Comments on: Another Careless Doctor to Avoid

By: It’s Day 30 of My 30-in-30 Writing Assignment! « Fibromyalgia Haven

It’s Day 30 of My 30-in-30 Writing Assignment! « Fibromyalgia Haven — Sun, 31 May 2009 23:47:56 +0000

[...] Another Careless Doctor to Avoid - Found something quick and simple to write about, but that doesn’t mean it is not worth the read. [...]

By: Kathy

Kathy — Mon, 25 May 2009 20:07:49 +0000

Careless? Yeah, I think that’s a good word for it. Doctors appear to be in three camps. 1) I’m not dealing with fibromyalgia, go somewhere else 2) We’ll try all the antidepressants on you and I will give you 12 months of refills…don’t come back and 3) careless. At least that’s what I’ve run into.

That’s with the exception of my first primary care doc. Actually she’s a nurse practioner and all her colleagues hassled her for dealing with fibro patients. But her sister had it, so she was damned if she was going to give us up. She quit, though. Gave up and went to urgent care. It just got to be too much. I don’t blame her at all, and who do you think I went to go see after my car accident? I found which urgent care she was at and went there!

I think people, like the accupuncturist you wrote about, have the stereotype that people with fibromyalgia are needy and are attention seekers. I know my first two years with my primary care doc…I was about to drive her staff nuts! But she was patient with me and we worked through it (it was at her office that I had the panic attack). Now I go in maybe once every three months to see ‘careless’ as he writes out the scripts for my narcotics in advance. An absolute no-no, I think.

I’m really curious…is my assessment of doctors correct? Do they fall within those stereotypes? Anybody want to chime in on that? (sorry for hogging your blog, FH. I’ll get my own eventually!)

By: fibrohaven

fibrohaven — Mon, 25 May 2009 19:35:40 +0000

Kathy I too take the occasional vicodine for my pain. I was not happy with the post title when I wrote it. My brain was not working and I just wanted to be done with it.

So now I have changed the title from “Another Reason to Avoid Narcotics” (which made no sense and was not what the post was about) to “Another Careless Doctor to Avoid,” which clearly makes more sense.

Thank you again!

Good luck with the move.

By: Kathy

Kathy — Mon, 25 May 2009 05:40:23 +0000

Sounds just like my doctor. Seriously. But my primary care doctor recommended him when I decided to go after disability retirement. He did an excellent job with that.

But he’s an interesting one. He’s really highly recommended online as well. Go figure, because pretty much anything I want to try, he’s game. Except for Xyrem. He’s funny about how clear he steers from that!

For the record, I’m on long-acting narcotics. And muscle relaxers. And a few others but I don’t want to get hammered (via comments) for my drug usage. My system doesn’t seem to tolerate any of the multitude of other drugs the doctors have all tried. So I do what I have to do to stay mobile.

Oh and also for the record…my choices were him and…him. No one else wants to treat fibro up here in Seattle. And especially someone who wants to go out on disability. Well, nobody that is covered by insurance. Pretty amazing.

Once things calm down (selling house, moving etc.) the plan is to go drug free! What is going to be interesting is finding some place that will dispose of all those drugs I have locked up in a cabinet. Remember all the drugs they tried on me? Still have partial containers of I’d say a good two dozen prescriptions.