Scenario: It’s been roughly three weeks since you’ve seen your doctor. He/She prescribed new meds and you think you aren’t tolerating them well. The scenario could be anything you like, but how you question yourself remains the same just as your reluctance to call the doc up.
In my scenario I use the word think as a descriptor in how you are tolerating the medicine because in the grand scheme of the rainbow of symptoms, we, as chronic illness patients can sometimes feel, it is not always easy to determine the why of an onset of new symptoms. It is also difficult for me, to decide whether or not to call the doc and share with them the symptom, out of fear that it is all in my head or not really worth the docs time, and that it will go away in a couple of days. If you are like me there is a certain amount of agonizing before calling the doctor. You have a mental checklist that you have to mark off, nearly all the boxes, before it is deemed legitimate enough to call the doctor. Alright, maybe it’s more like guidelines, but ultimately, it’s a way that I feel my concern is serious enough to call the doctor.
But what is serious? What is serious to you and me are probably different, and what is serious to a doctor is definitely different. I’ve also seen enough doctors that I feel I can make the statement that, male and female doctors can see things differently. This isn’t a blanket statement, just an observation from the many doctors I’ve seen for myself and on behalf of my children. This confusion, as a result of differing bodies and differing doctors can make navigating what to do when something new crops up, very difficult. So difficult in fact, that I spend quite a deal of time stewing in my own anxiety, working myself up and probably making it worse. I wish all doctors made it easier for chronic illness and chronic pain patients to come to them when they had concerns. For example, my rheumatologist gave me her email. This is a great source of relief to me because I can bypass the staff and nurses, trying to explain what is going on and just leave a message for her. Then, she can email me back advising me if I should come in for a visit, or something else I can do to ease the problem. This may not be something every doctor can do for every patient, but there should be some way bridge this difficulty. Life is already so difficult trying to manage chronic illness/pain. The majority of us come with comorbities that include a staggering number of symptoms that aren’t always there but fluctuate. It’s also pretty common to experience new symptoms that weren’t there before. For instance, I have developed an allergy to adhesive. Never had an issue before and I’ve had a lot of experience with them. It’s annoying.
I wish there was a way to improve the doctor/patient relationship so that the patient doesn’t feel like they are bothering the doctor and the doctor doesn’t feel like the patient is calling all the time. I do understand the need for a doctor to have some off time where they aren’t on call every day and every hour. I also think it is important that the patient feels they can come to their doctor with issues and not feel like they are troubling them. I don’t mind waiting until the end of business hours when they are not busy caring for other patients to get a call back. I don’t even mind if they just leave me a message. But I’ve had doctors not return my call for days, after which I had to take myself to the clinic, where I ended up needing additional meds. I’m not saying I know how to fix this issue, but I think it would be great to open up a discourse with the input of patients, to see how it could be fixed.
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