2019 Poll about Jemsek Clinic: Good or bad?

i've been seeing Dr. J personally for over 2 years now after striking out with two other LLMD's in NYC. the biggest thing Dr. J for me was recognize my biggest (and of course still persisting) symptoms were all nerve related and prescribed me Gabapentin. I would be dead right now without this drug and the other 2 LLMD's kept calling my issues inflammation and treating it incorrectly.

Dr. J's fairly standard protocol for everyone that walks through his door did get me significantly better in 18 months but I've hit a wall and can't shake the nerve symptoms and J's got no answers for me. Reason is for some antibiotics will only take you so far and that's prob me. He's not a holistic doctor he treats infections with his standard protocol. They vary slightly but its all very similar.

The support staff is atrocious. 3-4 day wait times via the Nurse triage line. if you have a question they stick a low level administrator between you and your doctor to interpret and communicate messages back and forth. Quite laborious and frustrating it took me 2 weeks to resolve something that could've been done in a 60 second phone call.

I think this place has a better reputation than it deserves as a practice but he's hands down a very knowledgeable man in the field and has helped many folks like myself.

physedgirl09 said...
Hey girlie.

Well starting Monday, I’ll be starting diaprim (spelling?) lol. I’ll be taking that with Bactrim, Omnicef, enula, crypto, tindomax, diflican for the first week.
The second week I’m back on the malerone with the rest of the meds.
And the Monday of the third week I’m gonna take ivermectin.
The first 8 days I’m also doing the lacto and xylitol.

Yeah I mean in 2017 I was in pretty bad shape. But I have been slowly crawling out of this year by year. I don’t wanna jinx anything. If I stay the way I am now, I’ll be happy for the rest of my life let’s put it that way. Lol

let's hope you don't hit a wall. that happens to too many people i know who do an antibiotic only route esp if you've had the infection for at least a few months unchecked.

Several people here have recommended Dr J in Washington DC, so I went to see him. This is a summary of my experience.

The initial appointment costs $890, and they don't take insurance. They require a deposit of $450 on a credit card before they will schedule the appointment, but first they wanted me to sign a form and send it back to them which says that I understand I will lose my deposit if I don't cancel the appointment 5 days in advance. So I do that, then we play phone tag a few times before I finally get to talk to a live person to schedule the appointment.

They're currently scheduling about a week out, which is fine, but then they wanted copies of my medical records and lab reports, which left me only a few days to get this. Luckily I was able to get it all, but it would have been too late to cancel or reschedule if I hadn't.

Once I had successfully scheduled the appointment and paid my non-refundable deposit, they emailed me a link to their 'patient portal' where there is a 20+ page online questionaire to fill out.

Some of the questions were reasonable, but some of it was really excessive. For example, they asked for my pharmacy phone number in three different places. I figured they would use this to call in prescriptions, so I looked up the number and filled it out. No, they ended up just writing a paper prescription. There were a lot of other redundant questions too. After that they wanted copies of lab reports, but there's a page limit so I couldn't submit it all online so they told me to just photocopy it and bring it to my first appointment. They really need to improve this process.

They ask that you get there 30 minutes early. There is limited parking so they recommend you take the metro. They also recommend you have someone come with you if you need assistance (depending on how sick you are).

Once I get there and sign in, guess what, more paperwork. After all the stuff I submitted online or brought with me, oh, here's a few more things. One thing was a new policy that they don't want patients posting medication schedules online. Additionally they have a informed consent document asking you to choose if you want to treat with antibiotics for 30 days or until symptoms resolve. They also insisted on making a photocopy of my ID which seems a bit risky. Verifying my info is fine, but they really shouldn't be keeping copies of drivers licenses or passports which could be used for identity theft. They also wanted copies of my insurance card. Most doctors do, but I don't know what JSC does with that since they don't take insurance.

The initial appointment takes about 3 hours and is done by one of Dr J's assistants. They do a physical exam (blood pressure, reflexes, etc) and go over my medical history. They barely looked at the lab reports, because testing for Lyme disease isn't reliable anyway. So I went to a lot of effort to get copies of all that stuff for nothing.

Then they give me scripts for antibiotics, plus some herbals for detox. Then they order a crazy amount of bloodwork and lab tests, a sleep study, and a MRI to look for neurological damage.

So now I'm calling a bunch of places to find out where to get all this testing done, and if my insurance will pay for any of it. It's really hard to do all this when you're not feeling well.

I hope they can actually do something for me after all this. I have a second appointment next month.

LymeWire: "Then they give me scripts for antibiotics, plus some herbals for detox. Then they order a crazy amount of bloodwork and lab tests, a sleep study, and a MRI to look for neurological damage."

Yes, they do want a lot of blood work done...but after that - it's only 'Safety' Labs once a month - for CBC, liver and kidney tests...
Sleep study - did you indicate there were some issues with sleeping? ie sleep apnea...?
and what prompted the request for the MRI? Do you have a lot of cognitive issues?
If so, sometimes they suggest IV abx if the neurological damage is significant.

Girlie said...
Usually a clinic who hasn't seen you before will want copies of recent/pertinent medical records.
You don't have to book the appointment one week out...you could have chosen 2...or 3...or more weeks out so it wasn't such a rush to get all the documentation in order.

I agree with the forms to fill out - you end up filling out some of the same forms when you get there.

When I called, they told me they had an appointment next week. So I booked it. It was only after that they asked for all that paperwork. And they sent me an email saying to please complete the paperwork 7 days prior to your appointment. Well, that didn't happen! And then they called me and said, hey we need you to fill out those forms. I did get it done before the appointment.

I wish someone had explained all this to me beforehand.

Girlie said...
Do you mean a NP? And didn't you choose one when you made the appt? I had an assistant do some vitals - ie blood pressure , pulse, weight...
but the NP was with me for 2 1/2 hours.....checking reflexes, eye-tracking, strength, and asking questions about certain symptoms.

NP or PA, I guess?

I just made the appointment, and then they gave me the name of who I would be seeing. I didn't know I could choose one. I wouldn't have known who to ask for.

Yes they did all that stuff. Eye tracking, stand on one foot, reflexes.

about the MRI, I don't know. I guess I need to call and ask for clarification. I've also found that if you call after hours you get a recording that says call back during normal hours, and you can't even leave a message. When you call during business hours then it goes to voice mail.