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Count on it: your doctor is going to ignore your symptoms

September 16, 2007 | 9 Comments »

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.

  • Want to keep track of these “fringe web­site” blog posts? ;-) Curious what’s on Janie’s mind? Use the noti­fi­ca­tion on the lower left of the links, called a News­let­ter, or an RSS Feed.
  • The extre­mely hip and sophis­ti­ca­ted STTM t-shirts are half price! Great BUMPER STICKERS, too. Spread the word – YOU may make a dif­fe­rence in someone’s life.
  • Check out the patient-to-patient book with even more detail (and which doc­tors seem to res­pect more than websites).
  • Need to unders­tand all your best options for thy­roid treat­ment? Go here.
  • Keep infor­med of each live Thy­roid Patient Com­mu­nity Call on Talkshoe by sig­ning up as a follo­wer.

Patient experience in the doctor’s office makes you weep

March 24, 2007 | 16 Comments »

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

We have all done it, filled with hope and pro­mise. I have done it!! Why not, since our doc­tor has had at least four years of medi­cal school trai­ning that we couldn’t fathom doing our­sel­ves, inc­lu­ding wor­king with patients under the super­vi­sion of licen­sed doc­tors, and 1 – 3 years of resi­dency follo­wing school. Oh and let’s not for­get the con­ti­nuing edu­ca­tion, besi­des expe­rience with thou­sands of patients before me.

I’m in good hands.

THUD. For thy­roid patients, it couldn’t be FARTHER from the truth. The expe­rience in the belo­ved doctor’s office has been nothing less than dis­mal, dis­gus­ting, and depressing.…and nothing more than pure malpractice.

Why? Because there’s not a thy­roid patient anywhere who hasn’t gone in with raging hypothy­roid symptoms…and 1) was dis­mis­sed, 2) told they nee­ded an anti-depressant/pain med/statin rather than bet­ter thy­roid treat­ment and/or 3) were told they were “nor­mal” simply because those ink spots called labs ‘said so.’ So we have left…sick, and for years.

Wha­te­ver hap­pe­ned to “cli­ni­cal presentation”????

And if you think that I am bar­king up the wrong tree, take heed. The follo­wing true story, which was rela­ted to me two days ago, is exactly like THOUSANDS we hear on this site every week:

I wal­ked into the Endo’s office, fee­ling awful. I had been told he was the best in the state and I knew he held a high posi­tion in the Uni­ver­sity. First, when I told him about my unre­len­ting brain fog, he dis­mis­sed it. When I told him my cho­les­te­rol keeps rising, he said I wasn’t eating correctly (I love veg­gies and eat fowl more than beef). When I told him my throat felt tight, he said it was a tem­po­rary inflam­ma­tion, take tyle­nol and it would pass. When I told him that I wan­ted a treat­ment with T3 in it like Armour to help my depres­sion, he laughed, saying there was no con­nec­tion bet­ween T3 and men­tal health. I left with my nor­mal script for 125 mcg Synth­roid, a pro­noun­ce­ment that I’m “nor­mal”, fee­ling crazy and stu­pid, moving to a sense of COMPLETE rage, and mostly, I felt like a com­plete fool for ever taking the time. What will hap­pen to me? I can only get worse with my symp­toms, which thanks to you site, I can now see are ALL hypo symp­toms. Will ANY doc­tor LISTEN TO ME???

I WEEP.

  • Want to keep track of these “fringe web­site” blog posts? ;-) Curious what’s on Janie’s mind? Use the noti­fi­ca­tion on the lower left of the links, called a News­let­ter, or an RSS Feed.
  • The extre­mely hip and sophis­ti­ca­ted STTM t-shirts are half price! Great BUMPER STICKERS, too. Spread the word – YOU may make a dif­fe­rence in someone’s life.
  • Check out the patient-to-patient book with even more detail (and which doc­tors seem to res­pect more than websites).
  • Need to unders­tand all your best options for thy­roid treat­ment? Go here.
  • Keep infor­med of each live Thy­roid Patient Com­mu­nity Call on Talkshoe by sig­ning up as a follo­wer.
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