therefore the Dr, physician's assistant or nurse practitioner reviewing our results would come to different conclusions. That should not be allowed, a Dr in Arizona should be able to look at my results and my mom's and be able to draw an accurate diagnostic conclusion regarding hemoglobin, the ranges should not be a moving target.
I need to take a break, my spirit is troubled by all this, maybe Dr Charles Stanley will have a word to restore my faith and hope.