Which expert do I see? Need opinions, please!

[EMilo]

Dr Laurie Marti MD is in Kirkland. I highly recommend her.

http://www.lauriemartimd.com/

You can schedule your appt via her online system.

Hi Sabrina,

Thanks for the link ~ I had not heard of this doctor before... HOWEVER, she costs $400/hour and I've had no income for a year and am just waiting for my savings to run out before I'm on the streets... How do people afford these doctors??

I know all specialists are going to cost, I guess that's why I would risk spending the last of my money on someone I have read a lot about rather than someone who may not help at all...

 

[rebar]

The ones that really matter are the diagnostic ones that can led to treatment.
an immune panel that can clearly show deficiency and a good viral panel which can show if any are active.
The blood work I did 4 months ago showed I am dealing with both, immune deficiency and reactivated EBV and HV6.
This led to my doctor prescribing hizentra, and I will probably start an antiviral, (again). My immune panel function was sufficiently low for my insurance to cover the rather exorbitant cost.

 

[Valentijn]

Rebar (love that name), I have no idea whether I have had the best tests done. I have had all conventional specialist tests done (for a list, see my blog:

My ND in Seattle has helped quite a bit by ordering labs - you can get them via LabCorps or Quest Diagnosits, etc, with a doctor ordering them (and an ND is a licenced doctor). He's also quite a bit cheaper than $400 since insurance companies usually don't cover NDs anyhow. I'm not completely sure (mom pays my doc bills), but I think it was something like $120 for the first visit lasting over an hour.

Via the private testing companies you can get literally anything tested. Despite me getting ME in the Netherlands where Q-fever was an endemic cause of identical symptoms, no one bothered to test me for it here - yet I was able to get it tested in the US where Q-fever doesn't even really exist There are also labs like European Laboratory of Nutrients (they have a US location too) which do some more specialized/alternative testing.

And something else you can do without any doctor is get genetic data tested. It's $99 for 23andMe.com to test about one million genes. There's also at least one website for interpreting them in an ME/CFS-relevant manner (in addition to the health data provided by 23andme) based on your genetic results.

 

[SanDiego#1]

Hi Sabrina,

Thanks for the link ~ I had not heard of this doctor before... HOWEVER, she costs $400/hour and I've had no income for a year and am just waiting for my savings to run out before I'm on the streets... How do people afford these doctors??

I know all specialists are going to cost, I guess that's why I would risk spending the last of my money on someone I have read a lot about rather than someone who may not help at all...

Elizabeth- Just so you will know Cheney s $750.00 an hour 3 months ago. $10.00 a word for e-mail and $750.00
for pc or e-mail.. $350.00 or $400.00 as far as I know is reg fee for these Specialists. Someone else may know of someone less expensive.

My Best to you.

San Diego #1