Medical Paranoia
Apr 16, 2007

Yeah okay, was finally able to afford the meds I'm suppose to take for a month before seeing my doctor again. It's called pulmicort and now that I have it I have a bad feeling about it. Reading the informational pamphlet the pharmacist provided and then researching further on the internet did NOT help either.

I need to call my doctor, but at the same time I don't want to. I've been hearing things about this doctor from friends and I'm not liking what I'm hearing. I'm most especially now hearing that he isn't thorough in examinations, has misdiagnosed more than once on one friend and either rarely prescribes or is likely to prescribe the wrong thing when he does.

I think I want to switch to a specialist but I'm not quite sure what to do. For now, I haven't even begun taking the prescribed medication, I haven't really needed it, by the time we could afford it my symptoms started to go away, and now I'm at the point in the year where they usually leave me until late fall. It's a bit silly to try and get treatment for something you can't track 'cause it's not the season in which you experience it.

I get allergy attacks year-round, but this is the season where they plague me the most. It seems that mid-late fall starts the asthma season, mid-late April ends it and thus begins the allergy attack season.

I'm actually beginning to feel like I might have gotten one of those doctors who knows what he's doing, but it's not something I'd approve of. I've heard of them before, from others in the medical professions even (I use to work at a school for nursing and did plenty of talking with not only the students but the teachers as well). There are doctors out there, who know their medications well enough that they can find ways to prescribe things for a condition that are not the best for their patient but are the most insuring of future business. Basically, they know of loop holes that what they do is not mal-practice because they are treating you with legal drugs for your condition, but they lay them about in such a way that you become dependent on the meds they choose, or you have to end up taking separate meds to support the meds you do need. Either way, you end up needing meds for life, all year round, and they're assured money from your visits once a month or so, all year round.

Makes me wish I'd gotten a medical degree so I could reeeally know how to spot such people. Unfortunately, they do exist and it is easy for them to exist. Smooth and charismatic to the point that those with common knowledge and a trust in doctors will never know that their doctor made it so that they have to see him/her more often rather than less, and all in a way that if you discover it too late, they were in the rules enough that the only thing you can do is switch doctors while the other gets to go on practicing.

Do I have one of those doctors? He was very nice to me, but this medication feels all wrong. I went into this thinking I might be prescribed something all year round. I went in knowing I'd need more than one doctor visit for it, but this medication feels instinctually wrong, and rather than finding evidence to make me feel better about taking it, I'm finding more and more things to make me think twice on it.

The visit was very good, he did help me feel better, I thank him for that, but I did notice, when we began talking meds, he seemed off... He began prescribing steroids assuring me how perfectly safe they were as I explained how easily my mom became addicted to the ones prescribed for her chron's and now she becomes bedridden every time they lower her dosage, let alone taking her off of them, how she got lesions. He assured me that this was completely different, a different steroid and that he'd never heard of such a reaction. I responded that I guess it will be alright, I'm just really weary of Prednisone, he immediately stopped talking and really looked at me, almost dumb-founded (he had been saying something at the same time) and repeated the medication. I nodded and he responded that the prednisone was what he was prescribing, but he'd never heard of such reactions to it, or of it being used for chron's (it was the only medication for chron's when my mom was diagnosed). Despite misgivings, I agreed to the one week of small dosages to calm down the inflammation I'd let build up in my lungs. But those moments when he was at a loss that the same evil steroid I spoke of was actually the one he was prescribing. I had to remind myself that he had been very nice, seemed to know what he was doing before that and that he was not a chron's specialist.

However, now I read on this new prescription and it makes mention of how I need to wear a medical emergency bracelet, letting people know what to do if I have some sort of violent attack (one I could die in if I don't have this bracelet to tell people what to do), to give me a cortisteroid or some-such thing if I have taken prednisone previously to taking pulmicort. It also makes mention that my body could stop making natural steroids and I may have to take these cortisteroids (I think that's the right name and don't feel like researching it) simultaneously to the pulmicort (giving me two steroid-based medications for life).

Meanwhile, I have a friend with MUCH worse asthma who doesn't have any steroidal based medications. Why do I, with such a mild, seasonal only case get prescribed such addictive medications? The risks to this medication do not sound like they are worth the slight benefits.

I'm no longer feeling comfortable with the situation and now that the symptoms are gone I've been putting off calling my doctor about it. I think I need to find a specialist willing to just talk with me or something and I really can't help but think that the doctor I have was trying to dupe me. I am a bit skeptical at times, but not usually with such strong instinctual feelings about the whole thing.

Perhaps it was the experiences with my ex that have made me so weary of the ultimate motives of others and the kindly worded and veiled deceits others are capable of...but normally when I listen to such strong feelings about something I feel very at ease and never regret it.

So, cleaned up the house, keeping it clean, cleaning it deeper, switching from laundry duty (gathering and messing with the dirty clothes around here tends to make me short of breath, wheezy and sneezy as well) to dish duty with my husband, making life adjustments, I have back up medication prescribed for the nebulizer machine pushed on me (the machine has helped in the past, I only say pushed because it was never made out to be an option to refuse and they made it seem like all part of the doctor's visit to send one home with me, I asked when I saw a sign and was told that I had no extra charges to worry about with my insurance, but the nebulizer was a hidden cost that we just received a bill for a few days ago) and I'm no longer having asthma symptoms anyhow, so I'll be fine, at least until it gets closer to fall.

I doubt I'll end up taking that medication, and I'm pretty darn sure now that I'm going to switch doctors. Once doubts are started in progress, backed up by the personal experience from friends with the same doctor *shrug* it's essential to trust your doctor I think, to trust his intelligence, reasoning, and ethics (I also believe it is essential to understand what's being done medically for you as well). Now it just comes to finding another doctor to take me, I'll have to talk to the other doctor to see if I can get a referral to a specialist or something. I'm also curious to see how he handles the fact that I've decided I want an alternative medication BUT that I really don't see how anything can be decided until my next asthma season. As for one last note, I am sure that the absence of symptoms is not due to medication, the nebulizer is the only thing I've been on the last two months and it is only for easing symptoms after they've already begun. Except for when I exercise (which is natural because I'm very out of shape now), I haven't felt short of breath for two weeks or more, not even when doing something that normally gives me asthma symptoms (just allergies instead =_=). Though honestly my sense of time is off, I do not remember any symptoms in the last two weeks, I may have forgotten about one a week ago, or it may have been even longer than two weeks since my last episode *shrug* I need to start keeping better records of this.

Anyhow, sorry about another boring medical blurb.