So, is preventing a patient from voicing all of her health concerns a part of preventive medical care? I've sat in the office with my grandmother while her doctor frequently interrupted her, hurrying her to state her case so that she could quickly treat and move on down the assembly line. I've heard others talk about how they've not been listened to, but rather handed the first explanation/diagnosis/line of treatment that "sounded" like it fit the symptoms. I sat in my own doctor's office last week and received the same treatment from a stand-in doc (my doctor took a spontaneous leave of absence). One would think that if you're sitting before a patient, at a follow up visit, and the only background knowledge you have is in the chart on your lap, you'd shut the hell up and let the patient tell you why the both of you are there. Its more than a little frustrating when you have real medical concerns, and you are being rushed along by your caregiver because of overbooking.
My regular doctor doesn't really think that my splitting headaches are migraines, and kind of thinks that I shouldn't really be that concerned about the fact that they always occur on the left side of my head, and my eye exam yielded some weird findings in my left eye that couldn't determine the cause of my headaches. My chart revealed the beginnings of an order for an MRI. The regular didn't even submit the request before she left! Luckily I didn't have to present a thesis to the stand-in to get her to push it through. If these really aren't migraines (which the stand-in said they most likely are) I'd kinda like to know if I'm at risk for a frickin' aneurysm or something. You never know. My grandmother wasn't expecting to learn that she had a tumor behind her left eye, let's hope there isn't anything hiding behind mine.
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