Getting the right doctor, without appearing to be "doctor shopping", is always a big challenge for someone with an ongoing medical condition.
The interpersonal politics are significant, at least underneath the surface. You depend on your doctor to give you the right medications, to support you in life and workplace issues, to keep an eye towards your future. You need a decent personal relationship for those reasons. Cheese off your doctor, and you have problems. Also, if you're going to get down and dirty about very private matters, at least you should have a rapport with the person on the other side of the desk.
Yet, if you start changing doctors, you are looked upon with suspicion. Other doctors, and in particular your employer if your medical condition affects your work, start to wonder: are you doctor shopping--continually changing doctors until you find one which will not only stick a needle in your ass but kiss it (the ass, not the needle)? It is a delicate balance--finding and keeping what you need, weighed against what will work with your employer and other doctors.
Doctors are business people, most especially general practitioners. They rely on a steady stream of clients. Apart from all the normal human niceties (is that a word?) of wanting to keep their customers happy and healthy, the doctors also want a happy and healthy cash flow.
For specialists, the elite, this is not a big issue--they have a steady flow of referrals. But for the general practitioner, clients can often be lost to other family doctors. Even when a family doctor is relatively well booked, it still can't be good to lose a client. As a result, general practitioners often appear to be much more vulnerable to patient demands.
Patient demands as in: I need a week off work, gimme a note.
I've seen it happen. It is why the word of a general practitioner in legal issues is helpful, but never nearly as good as that of a specialist. Of course, every g.p. is different. Some are more resistant to pressures than others.
Specialists are another breed. They are the elite. They, in particular, can often appear suspicious of their own clients, and of being manipulated. Ain't no one going to tell a specialist what to do--which is why their evidence is more respected.
I actually had one specialist (none of the ones mentioned in these posts) who appeared to be anti client. I told him that I felt sick and needed a couple of days off work. He was an internist in a medical clinic, I saw him thru the luck of the draw. He almost sneered and refused the sick note request, and only took a throat swab when I insisted. A few days later, the throat swab results came back and I was called in--I had strep throat. He started to talk about how good it was he'd gotten the swab, as if it had been his idea and he was Dr. Kildare. When I pointed out that I had to insist he swab my thorat, and he'd refused me time off work, he actually got angry. I never went back to that guy.
And he is a guy...a human being...even if he is a doctor.
Anyway, I am waiting for a specialist on Hypertension. And it ain't doctor shopping.
The last time I saw my WMD, I gave him a 'diary' he'd asked for about my work experiences. It listed about ten negative side effects. He did not ask a single question about any of the diary, including the side effects. Then I told him I had aching legs, and he did the right thing, ordering a blood test and taking me off Lipitor (no aching legs since then, by the way). I'd gotten his attention in my ten minutes with him. But he never asked a single question about the other nine side effects.
I needed a specialist, someone who would spend more time with me, in particular on the side effects. The prescription meds I'm taking have been very successful in bringing my blood pressure down to "near normal" levels. It's feeling dizzy a lot, forgetting things, getting exhausted easily--that's what I need help with.
My first specialist moved to Alberta. The second was in a hospital clinic who normally did not do follow-ups.
The WMD apparently has done the referral, perhaps a month or so ago, and now I am waiting to hear back. I think in the States it would happen a lot quicker, but maybe not--I do not live in a major population centre, I live in a small city in a small province. There aren't that many specialists to go around. It isn't the fault of socialized medicine, it's the fault of not living in Toronto or Vancouver.
Showing posts with label Prescription Medications sucking your life dry. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Prescription Medications sucking your life dry. Show all posts
Friday, April 06, 2007
Monday, March 19, 2007
Hypertension 43: Statins
This is a post about Statins. It is not a biography of Harold Statin and his family. I think Harold Statin was a Vice Presidential candidate in the United States. Probably you have never heard of Harold Statin. Don't feel bad: back in his own time, not that many people knew of him.
If you think that joke about Statins was bad, check out the last post & the biblical pun.
I started taking Lipitor in early October, 2006, when I was put on much more powerful prescription medications for Hypertension. Lowering blood cholesterol was part of the deal. I knew the medication could cause liver damage, but at that point medicating myself was on my mind (did Willie Nelson ever sing that song?)
About two or three months later, I began to notice aches in my legs. Sometimes it was just an annoying ache, in the background. Sometimes, in particular when I walked briskly to the fast food court in the mall near work (stop laughing at me, I got nice Japanese food at the fast food court...well okay I also got healthy Chinese food or it would be healthy without all those fattening sauces on it...and I rarely got a mozza burger which I really like, especially with those onion rings, and...where was I?) my legs began to ache painfully. I used to do that ten or fifteen minute walk each way with no problems. Suddenly the aching would be so painful I actually had to stop until the pain went away a little.
I mentioned this to my wife, who mentioned there were well known concerns (except to patients, of course) about statins. When I saw my family doctor, the WMD, and mentioned the aches, he ordered a blood test and, as something of an afterthought, took me off Lipitor. It's been perhaps three weeks now, and the aches in my legs have gone away.
No more Lipitor for me!
Here is an article in a recent Sunday Telegraph, a UK newspaper. It was brought to my attention by a very helpful reader. I'm sure it is copyrighted by them, and although I did not ask permission to reprint it here, I'm sure they won't mind. Buy the Sunday Telegraph. And maybe become a patient of Dr. James LeFanu! And respond to his request for more information at the bottom of the article--patients around the world, unite!
"If you want to feel younger, forget your statins
"By Dr James LeFanu
"A doctor accused of wittingly prescribing useless or possibly lethal drugs would vehemently, and understandably, deny it. This makes it rather difficult to oppose the prevailing medical consensus on statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to four million people in Britain at a cost of £1 billion a year.Thats quite a sum. It could pay the salaries of 700,000 nurses or build two spanking new teaching hospitals.
"An even bigger sum is £15 billion. That is the profit the pharmaceutical industry made last year from this, the most profitable class of drugs ever invented. They are so profitable that the latest statins to reach the market came with a £600 million promotion budget to push the notion to family doctors and policymakers that the lower the cholesterol the better, and that at least half the population would benefit from the drugs.
"But it is not so.
"Statins are useless for 95 per cent of those taking them, while exposing all to the hazard of serious side-effects. Hence my ever-growing file of letters from those whove regrettably had to find this out for themselves, illustrated by this all-too-typical tale from Roger Andrews of Hertfordshire who was first prescribed statins after an operation for an aortic aneurism (that he had cleverly diagnosed himself).
"Over the past few years, Mr Andrews had become increasingly decrepit (what can one expect at 74?) with pain and stiffness in the legs and burning sensations in the hands so bad that when flying to his son's wedding in Hawaii he needed walking sticks and a wheelchair at the transfer stops. However, he forgot to pack his statins, and felt so much better after his three-week holiday that when he got home he decided to continue the inadvertent experimentof not taking them. Since October, most if not all of his crippling side-effects have gone.
"Several friends can tell a similar story, and they have friends too.
"The take-home message is that statins are only of value in those with a strong family history of heart disease or men with a history of heart attacks. For everyone else they are best avoided as they seriously interfere with the functioning of the nerve cells, affecting mental function, and muscles.
"This is all wittily explained in a recent book by a Cheshire family doctor, Malcolm Kendrick, The Great Cholesterol Con (John Blake Publishing, £9.99). There are, I suspect, many out there, like Mr Andrews, wrongly attributing their decrepitude to Anno Domini, when the real culprits are statins.
"I would be more than interested to hear from anyone who finds that giving them a resteffects a similarly miraculous transformation."
James.LeFanu@telegraph.co.uk
If you think that joke about Statins was bad, check out the last post & the biblical pun.
I started taking Lipitor in early October, 2006, when I was put on much more powerful prescription medications for Hypertension. Lowering blood cholesterol was part of the deal. I knew the medication could cause liver damage, but at that point medicating myself was on my mind (did Willie Nelson ever sing that song?)
About two or three months later, I began to notice aches in my legs. Sometimes it was just an annoying ache, in the background. Sometimes, in particular when I walked briskly to the fast food court in the mall near work (stop laughing at me, I got nice Japanese food at the fast food court...well okay I also got healthy Chinese food or it would be healthy without all those fattening sauces on it...and I rarely got a mozza burger which I really like, especially with those onion rings, and...where was I?) my legs began to ache painfully. I used to do that ten or fifteen minute walk each way with no problems. Suddenly the aching would be so painful I actually had to stop until the pain went away a little.
I mentioned this to my wife, who mentioned there were well known concerns (except to patients, of course) about statins. When I saw my family doctor, the WMD, and mentioned the aches, he ordered a blood test and, as something of an afterthought, took me off Lipitor. It's been perhaps three weeks now, and the aches in my legs have gone away.
No more Lipitor for me!
Here is an article in a recent Sunday Telegraph, a UK newspaper. It was brought to my attention by a very helpful reader. I'm sure it is copyrighted by them, and although I did not ask permission to reprint it here, I'm sure they won't mind. Buy the Sunday Telegraph. And maybe become a patient of Dr. James LeFanu! And respond to his request for more information at the bottom of the article--patients around the world, unite!
"If you want to feel younger, forget your statins
"By Dr James LeFanu
"A doctor accused of wittingly prescribing useless or possibly lethal drugs would vehemently, and understandably, deny it. This makes it rather difficult to oppose the prevailing medical consensus on statins, the cholesterol-lowering drugs prescribed to four million people in Britain at a cost of £1 billion a year.Thats quite a sum. It could pay the salaries of 700,000 nurses or build two spanking new teaching hospitals.
"An even bigger sum is £15 billion. That is the profit the pharmaceutical industry made last year from this, the most profitable class of drugs ever invented. They are so profitable that the latest statins to reach the market came with a £600 million promotion budget to push the notion to family doctors and policymakers that the lower the cholesterol the better, and that at least half the population would benefit from the drugs.
"But it is not so.
"Statins are useless for 95 per cent of those taking them, while exposing all to the hazard of serious side-effects. Hence my ever-growing file of letters from those whove regrettably had to find this out for themselves, illustrated by this all-too-typical tale from Roger Andrews of Hertfordshire who was first prescribed statins after an operation for an aortic aneurism (that he had cleverly diagnosed himself).
"Over the past few years, Mr Andrews had become increasingly decrepit (what can one expect at 74?) with pain and stiffness in the legs and burning sensations in the hands so bad that when flying to his son's wedding in Hawaii he needed walking sticks and a wheelchair at the transfer stops. However, he forgot to pack his statins, and felt so much better after his three-week holiday that when he got home he decided to continue the inadvertent experimentof not taking them. Since October, most if not all of his crippling side-effects have gone.
"Several friends can tell a similar story, and they have friends too.
"The take-home message is that statins are only of value in those with a strong family history of heart disease or men with a history of heart attacks. For everyone else they are best avoided as they seriously interfere with the functioning of the nerve cells, affecting mental function, and muscles.
"This is all wittily explained in a recent book by a Cheshire family doctor, Malcolm Kendrick, The Great Cholesterol Con (John Blake Publishing, £9.99). There are, I suspect, many out there, like Mr Andrews, wrongly attributing their decrepitude to Anno Domini, when the real culprits are statins.
"I would be more than interested to hear from anyone who finds that giving them a resteffects a similarly miraculous transformation."
James.LeFanu@telegraph.co.uk
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