Why you can't rely on doctors

DX'd - Other
1

My experience with 11 years of visiting doctors is that, you can’t rely on their judgment. You are relying on people who have simply memorized all the material, and have no capacity to think.

Let me narrate my example. When I was diagnosed 11 years ago, they thought I had Bipolar, and I started on Abilify. It wiped the voices out, but the doctor concluded I also had ADD and prescribed me Ritalin which resulted in a severe psychotic episode that lasted years, and I ended up from the first-choice medication to the last-choice medication called Clozapine.

Further, at some point I was started on Clonazapem whilst I was on Clozapine. Now I had some strange symptoms: No sex drive and my arm would die while sleeping at night. I tried several doctors and they weren’t willing to take me off the Clozapine. Finally, years and years later, I reverted to a doctor who was willing to try different things. This doctor was supposedly New York’s finest, practiced in conjunction with Columbia University. To be honest he was just money hungry all the time, and I persisted because he was willing to do what other doctors wouldn’t.

So, I visited about 10 doctors for my side effects, no sex drive, and arm sleeping at night. However, they didn’t have a clue what was going on as the prolactin was coming out fine. So, eventually, I reverted to the doctor from Columbia. Meanwhile, I convinced a doctor to put me on Abilify in conjunction with Clozapine, so that the Clozapine could be tapered. However, symptoms resurfaced when Clozapine’s dose was reduced. So, I asked him to mix other medications with Abilify like Latuda. Unfortunately, he wasn’t skilled with these medications, so I reverted to the guy from Columbia. I saw him for 5 years, and kept on asking him, why does my arm sleep at night, why don’t I have sex drive, is it because of Clonazapem?

His reply was that it rarely happens with Clonazapem. Why does my arm sleep? It is because of the schizoaffective. So, anyway, I convinced him to stop the Clonnazapam, and my sex drive started going abnormally high to very low and I had no erections. I ended up with the worst urologist in history who diagnosed me with low T, and put me on testesterone therapy. I asked him why my testesterone was low, I wanted him to reason and think slightly, but his response was, we treat the condition, not worry about the cause. So, I was also on testesterone as a result. Then I came back to my country.

The best part about being here was that you don’t need prescriptions to have blood tests or to buy medications. So, I realized that testesterone was just a number and I can see what the normal range is…so, I got my testesterone tested and it was more than a 1000. I stopped taking testerone, and then I tested, and it came out fine. It was the freaking Clonzapem. So, urologists and psychiatrists had no clue why my sex drive was no-existent. Emboldened by my first move, I said, fine, I am going to try Ziprasidone along with Abilify. Something told me it will work. It was because I was asking the Columbia guy to put me on Ziprasidone all the time for 5 frigging years, and he would say, “it rarely works”. I knew he was consistently getting it wrong, and so were the other psychiatrists. So, I bought Ziprasidone and miraculously with zero side effects my symptoms were neutralized.
Then I worked out the last part. Why was my arm sleeping at night, because I went to Neurologists, and after doing all the tests, all of the Neurologists obviously had no clue. I realized by thinking, and deduction, it was the Clonzapem. And, viola, it was…it can do those things, I went to the website benzobuddies, and they noted the fact that a lot of people on benzos, especially withdrawing from benzos, can have things like these, and get mistakenly diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis.

All in all, a rough 11 years of journey-- and the eventual realization that set in was that there is seriously wrong with the quality of doctors around the world, including the United States. Perhaps, if these guys were asked to think more and memorize less, we would all be better off.

8 Likes
2

Doctors are smartest guys around.

2 Likes
3

I’ve nearly bled out twice in the past year from not knowing what I was doing with supplements and pain killers in combination with blood thinners I need to take. I would have died on one occasion if I hadn’t gotten some replacement blood.

I’ll stick with my doctor, even if he thinks I’m kind of an idiot for trying curcumin without asking him about it first.

4

Doctors vary. Some are interested in you. Some are not. It’s nice if they take an interest in you. But disheartening if, after all that, they prove to be incompetent.

3 Likes
5

I believe most drs are psychopaths. I mean that literally. But, you have to keep trying until you find one who thinks, problem solves and especially, who cares about you and your treatment and subsequent well being.

1 Like
6

Medical school is not just memorizing, you work for a long time in a hospital and gain experience, you get dead bodies etc.

Interesting about the arm falling asleep at night. I had the same thing and also have stopped benzos many times.

7

Did you know that the arm sleeps because of benzos and withdrawal?

1 Like
8

no, it could be the reason I don’t know why it sometimes fell asleep

9

How hard it is to deduce?

If it is not the medication A, medication B, so it should be medication C…this is the issue I encountered. The doctors are not good at deducing or abstract reasoning even slightly…that is my feeling anyway.

1 Like
10

Well, you are on the dot here…incompetency is the issue. Medical school, it seems to me, facilitates rote memorization and rewards those who can do that. But what is even the point about knowing about the whole body? With experience, they tend to specialize in one thing anyway and don’t know much outside of their specific fields. But, lastly, my major issue is that they stand incompetent at their own fields, too.

I went to a neurologist in New York, supposedly a very good doctor, and he tested me for Carpel Tunnel syndrome. However good the results were, he had simply no other explanation, so he concluded that I had Carpel Tunnel syndrome. I kept on reminding him I am on these medications. In my opinion the neurologist should know why my hand sleeps at night, that it is because of benzos…who else can know this? A psychiatrist? No chance!

11

That is the reason, my friend. Once you withdraw, it can continue for years after that…but it goes away eventually.

13

A major problem is that pdocs don’t have DNA tests, blood tests or brain scans that can help them be more accurate. It’s a guessing game. I’ve had several different diagnosis and tried meds that didn’t work or had bad side effects.

But after trial and error I am doing better than I ever have since I was diagnosed (Except for my insomnia problem which I hope one day resolves itself). I’ve had schizophrenia for 17 years.

1 Like
14

This is why in my view only the cream of the doctors should become pdocs.
However, I have realized why that is not the case. People who suffer from mental illness tend to be the worst off in society, and it doesn’t pay as much as doctors would like. For instance, if I am on medicaid, and seeing a psychiatrist, there is no way he can make a lot of money through me because medicaid will not pay him that much. Also, what compounds the issue is the fact that there are no blood tests, brain scans, etc…basically no other way to make money apart from playing the guessing game.

1 Like
15

I’m in Canada so the financial game is totally different with the medical system.

16

I don’t know about Canada, perhaps I would have been better off there.

I was in New York. Decent doctors charge minimum 500 dollars per session there. So, basically, schizophrenia sufferers cannot afford them. Who can afford them? The ADD kids if there parents are rich enough…

1 Like
17

Not likely. We have more demand than we have doctors. Services are rationed and psychiatric beds are only availble to those in real crisis. Pretty common to get sent home when you’re still floridly ill to make room for the next disaster.

2 Likes
18

Okay, for me everything was free. Hospital stays, pdoc appointments, meds, etc…

Technically it’s not “free”, here in Canada we all pay taxes which collectively pays for everyone’s healthcare.

1 Like
19

This is true, when my mom had breast cancer she had to go to Buffalo, New York for radiation therapy.

1 Like
20

We had that system in New York, too…we had medicaid. But, who takes medicaid?

The pdocs who can’t speak English and at this point I can convincingly say that I know more about psychiatry than them.

The only real treatment in New York for people who have medicaid is available in the hospitals. When you are hospitalized in, say, Columbia, then you have a good psychiatrist. But, I had a bad experience there too. I told the psychiatrist I have a sound filtering problem since childhood. He banged the chair twice and said see you don’t have a sound filtering problem. I think he didn’t know what that was…

1 Like
21

I don’t really know anything about medicaid.

Here it isn’t about taking any kind of insurance? You just walk into the hospital, see a doctor and get treated. There is no insurance or money involved, there is nothing to accept or deny. The only time you get sent home is like what @shutterbug said, they have no beds and you’re not considered a serious case.

1 Like