Have you ever lost your shit with the GP?

don’t think so - have had a word but not lost my shit

i think doctors have a really hard job and i want to give them the benefit of the doubt but sometimes… christ

we had a terrible GP when my gf was in the process of being diagnosed with an auto - immune disease, just trying to fob her off with anti-depressants and obvious mis-diagnosis’s. wouldn’t contemplate that my gf had what it turns out she does have, as it was ‘extremely rare and not something she had come across’ (pararphrasing), and then, at a later date when we requested my gf’s medication dosage was increased in frequency as she wasn’t coping on the amount prescribed, teh gp had the audacity to claim that ‘all my other patients with this condition get by just fine on this dose’ (again paraphrasing)

fucking terrible

going to contextualize a little bit more, gf suffers with Pernicious anemia, which basically means you can’t absorb B!2, which eventually proper fucks you up, but starts with excessive near permanent tiredness, mind fogs, pins and needles and stuff like that - stopped us doing a lot of things for quite a while and was making her pretty upset - hence the suggestion of anti-depressants whilst completely ignoring any f the actual symptoms

you just need injections of b12 every 6 - 8 weeks to bypass the part of the gut that doesn’t absorb B12, and then you use it all up and then need a top up again - which as i it understand costs peanuts as it’s just a vitamin and we just wanted to go from 6 jabs a year to 8 or somethng liek that

I have private healthcare so thought i’d see the difference between the NHS (aka my GP) and my private healthcare.

I was suffering with costochondritis which is inflammation of the chest muscles connected to your ribs. Basically hurt every time I breathed.

GP = didn’t even touch the inflamed area, told me to take 10 days of ibuprofen (which i can’t take due to a stomach problem since I was a child) every time it flared up. Went back 3 or 4 times, same advice, never referred off to anyone, I could barely breathe through the pain (breathing deep puts pressure on the rib muscles aka PAIN)
Did not work after months of trying.

Went private = Full examination, MRI scan, steroid injections right into my chest.
Problem solved. Not had the pains since.

But to answer your question, no i haven’t lost my shit with my GP.

This is actually something I have some experience of. I went to my GP last year complaining of tiredness and a persistently twitching eye and they did a blood test. That showed low B12, but that I was not anaemic. So I had one shot of it. Haven’t been tested again since so I don’t know what my level is now, but the symptoms are less (the cancer scare cured my eye-twitch overnight!)

Presumably you want the dose upped because she’s showing symptoms? Understandable if so, but surely if her blood B12 levels remain in normal boundaries on the current dose then that won’t solve the problem. Has she had further blood tests to check the levels?

Oh yeah, 100%. As much as I’ve got any number of bones to pick here I’m still massively in favour of the NHS and on the side of doctors (as a group). These are just individual frustrations.

Knee issues.

GP: well since running makes them hurt, I suggest you stop running.
Private: MRI straight away, surgical options, physio options. Let’s figure out what’s wrong and get you out running again, it’s good for your overall health.

~FIN~

my lifelong/family gp is excellent and overly helpful, always assumed it’s partly to do with guilt he feels for not diagnosing lifelong, serious and chronic conditions until someone else did? idk. see another two gp’s for ‘would you like to see a lady doctor?’ stuff and they’re both excellent. everyone else at the surgery is pale in comparison/usually just prints stuff off from nhs direct or patient.co.uk

been in the system for mental health stuff since before i was a teenager. nhs mental health care is where i’ve ‘lost my shit’/been on the receiving end of atrocious care the most. mainly just old white men who’ve been indoctrinated by popular culture: being told should just listen to more leonard cohen aged 13 instead of treating my clinical depression with medication, upon being discharged from cahms (after being generally ignored for 6 years by all but one psychologist) i was told by a senior child psychiatrist that i just needed to find someone to ‘love and accept me for who i am’ and watch cinema fucking paradiso, as if they’re genuine cures for generalized anxiety disorder, trauma/ptsd, an ed and clinical depression. also was outright refused to start CBT, and later any form of treatment from adult services on numerous occasions because my conditions (both mental and physical) are ‘too complexed’. fuck off.

The fuck!?

CAMHS was full of these people. a fucking joke.

this is going back a few years now and it’s all fine now, but we did get it upped to every 6 weeks and not 8 weeks which seems to be the level that she burns through it - maybe a week before her jabs are due she might get a bit more tired than usual - so we try (usually forget) to just not have anything too crazy planned in at around that time.

Oooph, that sounds awful : (

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that sounds terrible

just - unbelievable really

@otto @chris-budget genuinely hope that it’s changed in the last 10 years. have nothing but praise to sing of the psychologists tied to nhs pain management teams but all MH professionals i’ve dealt with otherwise were taking the mick, probably just been dealt a bad bunch, they can’t all be this incompetent.

Talking of unhelpful advice from doctors the gf , after many tries, finally got to see a dermatologist and she gets there and there’s this Italian doctor and a student in the room. He pays no attention to what she’s saying just goes ‘ah you’re stressed, got a busy job like me, go on holiday, get out of London, go to Italy it’s lovey. (he points to the student) Don’t go to New York, he’s from New York, it’s too stressful.’

And that was it. No tests or analysis just travel advice.

did she do the italian hands while explaining this?

Never said anything, but never went back to a GP who was only interested in asking me about smoking and drinking (I’ve never smoked - drinking fair enough) when I went to her with a sore foot that I had damaged at a Chairlift concert. Her diagnosis was essentially “you’ve got a sore foot.”

Eventually ended up at a specialist who found that I’d got plantar facsciitis, which is essentially the same injury that keeps Andy Carroll out of the West Ham team for months on end.

Yes. And the accent. With liberal uses of ‘mamma mia!’. I don’t think he was even called Mario.

No but last time I went my usual perfectly pleasant middle aged duffer doc was on holiday and temporarily replaced by this absolutely stunning and lovely blonde lady. I was so glad I didn’t have to show my willy or anything.

Maybe this needs a thread of it’s own - “Lewd thoughts about medical professionals”. I’ve had some lovely dentists too.

I’ve given him a stool sample, yes.

This post makes me sound creepy.

Can we delete it?

Maybe I am a bit creepy? That would explain a lot.