Nightmare doctors visit - VENT!!!

Background - been on Azathioprine 100mg for about 5 months (not seeing any difference in symptoms). Last time I seen specialist nurse about 6 weeks ago she told me to stay on 2.5mg pred and use predsol enemas at night and predfoam in the morning. Cannot tolerate predfoam in the morning it seems to just act like a clear out enema and I am on the loo until it seems everything is out of me so I have only been using predsol at night.

Had doctors appointment last Thursday so 1 week before going i stopped the oral pred as I knew he would tell me to do that anyway and I figured if things would get worse I wanted that to happen for my visit and anyway I was starting to feel good anyway I had also reduced the predsol to every second night (hate using them although I will if I have to).

Anyway went to doctors appointment and had to take my 3 year old son with me. I had toy cars, juice, sweets everything to keep him occupied. Firstly I was taken half an hour late for appointment so already my son had sat this long being very good then went into doctors room and my doctor took a phone call which lasted at least 5 minutes and can I add that this was not a medical phone call. Any way he finally got around to dealing with me and came out with "you need to help yourself" "your problem is when you are ill you expect me to fix you well I have not got a magic wand".  My son sat cuddling me and playing with my hair being very quiet.  Well, twice my doctor told him to settle down although he was not playing up. Then on the 3rd occassion he said "come on son, settle down you have your mother for the whole day, I only need 5 minutes of her time now let me speak to her" and this was said in quite a forceful voice to which I responded "look he is not bothering me I am quite capable of ignoring him and listening to you so can you do the same" aaaarrrrgh. He really p'd me off. Anyway I came out being told to use predsol for a full 3 months - (to help myself)!!!!!

Sorry about the rant and long posting but was just a bit annoyed. By the way when he had a go at my son my son just kind of looked at him like he was a nutter as he was probably thinking to himself you think this is playing up wait till you really see me in action!!!!

I changed doctors a while back - I don't know if this one is necessarily better than the last, but the big difference is that I can communicate with her - she responds to e-mails quickly and engages. The last one was fine, but his staff were impossible - getting an appointment or a repeat prescription could take more than an hour on hold and getting passed around from person to person. The old doctor apologised for this. But the cumulative effect was that I didn't get a sense of overall support. I have this now with the new doctor.

UC has a psychological element - even if you don't think it has a direct bearing on physical symptoms (which evidence suggests it has, but that's another discussion) your experience of the disease will be necessarily a lot to do with your state of mind about it. Feeling that you lack the support of a medical professional is going to make your experience of UC worse I think.

Of course, it's a matter of luck whether you have a doctor you feel comfortable with. But if you don't have to, I would say that settling for someone you don't feel is fully on your side is not worth it.

Unless you've been with this doctor for a long time and trust him completely, or there are no other doctors around, I'd drop him. But first, get your son really wound up, and then take him with you to an appointment. Then when your doctor gets annoyed, tell the doctor to calm down, and the the doctor know that while you will have your son all day, you expected that your doctor would have more than five minutes to spend with a sick patient. Then tell him what to do with his magic wand.

(okay, I'm a little grumpy right now, but that doc needs to work on his bedside manner!)

I feel your pain, my GI did not have time to see me, I finally switched after seeing him 3 times in 5 months (I couldn't get in aside from that). It actually took me two months to get a follow up after I was diagnosed, he told me to look it up on the internet and schedule a follow up, which was with his nurse practitioner, not him. I thought I was overreacting, and that bleeding for 6 months was just part of the gig, all he tried was canasa until last month. (I was diagnosed in May)

IMHO these GI doctors are pretty much worthless, they are only good for getting you the meds.  Really all the medical society does today is treat the symptoms, treatment for this disease is pretty repetituous, and slowly over time you have to change things up cause stuff stops working. After having UC for awhile you will have tried about every drug out there, so you learn what your options are or what works.  I dont know this is really just my opinion i guess, i rather not see a GI spec anymore alls they do is crame pills down my craw, i dont expect anymore from them.  Hopefully i can continue to self medicate through diet and natural supplements and leave the specailists out of it, hey why not they dont know crap about the disease anyways. And I am doing better than ever currently. Do i feel that i am better than them at treating this? YES I DO.