Fired By My Doctor!
My doctor fired me as her patient the other day. Imagine?
It was my third visit and she was done with me. She said she was unable to help me and that I had three options.
1. Seek the opinion of another specialist.
2. See a rheumatologist because she strongly believes (based on nothing) that I have rheumatoid arthritis.
3. And/or as a last resort, allow her to give me more shots and see what happens.
She went on to explain that my MRI really didn’t show much of anything that would cause me pain other than aging.
Interesting, because my interpretation saw thinning and inflammation of the fluid between my joints, as well as a couple of other things that would clearly cause pain. But that’s not really relevant to this blog. What’s relevant is how surreal this experience was.
Like, who does this? What doctor doesn’t want to get to the bottom of your concern? It’s not like she needed to refer me to a specialist. She was the specialist!
Having lost all faith in her by this point, I opted for the shots. I didn’t want the visit to be a total waste and I was still hurting.
The first shot she gave me sent fire through my fingers and numbed my thumb and pointer for 10 minutes. She made me sit there to see if the lidocaine helped me with my wrist pain. It didn’t. The steroid takes about two days to kick in so why she thought the little amount of lidocaine she used would lessen the pain is beyond my understanding.
I asked her why she didn’t use guided technology such as an ultrasound or x-ray before injecting me. She said she would with the next one.
By now I was afraid, but I had a feeling this one would help.
So, thankfully, without incident she did the second shot.
After 10 minutes, she came back in and asked if my pain was gone in the second area.
What do you think my answer was.
And that was that. She said there was nothing that needed surgery and she had no answers or solutions for me. She wrote down the names of three doctors, one of them in her own practice and sent out a referral to a rheumatologist who I have no intention of seeing.
I asked her why she didn’t consult the doctor she referenced who was in her practice and she said because anyone she consulted would want to see me anyway. Lame response.
She said I’ll be closing you out at the end of the day and you can sign a release for your records and they’ll get them to you thereafter.
I drove home feeling so dejected. I felt like such a loser, even though she is clearly the loser. But it was an awful feeling. Did she not like me? Was this personal? She didn’t have to like me to treat me, but I found myself searching for reasons she might not have.
Well, guess what? Those shots she gave me ended up helping quite a bit, beginning in the evening. And for the past two days, I’ve had no pain anywhere in my body for the first time in years! Steroids rock!
Obviously, I won’t be using any of her suggested doctors and I realized after trying not to dwell on this and failing, that probably the main reason she let me go is because I really don’t have anything that’s operable.
This was so odd, though, and I’m still kind of thrown by it.
If you have any stories like this, please share. Tell me I’m not alone here.