Menu

Re: Doctors, totally fed up!

by Chloe
(NY, NY)

I thought I would write this after reading so, so many blogs, here and elsewhere about the negligence, ignorance and even harm that "some" doctors cause. I by no means can say "all" there are still some great ones out there.

From my experience as a nurse, working alongside them, and as well as a desperate and confused patient.

As I mentioned in my first post, I diagnosed my self with PCOS, in the very early 90's. No internet, only medical books and journals I could get my hands on. I had all the classic symptoms, and my labs coincided. PCOS can manifest it self in such a way that you have some symptoms, but not others, labs can be negative, but yet there are cysts on your ovaries as well as other symptoms. They now diagnose it by a certain criteria being met. I was the classic, textbook picture. I told my Gyn, I have Stein-Leventhal (PCOS original name) she smirked and commended my efforts. So that was that. Due to increasing symptoms, I went to the best rated docs in NY, I saw an acclaimed endocrinologist. She had my labs, sono's, everything she needed to diagnose me. She chose to do an MRI, and coincidentally found a tumor on my pituitary gland. I was told this was the problem and it had to come out, but I said consistently, my symptoms still don't match a pituitary tumor. To keep this somewhat short, I woke up after surgery thinking, am I cured, did they get it. Will all these symptoms that make me feel like a freak be gone?? NO! it was not on the pituitary gland, turns out it was on the optic nerve. My eyesight needs to be checked and field of vision tests need to be done. SO. We will start on on BCP and Aldactone. As my family previously asked about doing before surgery and possibly monitor the tumor. They said no. So that started my 20 plus years on those meds, and I was getting worse but didn't know it.

It took a pod cast for me to hear what I need to hear so many years earlier. A wonderful psychiatrist was speaking with a compounding pharmacist, he said "even in psych. medicine we have to look at the patients health and view them as a whole person. If a woman walks in my practice complaining of resistant depression, but she has cystic jaw or chin acne, oily skin, overweight, but heavy particularly around the middle, hirsutism and absent periods, infertile and or irregular periods, how can I treat the depression and ignore what is in front of me?, if her hormones are out of whack, I am doing them a great disservice by giving an antidepressant, it just wont work at all or be enough. Resistant depression and a patient presenting this way, is why she is resistant" Then and there, I knew there were huge differences amongst doctors and levels of care. The pharmacist went on to say, "the BCP makes it worse, get off it." I couldn't believe what I was hearing, I spent 20 plus years on the wrong medicine and it made it worse?!

Still depressed but still on BCP,( could not get off it until progesterone cream) and after visiting many psych. docs, perhaps 6 of them. A new doctor asked if I was on meds for PCOS, and I said yes, but I plan to change my regimen in the future. So he said I want to see if you metabolize folic acid, I did the saliva test, he called in about a weeks time and said, you do not metabolize folic acid, and that is a vital building block for all other neurotransmitters to be made. ie, serotonin, norepinephrine etc. "were your children born with any learning disabilities?" I said yes, one of my children had a severe speech delay. We thought Autism, until gratefully and thank God it was ruled out. Folic acid, huh? the one we are supposed to have plenty of when we're pregnant?? Why aren't OB/Gyn's testing for this????!!! I started on a medical food called Deplin and I began to have moderate relief with my depression. Something was still not right, and that was my hormones. That leads me to here, and it worked like putting puzzle pieces together.

But it was me who had to keep pushing and advocate for myself. If a drug company cant get rights to something, many doctors wont know it as a treatment, like progesterone cream, either that or they stopped updating themselves on new treatments since they graduated or worse, they are aware but keep writing scripts for big pharma and their pay backs. This... for some, is literally and slowly killing us. All three are causing harm. Dr. Peat will say its. homicide and negligence. I have to agree.

Advocate, ask questions, go with your gut, ask more questions. If he is not the right doc then move on. They are not infallible. Holistic medicine is booming, I think and hope we are waking up to these harms. It was a hellish 20 plus years, perhaps 10 of them could have been better, with what we know now.

Click here to post comments

Join in and write your own page! It's easy to do. How? Simply click here to return to Progesterone faq.

Share this page:
Find this page helpful? Please tell others. Here's how...

Would you prefer to share this page with others by linking to it?

  1. Click on the HTML link code below.
  2. Copy and paste it, adding a note of your own, into your blog, a Web page, forums, a blog comment, your Facebook account, or anywhere that someone would find this page valuable.

Search over 8,400 pages on this site...