Disrespectful Medical Treatment and Tips For Working With Your Physician
by Jenny Fransen, RN
http://www.immunesupport.com/library/showarticle.cfm/ID/7878
(excerpts)
Unfortunately, during this pre-diagnosis period, many people have met with countless healthcare professionals who were insensitive, disrespectful, uneducated, and who blamed the patient for their pain. They were told they were crazy, “It’s all in your head,” and other damaging comments.
Guilt and shame are also painful emotions felt by many people with Fibromyalgia as a response to disrespect and blame by medical professionals. They are the feelings “I must be bad because I have this,” or “I must somehow be at fault for having this.”
If you have had this experience, it is important for you to know you are not to blame for your symptoms. You are not crazy. You have a real medical condition, and you deserve respectful medical treatment. The damaging comments that were directed toward you were completely inappropriate. You have a right to be angry about this mistreatment.
How can you express your anger toward those who have hurt you? You could write them a letter and express how their treatment hurt you, how you now have received a correct diagnosis, and what they could have done which would have been more helpful.
Lastly, you must not remain under disrespectful medical care. It will only continue to harm your sense of well-being, fuel depression and anger, and continue the cycle of distrust toward medical professionals. You deserve respectful care, and you must have it.
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I made sure that my doctors were made aware that their incompetence had permanently affected my health. Proper treatment -- addressing the pain and/or resulting insomnia -- almost certainly would have gotten me back to work within a few months. That treatment was repeatedly refused by doctors who believed "it's all in your head" and prescribed useless anti-depressants instead, and it is now the specialist's opinion that I will never work full-time again because I didn't get proper treatment early on.
And I have made sure that other patients are aware that believing that if you persist, eventually your doctor will listen to you and give you the right prescription, can be detrimental to your health. The doctor who refuses to believe you now will stubbornly refuse to believe you no matter how many times you repeat yourself. You will never "prove" to him that he is wrong.
Much better to do what I did not -- give him ONE second chance and then look for a new doctor who takes a different approach. By the time I finally realized that that doctor was never going to give me the pills I asked for, that he didn't know the first thing about CFS (not even how to diagnose it), it was too late, and I have to live with the consequences.
He was unable to admit to himself, or to me, "you would be better off with another doctor". His erroneous belief that I was just imagining things because I didn't want to work cost me all chance at State Disability benefits, and impacted my SSDI application as well. No matter how many other doctors, who know CFS/fibro is real and incurable, say that I cannot work, the judge keeps going back to the first doctor's false statement to support denying my benefits.
Don't let that happen to you!
Co-Cure.org has a list of "good doctors" for CFS/fibro. RateMD.com lets you warn others off bad doctors (or praise a good one).
I may not be able to get myself back to good health, but I can make sure that the same doctors don't do the same thing to other patients. Maybe the doctors will read the studies I cited showing that exercise and anti-depressants don't work for CFS; I wouldn't bet on it. But I can steer other patients away from them.
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