#she’s the reason I even jumped the waitlist with the specialist so I’m v grateful for her

[justtogetthrough]

The failures of doctors never stop amazing me

I hate self diagnosis with a burning passion and yet it’s not until I find stuff online and go to a doctor and am like is this a thing? I read this, does this apply in my case? that doctors are like oh yeah totally that’s a thing. When… doctors should have been the source of that information in the first place if any of them were doing their jobs.

In other news, I have probably destroyed my stomach lining with NSAIDS (taking them was no secret and I included them on every list I’ve ever given a doctor about medications I take daily and occasionally, just like the medication that caused all these problems in the first place, but oooookay) and am now prescribed a PPI to try and calm it down. I’ve been telling doctors I’ve been having abdominal pain and nausea for SO LONG and no one ever checks the patient’s medication list. At LEAST three doctors could have been like oh, constant nausea? Common source: NSAIDS. But instead one doctor just encouraged me to take them with food, knowing I was taking them on an empty stomach every day, a second doctor told me it was probably dehydration, and a third told me I just need treatment for my eating disorder.

This doctor also said I’ve been managing my pain all wrong (“wrong”, all I do is take NSAIDS lol it sounded like most people take other things) and when I told him I’ve tried proper meds but had really bad side effects and couldn’t tolerate them, he said that once my body stabilizes and “if” my adrenal glands resume independent function (I didn’t know they might not, fml), it’s worth trying them again because my body will process meds differently now.

And then I realized I have sooooooo many medications to go back and give second and third chances to now that I don’t have sludge in my veins. I should have connected that after reading about the drug interactions between it and most things I am taking, the primary interaction is it reduces their effectiveness by decreasing the blood concentration of other drugs, but I didn’t even think about all the drugs I’ve tried in the past.

I was already medically complex but this misdiagnosis has added SO many layers and it’s so overwhelming. Getting off this medication and waiting to find out if my body will bounce back is torture. This mistreatment changes everything and all my health problems now need to be re-examined after a while to see if and how they were impacted by long term steroid use. This doctor said for SURE my weight and sleep are the way they are because of it, and he suspects I’ll be able to get off a number of meds I’m currently on as my body stabilizes.

This is absolute hell.