• Doctors
• Patients

A friend of mine, Kerry, recently con­fes­sed to me and a few friends that it was time to find a new doc­tor. Her nor­mal one had been a disap­point­ment for her far too many times. Time to move on.

And how she is moving on TOTALLY impres­ses me, and I think all of you rea­ding this should con­si­der this posi­ti­vely asser­tive and self-advocating strategy.

First, she scou­red through her list of doc­tors on her insu­rance plan, and found one that loo­ked pro­mi­sing. She called and spoke to his nurse on the phone. She then told us the follo­wing: I explai­ned that I use Armour and refuse to change meds; I am VERY invol­ved in my health; I watch my Frees care­fully and don’t rely on the TSH at all since the feed­back loop is inte­rrup­ted by meds..etc. With that said, the nurse sta­ted she would check with the doctor.

In other words, my friend Kerry refu­sed to do what all of us have done most of our lives – approach the doc­tor pas­si­vely. She clearly out­li­ned who she is, where her inte­lli­gence is about her body, and that she expects a part­nership, not a demi-god, one-sided dic­ta­torship of what is right and what isn’t right for her health care.

She also sta­ted that if this doc­tor didn’t come through, her next stra­tegy was to write a let­ter about her health needs and how she wants to be very invol­ved in her treat­ment, then fax it to every avai­la­ble doc­tor on her insu­rance list in her area and see if she gets someone calling.

MAJOR, HAND-CLAPPING BRAVO, Kerry!!

THAT, friends, is the way each and every thy­roid patient should approach their health care: can­did as to your beliefs about your treat­ment, and what you want from the doc­tor. And even­tually, your asser­tive approach will pro­duce a doc­tor who is going to be a gem for you! Remem­ber: it’s YOUR body and YOU live in it.

p.s. Without an insu­rance plan? Pull out the Yellow pages! And don’t hesi­tate to use parts of this Dear Doc­tor tem­plate let­ter to help you flesh out and com­pose your words or letter.

***WANT TO MAKE A FASHION STATEMENT ABOUT YOUR THYROID TREATMENT? Go HERE for a thy­roid advo­cacy t-shirt. I dare you to wear it to your doc­tors appoint­ment. (But if you don’t, wear it everywhere else. It does attract questions.)

At the heel of Oprah’s reve­la­tion that she has a thy­roid con­di­tion (see my blog post below) comes this article on Sep­tem­ber 13: Sta­tins: Doc­tors ignore patients’ com­plaints of reac­tions to drugs

Boy howdy, doesn’t THAT sound familiar!

Sure, it’s about a non-thyroid drug called a sta­tin, which has an adver­ti­sed pur­pose of lowe­ring your high cho­les­te­rol. But the infor­ma­tion MIRRORS the expe­rience of ALL thy­roid patients!! Namely, the article shows that doc­tors rarely believe that the pill you are on is to blame for your “real — or ima­gi­ned reactions”.

The article out­li­nes a study that invol­ved 650 patients who had com­plai­ned of par­ti­cu­lar reac­tions after taking their sta­tin. And the pro­blems these patients obser­ved are COMMON to being on sta­tins — muscle pro­blems, cog­ni­tive loss, and nerve pain called periphe­ral neu­ro­pathy (and my dear mother-in-law, who is on a sta­tin, has all three). And what they got across the board is that their doc­tors either denied or barely con­si­de­red that the sta­tin could be cau­sing the pro­blems which the patient com­plai­ned about!

And there’s a huge dou­ble whammy irony here. Namely, not only do thy­roid patients have this exact expe­rience when we are on T4-only meds and con­ti­nue to have hypo symp­toms that our doc­tors dis­miss, but WE ARE A CERTAIN BODY OF THOSE ON STATINS because of one of the key con­ti­nuing hypo symp­toms that our doc­tors dis­miss – high cholesterol.

Cli­ni­cal pre­sen­ta­tion has gone by the way­side in favor of a lazy worship of the infa­lli­bi­lity of pills.

Who hasn’t heard the tale of the naked king, who suc­cee­ded at making his sub­jects schi­zoph­re­ni­cally believe that naked­ness is the norm?? That naked­ness isn’t naked­ness at all!

The same folly still occurs today when you view the final press release in the Fit­ness to Prac­tice hea­ring of Dr Gor­don B Skin­ner in the UK, sent to me by Lyn Mynott, chair of Thy­roid UK. In case you aren’t up on the news, Dr. Skin­ner has been brought before the GMC because he dares to treat his patients with thy­roid hor­mone when they have so-called “nor­mal” blood lab test results. The Gene­ral Medi­cal Coun­cil (GMC) is the “big brother” of all doc­tors in the UK, dic­ta­ting exactly what is “a good stan­dard of prac­tice and care” for patients and the “pro­per stan­dards in medicine”.

And you don’t have to guess long to know what that “good stan­dard of prac­tice” is. Namely, that man-made ink spots on a piece of paper called lab­work tells the truth, and your slew of symp­toms do not. That your chro­nic low-grade depres­sion is of “unk­nown ori­gin” or ima­gi­ned. That your aches and pains are from Fibrom­yal­gia or ima­gi­ned. That your easy weight gain is because you eat too much or exer­cise too little. That your rising cho­les­te­rol is from what you eat or your genes. That your hair loss is simply alo­pe­cia or age. That your poor sta­mina simply means to take naps. And they can all occur with “nor­mal” thy­roid labs.

It’s simply pure and sim­ple crazy-making: Of COURSE you aren’t hypothy­roid. Your lab work is NORMAL. You are NORMAL.

What a bunch of brain­less, skunk-butt bull crap.

If what is hap­pe­ning to Skin­ner by the GMC isn’t so piti­ful, it would be hila­rious. His­tory will one day look back at this and weep.

I’m sick. I’m tired. I feel awful. I’ll go the my doc’s office for help.

Today’s mor­ning news­pa­per was repug­nant. The article was tit­led Doc­tors not fans of Goo­gling to find ail­ments. Oh really?? Why are we not sur­pri­sed! Yes, the article began with the idea that many of us are goo­gling our unex­plai­ned symp­toms before hea­ding to the doc­tor and they “aren’t thrilled.”

It then stated:

In fact, doc­tors used words like “night­mare,” “anno­ying”, “irri­ta­ting” and “frus­tra­ting” when tal­king about the bur­den of dea­ling with patients who bring in stacks of Internet-based health infor­ma­tion (and misin­for­ma­tion) accor­ding to a recent study in the Jour­nal of Medi­cal Inter­net Research.”

It con­ti­nues with doc­tors seeing it “as an unwel­come intru­sion” and they “resent the new inter­pre­tive role they have been put in.”

Does that trou­ble you, the thy­roid patient, as it does me?? In fact, I find it pom­pous and nau­sea­ting. Let’s turn that article around to repre­sent the REAL truth:

Thy­roid patients have found it to be a “night­mare” when doc­tors overtly and una­ni­mously proc­laim us “nor­mal” because of dubious lab results (TSH and T4) in the face of obvious and ongoing hypothy­roid symptoms.

Thy­roid patients find it “anno­ying” that doc­tors ignore the con­ti­nuing symp­toms and ins­tead, push anti-depressants, sta­tins, anti-anxiety or pain meds on the patient rather than become edu­ca­ted about the role of a low free T3.

Thy­roid patients find it “irri­ta­ting” that doc­tors, espe­cially Endoc­ri­no­lo­gists, blindly conc­lude that Synth­roid, Levoxyl and any other T4-only treat­ment is the best treat­ment for hypothy­roid patients…when it has clearly fai­led us for decades.

Thy­roid patients find it “frus­tra­ting” that doc­tors don’t recog­nize the com­mon occu­rrence of adre­nal fati­gue with hypothy­roid, and their fai­lure in unders­tan­ding how to treat it.

And thy­roid patients “aren’t thri­lled” that doc­tors still seem to see them­sel­ves as demi-gods of their patients health, when in fact, the rela­tionship should be a PARTNERSHIP. You do NOT live in our bodies.

So dear doc­tor, ins­tead of bemoa­ning our use of the inter­net, which in fact saved ME from your incom­pe­tence as it’s doing millions of others, rejoice that your patients have had the balls and inc­li­na­tion to FIND ans­wers via the inter­net. Because those ans­wers are here. And the ans­wers are not just for us, but for those of you who are open-minded and mature enough to LEARN from the inter­net. Because the inter­net is ulti­ma­tely US.