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This is why I dislike going to the doctors..

57 Comments

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After feeling like utter crap for a week, my husband drug my sorry self to our health care providers office yesterday. Naturally my primary physician was unavailable, but they had one appointment open. With a new doctor who just started there.

Basically, he’d just started anywhere. He was a newbie, probably under 30 years old and freshly graduated from Dartmouth College. He was very nice, very polite and very thorough. With the symptoms he wanted to address.

As I said yesterday I’ve been experiencing a bit of dizziness but my main complaint has been constant stomach discomfort, nausea and crippling fatigue.

Though I told him the most I’d eaten at one time in the last week was half a piece of toast, he zeroed in on the dizziness and gave me a seriously bizarre neurological examination.

He put his hands on my cheeks and told me to press my tongue against them.

He had he me extend one palm upward and flap the other hand back and forth against it as fast as I could.

I told him I’d had bouts of vertigo on and off my entire life, but that wasn’t why I was there.

Didn’t matter, he was off to the races and had me do balance tests, positional transition tests and a bunch of other nonsense that triggered my vertigo and made me feel worse.

Diagnosis?

Benign Paroxysmal Positional Vertigo.

(The simple explanation-

BPPV happens because there’s a problem deep inside your ear where your balance is controlled. Tiny calcium particles in your inner ear get loose and float around where they don’t belong. This causes symptoms. 

The particles shift around when you move your head in certain ways, such as rolling over in bed or bending over to pick something up.)

He seemed pleased, and set me up with referrals to a therapist who apparently has exercises and manipulations to restore the loose rocks in my head.

Great.

And what about my other issues?

As he was shuffling me out the door, I had to beg him to do blood tests to see if any of my vitamin levels were off or I if had anemia because this fatigue is insane. He was completely uninterested in my stomach issues and suggested I might have picked up a virus somewhere. Basically, he poo pooed my weeklong discomfort as unimportant and told me to eat bland foods for two weeks.

So I’m home. Not feeling one bit better and without any more idea of what’s going on than before.

Ugh.

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57 thoughts on “This is why I dislike going to the doctors..”

  1. First things first, it does sound like he missed the entire point! How frustrating!

    Secondly, I have that ear thing, too, and it really affects my life. Now, my displaced ear crystals have nothing to do with my low BP that also causes dizziness, so I get that this is all complex. But, man I sure can set myself straight with that epley maneuver that I do myself. I know the triggers for this starting, and I do that maneuver right away, sometimes over and over.

    Funniest part is that Midwest Mark is also an expert on it! He wrote about it for work, years ago. So, you have your ear crystal experts at your disposal here.

    Again, sounds like you have more stuff going on, truly. And I don’t mean to make light of it. But that ear crystal thing makes me so sick to my stomach and miserable.

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      1. It does sound over simplified, I’m totally there with you. But my nausea was terrible – I could hardly ride in the car without barfing – and general feeling of dread that something big was wrong with me, that all was alleviated after I got my inner ear sorted. Again, there are certainly other ways my body is messed up! But this diagnosis was extremely helpful to me. I’m a pro at that maneuver now, too.

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      3. Even if it’s not all, but the reason for some of your symptoms, that would be a relief, because it’s entirely treatable, by yourself and on your sofa. Did the doctor do a test where he got you good and dizzy then watched which way your eye balls bounce? That tells you which ear is wonky and thus in which direction to do the maneuver. For me it’s always my left ear, which is the way I sleep at night, so I actually know I am causing it. But I also know if I do the moves for that ear, I get myself better right away.

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  2. Yep, sounds about par for the course. Once a doc decides what is wrong with you, there is no dissuading them that it might be something else. And it is only after multiple visits that they may begin to listen to you— like you know yourself better than they do. Good luck.

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  3. Sounds like a second opinion is in order. Hopefully your regular primary doc will have a cancellation soon. It’s so hard to get into any doctor these days, and for some specialties it’s practically impossible. Here’s hoping you get to the bottom of this soon. (By the way, “eat bland food” is dumb advice for someone who hasn’t been able to eat any food – bland or otherwise – at all.)

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  4. I haven’t seen a doctor in 40 years and even then it was only to have an ear flushed out (which I learned I could have done easily at home) I firmly believe we are our own best doctor. I’m 85 (Yes I really am) and take nothing except an occasional Advil for a headache. I could avoid those too if I could just learn to stop stressing about others’problems. Keep busy, eat good and get plenty of sleep! Best medicine in the world!!

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  6. If he’s right about BPPV, the fix is quick and easy. The sooner done, the better. Nausea and extreme fatigue are symptoms of BPPV. If you haven’t been eating or drinking, I hope he checked electrolytes. You might need something like Pedialyte or other electrolyte drinks to sip on, especially if you’ve been vomiting.

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  11. Oh gawd, a resident of, I’m assuming family medicine? I hate the fact that they don’t listen to their patients! Sorry that your docs visit didn’t go as planned. But, I’m with Architect, I think a second opinion is what you need. Even if you don’t like going to the doctor. You should let your doctors office know that you were not examined properly and he refused your blood work request because, that’s not right one bit.

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    1. I did talk him into blood tests. Just have to wait on the results now.
      This is a military health care center. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of wiggle room when it comes to choosing doctors…

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  12. I will not defend his actions because I was not present, BUT…my a PCP of 25 years (whom I explicitly trusted) once explained that all parts of the body are connected. A pain in your foot may have a root cause centered on a nerve in your neck. Yes, this is an overplay for dramatic effect, but the stomach issues may be, in part, tied to your vertigo. He may not have been treating the symptom as much as he was treating the cause. Fix the cause, goodbye symptoms.

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  14. Sometimes medical problems are not easily seen. I am a year or two older than you and discovered when I was 60 that I had a type of lymphoma cancer, very rare, discovered at 1A while swimming. It looked like eczema but was not. They have successfully treated it and is now being monitored. I was inclined to let it go but one of the swimming exercise members told me I would get that checked out. I had always been ridiculously healthy, so…but it paid off. Wishing you the best.

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  15. I’m sorry you’re still struggling. Your situation is not unfamiliar to me, I too avoid going to doctors unless absolutely necessary. I’ve had better luck (and longer appointments) with holistic practitioners, and combine those with traditional medicine.

    Re blood tests, I always have to ask specifically what I want tested, they seem to just tick off the standard ones which often isn’t enough. Trust your gut and insist. Good luck!

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  16. I avoid doctors as much as possible. I’ve had so many bad experiences with them (and extremely few good ones). Several people close to me have been victims of medical malpractice, which doesn’t do anything to increase my confidence in the profession generally.

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  18. I also suffer from BPPV — about 15 years now. I did the vestibular pt and barfed my brains out. I do the Epley maneuvers on my own and seldom have an unmanageable day now. Further, after years of this, some of my kids got diagnosed with it, and it turns out vestibular migraines are also a thing. I talked to my doctors about this. Sooo, for me, a reduction in painful, life-stopping migraines may have become whirling vertigo life-stopping vestibular migraines instead.

    See the specialist, be curious and insistent. Take care.

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  20. Well shit on a stick! That was a waste of your time, and energy.

    Are you feeling any better, like any improvement? If not, you need to see someone else.

    I’ve had bouts of vertigo and finally did the crystals thing with a PT and it did improve quite a bit. Now it happens occasionally, but not as bothersome as it had been.

    I hope you’re feeling better!

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  21. F thst asshole!! He should be working at the “murder hospital” up the street from me… the one that decided I had the flu when I had severe Diverticulitis and a white cell count of 200,000 (normal is 4,500-11,000)

    At least he didn’t blame PMS?? (Joking only a teeny bit)

    If there are Urgent Care options in your arwa, give that a try!!

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    1. I’m a bit past PMS, though when I mentioned menopause wreaking my body he didn’t seem interested.
      I’m starting to feel a bit better everyday, so maybe it was just a weird bug.

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      1. You know you, but keep the UC option in mind. I’d hare to find it was an early sign of something bad.

        I’m really bummed about that doc because buzzfeed recently posted a collection of people raving about new young docs being caribg and empowering. It gave ne hope for a second! But I suppose there will always be bad docs out there. It sounds like the one you saw is in the wrong specialty. Have yiu considered filing a formal complaint, or at least notifying his employer, to reduce the amount of future patients getting equally horrible treatment? I totally get it being too much effort… I tend toward blowing off bad service and focusing my energy on acknowledging the good. I plan to write thank you’s to a couple of my nurses, abd the hosoital cafeteria, cc-ing their dept overlords

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  22. This sounds so typical of medicine today, especially if you are a woman and they discount you completely and tell you it is all in your head. Had a friend years ago whose husband was a doctor at a teaching hospital. He always told his students, “LISTEN TO YOUR PATIENTS. They know their own bodies.”

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  23. I’ve been a vet for almost 40 years and I prefer to see new grads. They are enthusiastic, knowledgeable and thorough for the most part, not jaded and inclined to make assumptions…like some of us oldies! Hopefully he’s right about the virus

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