Thanks, that's really useful info.
I am going to keep pushing the "joint pain, joint pain, joint pain" as my symptom and hopefully he will also listen properly to my history and my family history. The GP didn't but then as she said, it's not her place to diagnose me, her job is to make the appropriate referral, which she has done, so considering she has a 10 min appointment and was already running 20 mins behind schedule by midmorning, fair enough if she didn't want to listen to me talking about every detail I suppose.
When I told her about my family history she said "With a definative diagnosis?" and I thought, this is my great aunt, she died aged 80, about 20 years ago and all she knew she had was a humped back and spine problems, course she didn't have a definative diagnosis of AS. As for my uncle, he has Alzheimers and doesn't even recognise his own wife, so not much point asking him about his back problems.
I understand her point about my flexibility but I don't know why she was so keen to jump to fibro, she didn't even ask me if I have any muscle pain or other related issues, or about any of the other symptoms of fibro. I can't help thinking that her mind went "fat middle aged woman with history of depression complaining of pains= fibro, but maybe that's too uncharitable of me lol). But it doesn't matter, she's referred me and that's all the counts at this point, so I will try to focus on that and not get stressed about how the appointment didn't go at all how I'd hoped!
I will do as advised and ask to see a rheumatologist whatever the outcome of this stage of things, thanks. I won't accept being told it's fibro without being thoroughly investigated first. Point noted about the fibro points, I'll remember not to be too wimpy about those.
Last edited by Horsewoman; 01/11/12 04:06 PM.
