a rant about doctors - you KNOW yourself better!

[joannap]

i am sorry but i have to have a rant!

i have had anxiety - v bad at times for around 11 years. around 5 years ago i started to have a lot of jaw problems and was treated for tmj by my dentist. not long after that my eye on the side my jaw was bad would swell up and i would get what my gp thought were sinus symptoms. i have eventally been referred to e/n/t - i did say to my doctor that i think that tension in my jaw may be causing these symptoms and he laughed it off - no - its definitely sinus (although i had a ct scan several years ago and this was clear).

Anyway - saw consultant today - definitely not sinus in his opinion - is mid face myofascial pain - i mentioned my jaw and he did not say anything but have just looked the condition up at home and it is caused by stress/tension in muscles - WHAT IS WRONG with the medical profession that firstly the gp says it could be nothing to do with my jaw but is sinus - the consultant says not sinus and doesn't pass comment on my jaw problems being linked to it when all the evidence says otherwise! it also lists on my ssri leaflet that people can suffer jaw problems/sinus type pain etc!

I am so SICK of having to diagnose myself as i have done with all sorts of other pain too like the time i came off the pill and suffered terrible stomach pain - i said to the gp - is it because my ovaries aren't being surpressed anymore? ridiculous they said and gave me 3 lots of antibiotics for "infection" - went back on the pill and pain totally disappeared plus there are many other examples i can list!

The moral of this rant is to not put your health - physical and mental totally in the hands of doctors who may not know much more than you do! This is what i have discovered about doctors and anxiety

1) they spend the least amount of time in their training on mental health and unless they have read books like claire weekes or gone through it themselves - they have no idea that anxiety can be treated naturally without meds.

2) they tend to want to just give you medication and often say very unhelpful things like - you will probably need to take it for life.

3) when coming off antidepressants - they tell you to miss doses/take every other day - THIS IS THE WORST METHOD - all the websites dedictated to ssri withdrawl tell you otherwise.

I am now planning to come off my 10mg citalopram and seeing if am any worse without it - at the end of the day these are heavy duty medications that help anxiety to some degree but can and often do cause other problems which then naturally you get anxious about!

[Alicat]

Yeah, I'm with you. GPs are General Practitioners so know a little bit about a lot of things. No disrespect to them, because they've gone through a lot of training, but we often know more about a particular problem we have. Unfortunately we have to get through the GP to get decent help!

[BubbleBonce]

I agree, I see a Chiropractor now. It's drug free AND it works! A deep tissue massage might help you too.
Maybe the GP was thinking it might be reassuring foe you to have things checked out and was at a loss to know what else to do. I should know, I've been there. :blush:

Bubble

[Belfry1973]

Sometimes it depends on your doctors, mine fabulous and I would def trust what he says to me.
Its more of a concern that people are googling, frightening themsemselves silly and then self-medicating.

[sarah jayne]

I definately agree ! x

[Wolfie]

Hey,

I don't think this is necessarily the case. I think you have simply pointed out what is classed as a 'bad doctor'. I went to a doctor who didn't do feck all for and needless to say, he knew nothing. I changed doctor. Now I have a fantastic female doctor, so isn't too long out of medical school and let me tell you this, she is the best doctor in that damn practise because first thing she said was 'why the heck haven't you been tested for blah blah blah, some doctors huh'. Which to me, was a total carthartic moment lol. She's the best. I think, you really do need to keep trying to find a good doctor. Why rely on your own 'knowledge' through google and diagnose yourself? Heads up, a road to disaster, my friend.

Chrissy xx

[Primula]

I'm sorry, but I don't agree. To say you know better yourself is wrong, especially in people with HA. You may sometimes know what's wrong with yourself, but to suggest that you can diagnose yourself by googling is dangerous. A GP is far more qualified that Google to give diagnoses.
I have had good and bad doctors, the best ones I have found have been the newly qualified. Don't forget they are only human, and it's not in their interest to constantly misdiagnose people. So if you don't like your doctor I would see another in your Practice, they can't all be bad.

As far as Antidepressants go, my doctor has never forced me to take them, it has been my choice, and have found taking them every other day to wean off them and then leaving longer gaps has worked better for me than cutting the dose gradually and then stopping. You have to do what suits you best. Different methods work for different people.

Also now you are feeling better you may have forgotten how desperate you felt when you first took ADs, and how grateful you were at the time. I know I did when my anxiety hit again, and no amount of acceptance would quell it, I needed the ADs to get me off the ground again, so that I could get my head around acceptance.

Anyway hope you continue to improve, I though your acceptance post a while back was very good.

[joannap]

hi guys

you have misunderstood me lol! i did not mean i googled and self medicated. what i meant was that i listened to my own body and used my common sense - i actually think its scary that some people trust their doctors implicitly when so many misdiagnoses are made and i have seen a lot of doctors over the years for many different things. i personally think the dangerous road to go down is to believe what your gp says 100% because i and several members of my family have been given unnecessary treatment at times/being wrongly diagnosed. It just hacks me off that many of them on over £100000 a year do not seem to have common sense, treat you as a whole person and link symptoms to each other or what is pretty obvious!

i always go to the gps with unexplained symptoms - i google after!
i do have to add that some gps are brilliant and the doctor i usually see is lovely and very thorough but even she has come out with statements like - people with anxiety often have to take meds for life when i know this does not have to be the case.

Yes - with diabetes/thyroid disorder - anything like this - you need medication but anxiety is basically a normal response that has got out of control so what i am saying is that we do have a choice and we should not put the responsiblity for our own bodies completely into the hands of gp's who can get it wrong and at the end of the day - go home and forget about us!

[joannap]

ps - by "sick of having to diagnose myself" in my initial post i meant that i do go the gp saying - i think this is because of such and such and they disagree and give me the wrong treatment most of the time and i turn out to be right with what i thought initially!

and yes - when i felt terrible years ago - i was glad to take anti depressants but if someone had sat me down and said - this is all anxiety - read this excellent book and given me the right help instead of just giving me medication and not even putting a name/explanation to what i was suffering from and leaving me in the dark - i would not have taken them. The approach to treating anxiety - allthough perhaps it is much better now for those being newly diagnosed - was rubbish 15 years ago.