And the verdict is...

[kickaha]

"Meh, we dunno."

Endocrinologist is 'disinclined' to think it is adrenal, but glucose instead. (His reason? I'm not hyperpigmented. I'm a *redhead* you dolt, we *don't* pigment... and besides, I *have* had a large increase in freckles in the last five months, without sun exposure.)

Despite me sitting there and telling him that every &*%$@$%# doc I've ever seen has said that at first, then come back with "Huh, I guess not. I dunno."

Despite me sitting there telling him that my BP drops below 110/70 unless I drink 1/2 gallon of salt water a day.

Despite me sitting there telling him that I *have* a glucosometer, and that it reads like clockwork, and *does not* correlate with my feeling craptacular.

I swear to god, I may as well not have been in the room. I could have saved two hours, and just had him look at my previous blood workup, since that's all he did.

I think I am 'disinclined' to want to go back to him.

I have a battery of tests on scrip, and I have a call in to find out if the ACTH test listed is an ACTH *response* test, or just yet another goddamned ACTH snapshot, like I've already had two of. If it's the latter, that's useless, and I'll argue until I get the correct one.

Oh, and the followup appt?

Six weeks. Six more weeks of this shit, until he goes "Meh, I dunno" again.

Edit: Okay, so mental fog and irrationality is something else I'm dealing with when stressed or frustrated. Thanks to ginkgo looking up some of the tests he ordered, it's much more oriented towards adrenal than our spoken conversation indicated. In fact, it's pretty damned comprehensive. Thanks hon, that makes me feel tons better.

Comments

[herithoth.livejournal.com]

My experience is that physicians are ruled by statistical frequency. They start with the most common thing and rule out their top ten before they even consider the rare explanation. This creates a lot of lengthy process for the patient with a rare problem who may get burned out before the doctor can get to the end of his or her process. Keep in mind that July is around the corner which, in a hospital-based practice, means a bunch of clueless folks will suddenly appear that don't know what they are doing. So expect things to operate even more inefficiently next month than usual. I think Ed makes a good point of getting the doctor to view your role as a historian differently. I get different treatment when I mention that I was a medical student. The new patient visit also isn't typically the most efficient. Only with the experience of you being reliable over several interactions will the doctor begin to trust your reporting. Finally, in most visits the doctor does about three things anyway. In your case that may be to rule out three obvious things in the first visit.