Posted 5/1/2013 9:19 AM (GMT 0)
Mine is a long story:
I have been battling concomitant ailments for about 10 years, osteoarthritis (OA), fibromyalgia (FM) carpal tunnel (CT). I acutally have the none wear and tear OA the bad one called severe generalized idiopathic OA this is multiple sites of no known cause. For example my elbows, ankles, knees, hands, thumbs, spine are all affected and they vary in the severity. My right knee is worse, my right hand but left thumb are worse and so on. I have had 3 lumbar spine surgeries. My cervical spine is not doing very well at all but is confounded by the OA in the hands and the carpal tunnel. I had nerve transpostion surgery done on both elbows, the ulna nerves, the surgeon insisted that this was needed. He was the specialist in his field, highly recommended. That surgery was not a good idea and as far as I am concerned was not necessary. It did nothing for my elbow pain which now is being called tennis elbow and golfer's elbow bursitis. What the heck?
So my GP who is just a great guy, has been looking at me and saying "have we seen a rhuematologist yet?" So I made an appointment and waited over a month to see the guy. Well big mistake, the app. was scheduled for an hour and I gave a stack of paperwork MRIs, CTs, surgical reports the entire medical file just without doctor notes. So he walks in with a chip on his shoulder sits and grills me on what's what and then asks me "What do you want me to do for you?" So I am prepared and explain my GP's position and it's getting to be a bit much for the GP. I need someone to help manage all this stuff. For example when a doctor like my spine surgeon sends me for post op PT it does not take into account my other ailments, and inevitably they try to make me do exercises that need a bit of adjustments due to knee OA, hand OA, the FM. They all write the same order ROM (range of motion) and strengthen. I cannot comply with the arm bike with these elbows, they need to be heated and massaged before I can use the arm bike and so on. And when everyone decided to inject corticosteroids, two years ago I had so many injections I had elevated sugar and elevated eye pressure in both eyes. It turns out I was getting too many injections by too many different docs. Pain management in my lumbar spine, my GP injecting my knees and so on for several months. I need someone to manage this and keep track. He just looked at me and said that since I had been to pain management in the past and I have the neurosurgeon he saw no need for my seeing him. Then he semi examines my knees, does the leg raise stuff and feels around my hands. He then says he sees no evidence of autoimmune disease and that is that, he is going out the door and motioning me to leave as well. So the scheduled 60 minutes in fact was only 15 minutes and 5 of that I waited for him to come in.
I was in tears all the way home, tell me, was it me? Did I do something wrong? He came in that door with a big chip on his shoulder, bad day maybe. I don't understand what I did wrong. I have not had an easy time of this, it's a long time, a lot of surgery that did not help. A lot of PT, chiropractic, pain management and so on. I needed this doctor to care for my arthritis and FM and every thing in between. What happened?
I am in the midst of a major flare of the FM due to other issues medical and personal. I can be a little forgetful, seem a little fuzzy. But this is exactly what happened.