This has been an interesting read and thank you all for it. I think it was Jay raised the issue of doctors denying that a med could be the cause of a new symptom, when that symptom is listed as a side effect of the med in question. And no, Jay, I'm not picking on you. I just think it was you who talked about this.
Some of you might remember several years ago when I posted about my sweetie's experience with Ramipril (Altace).
Altace is a blood pressure medication, one of the ACE inhibitors, that is apparently completely safe in about 99% of the population. My sweetie was put on it about 11 years ago now. Told he had to take it every day for the rest of his life or he might die. He started experiencing some odd symptoms that he'd never had before starting the med. He told his doctor, who said it couldn't be Altace because it's perfectly safe. As the years went by, the odd symptoms increased and he told a succession of doctors about them. All of them denied it could be the Altace and since most doctors will no longer talk about more than one symptom in one visit these days, they were only looking at one of an increasing variety of symptoms when he saw them. So, nobody looked at the whole picture, and everybody missed the fact that every symptom was on the list of side effects of Altace, and ranged from the least to the more extreme. They finally figured it out when he landed in emergency 3 times in 10 days at the end of May 2006, the last time in anaphylaxia. The right doctor just happened to walk through ER at exactly the right time, heard what was going on, asked the symptoms, asked what meds he was on and 'Eureka!!' In 20 years of practicing medicine, she'd only seen this particular reaction to Altace about 5 times. My sweetie's case was rare, but exacerbated by the doctors not listening to him and sloughing him off.
Am I pissed at them. You bet I am. Should they have listened better? Most definitely. Should they have looked at the case as a whole instead of one symptom at a time? Assuredly! Would I sue them? No!!!
It wasn't just one doctor that missed this. It was five different doctors. My sweetie was persistent, but he gave up trying to get them to listen after a while. It was pure luck that the one doctor capable of figuring this out was in the right place at the right time to save his life. Just as medical students only get so much rheumatology as part of their studies, resulting in family doctors who only recognize the most basic of arthritis symptoms, they also can only be intimately knowledgeable of the most basic side effects of any med. We as patients need to learn about our meds so that we can, when necessary, go to the doctor prepared with our full list of side effects and say, "This is what I'm experiencing and all of it is on this list of side effects that only started after I began taking this medication."
Gone are the days of the family doctor who was willing to see an entire family at one visit, who was willing to drive over to a house where the mother is dealing with multiple sick children, who was all knowing and god-like. Gone are the days when a patient could blithely pass the buck to their doctor, trusting implicitly that their doctor knew best. We live in a world of personal responsibility. We need our doctors and other healthcare practitioners. Many are extremely good at what they do and many are willing to listen. Sadly, many are the exact opposite of that, and that's when we, as patients, have a responsibility to be pro-active. And no, I'm not saying we know better than they when it comes to medicine and diagnosis. And dear god, I am definitely not saying that we should be searching the internet in a bid for self-diagnosis. But doing our research is now an integral part of being a patient, so we can talk to our doctors from the point of view of knowledge.
IMHO, anyway.
Warm hugs,
