The "What's on your mind?" Thread -2017

[Mamanyt1953]

Now I'm really p*ssed off. According to the pharmacist what the NP told me she was prescribing and what she prescribed are two totally different things.

Edit: I don't have a regular doctor. I hate going to the doctor with a passion. If it's not psychiatric, I'll deal with it myself.

Dear Lord...All I can say is that I hope you can find someone who will listen and actually be responsive!

 

[donutte]

Thank you everyone! It was weird waking up this morning and the realization that I'm not "almost 40" anymore hit me, lol. Mostly working so far today, movie with friend tonight.

And of course today is also Maple's birthday! She is 15 years young today :heart3: Kisses to heaven for Sara and Lucky today

 

[Margret]

If you can't get these, or are allergic to any of the ingredients, a simple Google search on "adult personal washcloths" should get you several options.  These are primarily intended for taking along for quick cleanup on a hot day or some such.  There are others that are intended to be the primary method for disabled people who can't use the shower alone to keep clean.

Cannot get off my mind, though I have tried, an article on the dailymail website on Monday. Video included. A mother in China was kicking her toddler little girl. Google it at your peril. The child, apparently, is now in her grandparents' care. How a mother can kick a defenseless child like that is beyond me. Profoundly depressing.

Some mothers are mothers in name only, unfortunately.  I'm surprised that the authorities in China thought it was worth removing the child from her "care."  Perhaps they've been making some changes with regard to human rights.

 
Happy 40th Birthday!!!! @Donutte. 

 

 

 

  I hope you're having a wonderful day!

Margret

 

[Willowy]

Cannot get off my mind, though I have tried, an article on the dailymail website on Monday. Video included. A mother in China was kicking her toddler little girl. Google it at your peril. The child, apparently, is now in her grandparents' care. How a mother can kick a defenseless child like that is beyond me. Profoundly depressing.

Around 400 children a year are killed by child abuse in the US, and around 4,500 are hospitalized . I can't imagine what that number is in China, with so many more people. It's encouraging that the government felt that it was worth stepping in. I imagine they wouldn't have felt that a girl child was worth protecting even a few years ago.

 

[tallyollyopia]

If you can't get these, or are allergic to any of the ingredients, a simple Google search on "adult personal washcloths" should get you several options.  These are primarily intended for taking along for quick cleanup on a hot day or some such.  There are others that are intended to be the primary method for disabled people who can't use the shower alone to keep clean.

Some mothers are mothers in name only, unfortunately.  I'm surprised that the authorities in China thought it was worth removing the child from her "care."  Perhaps they've been making some changes with regard to human rights.

Margret

I don't have the time to look for them. I'm working six days this week, and we don't have next week's schedule yet.

 

[arouetta]

You said you "have a regular doctor appointment on the 2nd," which is what @catlover73
was referring to.  Regardless of the semantics, tell your doctor about it!!!!  Do not save it for "another appointment," no matter what the doctor says.  This NP has treated you abominably, and is presumably employed by this doctor, so he or she

1. is ultimately responsible, and
2. desperately needs to know.  This is the kind of malpractice (yes, it is malpractice to give a patient incorrect information about a prescription) that could get your doctor sued someday.

The appointment on the 2nd was a new patient appointment with a PCP. I'm not a patient yet and it was for something petty. (I fell down the stairs in Sept and my elbow still hurts bad.) The NP is a psychiatric NP out of a different practice. A regular doctor is not qualified to untangle the mess my psych meds are. Usually past PCPs hear the diagnosis and the list and say "Yeah, I can't do a thing, you need to talk to a specialist."

I did cancel the appointment though because I'm going to make the 2 hour drive to see my old PCP. I honestly think he's going to say he can't help me but maybe he can at least tell if it's the new medicine or the whole cocktail. I checked out what I'm really on and not what I was told by the doctor and they don't list the symptoms I'm having.

 

[foxden]

arouetta
Waiting until the 16th seems like an awfully long time when you're playing "medication roulette"

You said you can correlate the symptoms to the new med getting to the therapeutic level in your blood. I'm not a doctor and I can't recommend this -- but, the way my dr discontinues medications is almost the opposite of how you start taking that medication.

I'm playing "roulette" right now, and it just happens to overlap with losing my "soul" kitty almost a month ago. It's tough to filter out the drug effects v missing Kiki.
I've also got a complicated cocktail, but a huge advantage since I've been with my dr for several years.
Even though the NP cut you as a patient, you could still call that office to get advice about how to discontinue that medication

 

[Margret]

 

You said you "have a regular doctor appointment on the 2nd," which is what @catlover73
was referring to.  Regardless of the semantics, tell your doctor about it!!!!   Do not save it for "another appointment," no matter what the doctor says.  This NP has treated you abominably, and is presumably employed by this doctor, so he or she

1. is ultimately responsible, and
2. desperately needs to know.  This is the kind of malpractice (yes, it is malpractice to give a patient incorrect information about a prescription) that could get your doctor sued someday.

The appointment on the 2nd was a new patient appointment with a PCP. I'm not a patient yet and it was for something petty. (I fell down the stairs in Sept and my elbow still hurts bad.) The NP is a psychiatric NP out of a different practice. A regular doctor is not qualified to untangle the mess my psych meds are. Usually past PCPs hear the diagnosis and the list and say "Yeah, I can't do a thing, you need to talk to a specialist."

I did cancel the appointment though because I'm going to make the 2 hour drive to see my old PCP. I honestly think he's going to say he can't help me but maybe he can at least tell if it's the new medicine or the whole cocktail. I checked out what I'm really on and not what I was told by the doctor and they don't list the symptoms I'm having.

Okay, now I understand.

1. The NP did commit malpractice, and the doctor with whom she is associated needs to know about it.  If she isn't associated with any doctor, your state's medical board needs to know.
2. If you can't get a quick appointment with a new NP or qualified doctor, you should be talking with your PCP about it.  At the very least, he or she can tell you whether it's safe to discontinue this drug.
3. An elbow that still hurts badly this long after the original injury is not petty.  It's something that threatens to be disabling if it isn't taken care of, and the sooner the better.

Margret

 

[foxxycat]

From years of watching my mom struggle with side effects from those types of meds-I would follow Margrets advice. Definitely a big NONO to discontinue meds without tapering. And you can always call that office and see if you can speak to another doctor there-since this pin head didn't help you-someone needs to help you.

Back to work today. Slept soso. No Honeybee on me last night-maybe I was snoring. She's so cute-jumped on Jon to wake him up because oh my gosh the food bowl was empty! And she wanted treats. I gave her some but she puked them up. I think I gave her too many and she ate to fast...note to self=don't give too many at once! Usually I hold them in my hand and make her gently take it out of my fingers then let her swallow before I give her another treat...Spring is almost here..half the snow is GONE. The brook out back is GUSHING so that means snow is MELTING!

This morning it was 50! Tonight supposed to be very cold in the 30s with brisk winds. Just finishing up some orders here then it's an easy afternoon I hope!

 

[foxden]

arouetta
Please call the NP's office. She behaved unethically to put you on a new med, then cut you off from treatment the next day. She (AND the practice) is still obligated to help you until you actually see the new dr

Ask to talk with someone else. They will have your records. Describe the side effects you are having and ask how to discontinue the med safely. I agree, you cannot go another 2 1/2 weeks without sleeping.

Even though they are not likely to prescribe any other med for you, this one will be out of your body by the time you see the new dr. Then, your new dr will not have to wait to try the next medication.

Please take care of yourself. You will need to insist to get the care you deserve from the practice where the NP works. Don't let them bully you into thinking you need to wait 2 more weeks.

Changing meds is hard. I always hope that THIS change will help, but it seems like it takes so long to find out if it works.

My psychiatrist is an excellent pharmacologist, and we have a base cocktail of meds that keeps me from totally crashing. Now, we're working on the teariness and isolation.

I've been in psych treatment for more than 30 years. There's obviously a biological illness underlying my depression, or the medications wouldn't help as much as they do. There are lots of people who go through this, but not many people feel free to share their experiences.

Please keep updating us, or feel free to pm me if you prefer.

 

[arouetta]

I might complain to the state medical board.  I'm that angry.  But I'm going to wait for that and for the HealthGrades.com review until I get a new doctor to disentangle what was done wrong.  Might as well have all the information handy.

The annoying part is to talk to my last PCP I have to travel to another state.  I moved nearly a year ago.

All the local PCPs have long waiting lists for new patients, even if it's a sick appointment issue.  Glad I don't have something like strep throat.  Despite the pain and the difficulty I'm having at work lifting light items, I can muscle through a waiting period.  I'd hate to see if I had something like strep throat that doesn't rise to the level of urgent care and I had to wait a month or two.

The reason I hate doctors (other than decent psychiatrists) is that it's always the same thing.  Doesn't matter which doctor, which practice, which metro area.  You go in and you wait for about an hour in the waiting room.  The nurse calls you back and asks a bunch of questions.  Then she leaves you in a tiny room for another half an hour.  Then the doctor finally comes in and asks the same darn questions, showing he neither talked to the nurse nor did he read what she wrote.  And then after all is said and done, he tells you what OTC remedy will work in your situation.  So you waste 2 hours of your life and the money that went towards the copay just to be told to do something you could have done without seeing the doctor in the first place.

My daughter was throwing up every day and I thought she had an eating disorder.  Nope, the doctor says it's ordinary heartburn and to take Prilosec OTC for 6 months.  Um, could have done that on our own, thanks for the tip.  I was coughing up blood and the doctor said I was in a feedback loop of the cough causing damage to the bronchial tubes but the damage was causing the cough.  He told me to take an OTC cough syrup and got all attitudy when I said I had been doing that and ask for prescription cough syrup and was grudging about writing the prescription.  It took over two months of seeing a doctor weekly about pain pinging 9 to 10 on the pain scale before the final doctor gave me effective pain relief that he said up front was not going to work.  It worked.  How about the time that I saw a NP because the practice decided the doctors would stick to chronic cases only and she told me I had no eardrum, only for an ENT to find the intact ear drum 3 hours later?  The time I saw a cardiologist about a weird EKG reading and for him to say that the three irregularities were nothing to worry about, even though previous EKGs were completely normal?  Oh, but he'd be glad to see me every three months even though my heart was perfectly fine.

And of course when you go in the PCP type of doctors are pushing hard about getting a physical and a pap smear and a mammogram and other stuff that I'm not going to waste time and money on without a really solid "I'm sick" reason.  I mean, when the OB says that she must do a pap smear but it's a guarantee that it will come back as inconclusive because she's not going to dig deep into the interior of the cervix like she should since she doesn't want to risk a miscarriage, it really makes you realize the damage they are doing to your insides.  And yeah, too many women have told me that if you have no significant bruising after a mammogram it wasn't done right, no I'm not doing that to the girls.  And there's a lot of proof that annual physicals are actually harmful as they don't really catch any problems and "abnormalities" that are really nothing wrong cause a lot of financial expenditures in follow up tests and a great deal of emotional trouble while you have to worry that you are dying when waiting for the testing center to actually have an appointment and then additional waiting for reading of the tests which often takes up a lot of time.  Let's add in how much radiation you are being exposed to during all this routine stuff and the tie between lifetime radiation exposure and cancer.

http://time.com/4074086/skip-your-annual-physical-2/

 

[arouetta]

 
From years of watching my mom struggle with side effects from those types of meds-I would follow Margrets advice. Definitely a big NONO to discontinue meds without tapering.

The thing is there was no taper upwards for this medicine.  Full dose from day one.

 

[segelkatt]

I don't know where all of you live or what kind of insurance you have but I can't say that I have ever had any of these problems you have with your physicians. Only once did I change doctors because there was a personality conflict and I saw that after the second visit. I told my new doctor that if she did not listen to me I would be out of there immediately and so far (over a year now) she does. She also gives me a print-out of everything that was said during the visit,  prognosis, what to do and what to watch for, what medications to take including any that are now changed or dropped  and what they are for.

Perhaps this is because most doctors are affiliated with large hospitals here that have their clinics scattered all over and the doctors work out of those clinics. If a doctor is not available due to illness, vacations etc there is always another doctor available who has access to the same records as they are all computerized and instead of scribbling in a paper record the doctor inputs info in the computer record herself.

Specialists who are affiliated to the same hospital are also available but one is not tied to those.

The only place I ever saw a Nurse Practitioner was at Urgicare where I went with chest pains which turned out to be an ulcer and for which I now take Prilosec whenever the pains come back which is only once in abig while but at least now I know what that feels like and I don't panic thinking I have a heart attack. 

 

[DreamerRose]

It's the same here. Absolutely no long waits or any of the other things you wrote about. I have several times seen a physician's assistant, who are like doctors but no surgery.

 

[margd]

@arouetta   I've been reading about the horror story you experienced at the hands of that NP.    If your insurance covers it, and the effects become even worse, it might be worth just going to the ER.   They have psychiatrists on staff and can easily call one in to answer your questions about the problem medication and about the protocol you are on currently.    I recommend this with some caution because those doctors also have the ability to make you spend 3 days on a psych ward and you don't need that.  

 

[foxden]

segelkatt DreamerRose

There is a shortage of primary care physicians here in northern Delaware (south of Philadelphia).

My PCP is great, but he cannot find another dr to add to his practice so he has added nurse practioners (NP) and physician assistants (PA) to his practice.

He's very hands-on, and has a private practice. The internists and general practice physicians coming out of medical school apparently choose to be "hospitalists" or they join one of the larger groups that are associated directly with the hospitals.

He frequently has patients who show up at his office with empty prescription bottles whose PCP has left the area, retired, or decided not to accept any insurance anymore.

The NPs and PAs at his office allow existing patients routine and emergency access to medical care, usually the same day. He insists each patient to have an appointment directly with him at regular intervals.

When I make an appointment for the doctor specifically, there is often a few weeks delay. He schedules part of each day and week as appointments for new patients and to evaluate, accept, and provide care for the people who "show up at the door". When he is unable to take direct care of these new patients, the second appointment at his office is almost always with him.

Now that Urgent Care facilities are more common, things like strep throat or cough can be seen by an NP without directly seeing a physician, but chronic illnesses should be seen by a PCP regularly.

 

[arouetta]

I just.....ugh. I can tell you this, I'm listening to my gut instinct from now on. I will never again allow a NP to provide medical care to me.

On the positive side I guess work likes how I answer phone calls. In the last two months I haven't been answering phones maybe 3 times. Part time but I do work 3 to 5 times a week. I also seem to be getting longer and longer shifts.

I need to clean up my resume. No I need to redo it from scratch and I need two versions, one chronological and one functional/hybrid. I'm not making any moves now, but I'm going to look for a new job back where I used to live. My husband wants me to help him by searching for jobs for him too. He works 60 hours a week, I work 20-35, so yeah he needs the help.

I don't know what to do about the cats. The fights have calmed down tremendously, but Montressor's mood hasn't. The other night he wouldn't walk near Midway to get at food. I ended up gently pushing him past so he could see there was no need to be afraid. Its kinda my fault, I didn't notice how those two were dividing territory until the territory disputes started. Shadow....she's not Switzerland in any way, she's just above the squabbling. Until Midway gets too close and she gets, dang can't say the word. Acts like an intact female dog, yeah we'll go with that. She's 18, not in good shape, from what I hear that usually triggers hierarchy changes, but she has Midway scared. In comparison Midway is 12, just started last year thinking naps were better than climbing the walls, 15 pounds, solid muscle, excellent shape.

But Montressor, yeah. He's always put himself at the bottom of the totem pole and I have no idea how to increase his confidence. The two boys divided territory by upstairs and downstairs and Montressor, despite being people needy, is isolating himself.

 

[arouetta]

Wow I can't even see the silver lining.

About a month and a half ago, not even two months since it wasn't near the new year, I realized that my clothes weren't stretching due to being mostly cotton, I was actually shrinking.  Woo hoo!  So over the last month and a half I've been celebrating by revamping my wardrobe.

Last summer I was a 24 and that was feeling a tad snug.  So when I realized I was a 22, I was happy!

I had gotten a ton of nicer shirts as hand-me-downs and I kept a few that I liked that were my size.  I donated the other shirts and all my pants (except my two work pants) to Goodwill.  I proceeded to go on a buying spree.  I haven't calculated shirt costs yet, but between Goodwill and Target I've spent about $100 on pants and skirts.

And today was the first time in a couple of weeks that I've had a chance to wear jeans.  They felt loose.  And then I had some new ones that I haven't hemmed yet, so I tried a pair on to get a sense of hem length.  They also felt loose so I tried to take them off without unfastening them.  They came right off.

So on down to Goodwill to see if I can fit into a size 20.  Doubtful, right?  Goodwill is nice because they have a variety of manufacturers so you can weed out the smaller cut and the larger cut by comparing waist sizes.  I found a few average cut jeans and started trying them on.  Just to see, I doubted I was a size 20.

I can squeeze my more-to-love derriere into size 18 pants and they look good.  They are snug but they look good.

And.....that's a lot of money down the drain. 

I've got on an older shirt that I kept and it's hanging on me.  I will admit I didn't try on the older stuff I was keeping, I went by printed size.  But the stuff I've been buying over a month and a half turned out to be smaller.  Apparently XXL is not 2X, it's either X or 1X, depending on cut.

 

[tallyollyopia]

 
I might complain to the state medical board.  I'm that angry.  But I'm going to wait for that and for the HealthGrades.com review until I get a new doctor to disentangle what was done wrong.  Might as well have all the information handy.

The annoying part is to talk to my last PCP I have to travel to another state.  I moved nearly a year ago.

All the local PCPs have long waiting lists for new patients, even if it's a sick appointment issue.  Glad I don't have something like strep throat.  Despite the pain and the difficulty I'm having at work lifting light items, I can muscle through a waiting period.  I'd hate to see if I had something like strep throat that doesn't rise to the level of urgent care and I had to wait a month or two.

The reason I hate doctors (other than decent psychiatrists) is that it's always the same thing.  Doesn't matter which doctor, which practice, which metro area.  You go in and you wait for about an hour in the waiting room.  The nurse calls you back and asks a bunch of questions.  Then she leaves you in a tiny room for another half an hour.  Then the doctor finally comes in and asks the same darn questions, showing he neither talked to the nurse nor did he read what she wrote.  And then after all is said and done, he tells you what OTC remedy will work in your situation.  So you waste 2 hours of your life and the money that went towards the copay just to be told to do something you could have done without seeing the doctor in the first place.

My daughter was throwing up every day and I thought she had an eating disorder.  Nope, the doctor says it's ordinary heartburn and to take Prilosec OTC for 6 months.  Um, could have done that on our own, thanks for the tip.  I was coughing up blood and the doctor said I was in a feedback loop of the cough causing damage to the bronchial tubes but the damage was causing the cough.  He told me to take an OTC cough syrup and got all attitudy when I said I had been doing that and ask for prescription cough syrup and was grudging about writing the prescription.  It took over two months of seeing a doctor weekly about pain pinging 9 to 10 on the pain scale before the final doctor gave me effective pain relief that he said up front was not going to work.  It worked.  How about the time that I saw a NP because the practice decided the doctors would stick to chronic cases only and she told me I had no eardrum, only for an ENT to find the intact ear drum 3 hours later?  The time I saw a cardiologist about a weird EKG reading and for him to say that the three irregularities were nothing to worry about, even though previous EKGs were completely normal?  Oh, but he'd be glad to see me every three months even though my heart was perfectly fine.

And of course when you go in the PCP type of doctors are pushing hard about getting a physical and a pap smear and a mammogram and other stuff that I'm not going to waste time and money on without a really solid "I'm sick" reason.  I mean, when the OB says that she must do a pap smear but it's a guarantee that it will come back as inconclusive because she's not going to dig deep into the interior of the cervix like she should since she doesn't want to risk a miscarriage, it really makes you realize the damage they are doing to your insides.  And yeah, too many women have told me that if you have no significant bruising after a mammogram it wasn't done right, no I'm not doing that to the girls.  And there's a lot of proof that annual physicals are actually harmful as they don't really catch any problems and "abnormalities" that are really nothing wrong cause a lot of financial expenditures in follow up tests and a great deal of emotional trouble while you have to worry that you are dying when waiting for the testing center to actually have an appointment and then additional waiting for reading of the tests which often takes up a lot of time.  Let's add in how much radiation you are being exposed to during all this routine stuff and the tie between lifetime radiation exposure and cancer.

http://time.com/4074086/skip-your-annual-physical-2/

Back when I was in high school, I got really sick. Every doctor I talked to (including my family's PCP) said the same thing--I was pregnant or had an STD. (I must have been tested for pregnancy almost two-hundred times altogether during the period, and every STD in the book several times--although not quite as much.) Most of them didn't even look at me--just stopped listening when they heard my age. My explanation that I couldn't be pregnant because pregnancy requires an activity that I simply didn't (and don't) participate in were brushed off. In the meantime, I was getting worse, insanely worse. (I was falling-down-dizzy all the time, generally weak, had sudden extreme sensitivity medicines like Benadryl, and frequently had trouble breathing. I also occasionally had trouble seeing as some days everything would be fine, some days everything would blurry, and some days I'd randomly switch between the two states--not that anyone medical believed  me about it.)  So--I get where you're coming from here. (One of the doctors tried to diagnose me with Munchausen Syndrome--so after that I stopped going for anything that wasn't simple and easy-to-fix with prescriptions--like when I had strept, or a highly visible (and painful) rash in my underarm.) I still  don't have a PCP, because I don't see the point.

 
I don't know where all of you live or what kind of insurance you have but I can't say that I have ever had any of these problems you have with your physicians. Only once did I change doctors because there was a personality conflict and I saw that after the second visit. I told my new doctor that if she did not listen to me I would be out of there immediately and so far (over a year now) she does. She also gives me a print-out of everything that was said during the visit,  prognosis, what to do and what to watch for, what medications to take including any that are now changed or dropped  and what they are for.

Perhaps this is because most doctors are affiliated with large hospitals here that have their clinics scattered all over and the doctors work out of those clinics. If a doctor is not available due to illness, vacations etc there is always another doctor available who has access to the same records as they are all computerized and instead of scribbling in a paper record the doctor inputs info in the computer record herself.

Specialists who are affiliated to the same hospital are also available but one is not tied to those.

The only place I ever saw a Nurse Practitioner was at Urgicare where I went with chest pains which turned out to be an ulcer and for which I now take Prilosec whenever the pains come back which is only once in abig while but at least now I know what that feels like and I don't panic thinking I have a heart attack. 

Glad you weren't having a heart attack. It's great being able to talk to you.

 
@arouetta   I've been reading about the horror story you experienced at the hands of that NP.    If your insurance covers it, and the effects become even worse, it might be worth just going to the ER.   They have psychiatrists on staff and can easily call one in to answer your questions about the problem medication and about the protocol you are on currently.    I recommend this with some caution because those doctors also have the ability to make you spend 3 days on a psych ward and you don't need that.  

If you do go to an ER, be very careful about which hospital's ER you go to. Some are good and some (like our local hospital) are very bad. So be careful.

 

[Mamanyt1953]

Changing the subject a bit...well...a LOT...

It is now weird o'clock in the morning, and this is on my mind.  When you are like me and have limited mobility and no car, you end up watching a LOT of TV.  I do have cable, and I watch a fair number of true crime shows, such as "48 Hours," "Homicide Hunter," and "Nightwatch" (well...that is about all first responders, but still).  In every one of these shows that show actual footage rather than dramatizations, in at least one night scene, there will be a shot of a cat lounging on a porch or scooting across a street or ambling down a sidewalk.  What's up with that?  I'm assuming it is a metaphor, but for what?  And why a cat?