I've officially confused multiple doctors

[StarPattern]

Thanks, all.

I am in Alberta, Canada. That’s why it gets cold as H-E-Double Hockey Sticks (Go Oilers) here.

I suspected menopause as well, but my doctor is adamant that I am too young based on the fact my cycle is completely regular and hasn’t changed at all since I was about 16. It’s so regular that I have an app on my phone that tells me the day it’s supposed to start and I can time it down to the hour. It never deviates in start, duration or heaviness. According to the doctor, these are very telltale signs that my body is not starting the process of menopause. I’m not a doctor and I don’t even play one on TV, so I have to take her at her word. Hormone specialists I’ve seen concur.

My pharmacist isn’t really diagnosing me, but he is equally confused over my symptoms and trying to offer insight for me based on what he sees in my bloodwork. He is a prescribing pharmacist, which gives him more authority to prescribe and treat patients than a normal pharmacist.

I don’t know if we really have ticks in my area, although I’m sure we do have the potential of them. But I don’t remember ever being bitten by a tick.

Can I just say the ailment MTHFR has an awesome acronym? The first time I read it, my mind went straight to a swearword that started with MOTHER and rhymed with CLUCKER.

[Sdel]

@StarPattern

Can I just say the ailment MTHFR has an awesome acronym? The first time I read it, my mind went straight to a swearword that started with MOTHER and rhymed with CLUCKER.

A few years ago my area was issuing license plates that started with FKR.

[RMJacobs]

@FjordBCRF

My best recommendation for finding good doctors is to ask around and get insight from patients that have similar health concerns to you.

The catch to that is if there just aren’t quality physicians in a given geographic area, you may have to settle for what’s out there. Both my rheumatologist and gynecologist in South Carolina were the favorite of people who lived near me with similar health issues. But they both sucked, because health care in general in SC just sucks. I thought about going to Charleston for care, but people i knew there said it wasn’t any better. I couldn’t go out of state at the time because I was on an ACA plan limited to SC. There were better options just over the state line in North Carolina, but I couldn’t use them.

Rebecca

[FjordBCRF]

I should edit that to people someone knows locally! That’s what was in my head when I typed that.

[LCDR]

Speaking as a Mayo Clinic educated and trained surgeon, I found a really caring approach to men, women, and children by almost every doctor I knew. There were a very few outliers, like there are in most health care systems. So please don’t tar and feather an entire clinic and hospital based on one individual’s report.

[red_mares]

I threw out CC & Mayo because they are generally well known. I know where to find a good ortho, other stuff not so much. You might try Healthboards.com. Eons ago, I found my ankle doc & a lot of support from folks who had been down the same road.

Either way, to keep going to the same doc and hope they magically come up with the right answer seems wildly optimistic at best.

[Simkie]

@LCDR

So please don’t tar and feather an entire clinic and hospital based on one individual’s report.

I assume this is pointed at me, since I posted about my fairly universally negative experience at Mayo, from primary care to specialists to surgery.

If you’d like to know just how bad it was, I’d be happy to elucidate. Feel free to pm me.

I also worked there, which did not improve my experience or impression. But, I can certainly appreciate your experience as a physician: the needs of the doctor come first.

[WavyRider]

Apologies if someone has already mentioned this, but if I were you, I would get a test for sleep apnea.

[WavyRider]

Ah darn, someone beat me to it hard agree. Sleep apnea could be a culprit for the brain fog, esp with a history of deviated septum. If the home study is negative, push for the lab study too. It sucks but that’s the only way they found mine.

[glitterless]

lol great minds think alike

[tbchick84]

What is your diet? Pretty much every symptom you have can be caused by eating refined carbs, sugar and processed food. Maybe try a keto or paleo diet for a month and see how you feel. (If you do try it, make the change slowly over a week or so or else you’ll feel worse, not better. Ditch all cereal, fruit juices (unless you’re eating the actual fruit) bread, anything that comes in a box with a label on it. It’s not food anyway, it’s chemicals in a box.

Eggs, fish, chicken, beef, avocados, olive oil are all real food and better choices. Dr Robert Lustig has some very good informative videos on youtube explaining metabolic syndrome and how our food supply is to blame. His videos are loaded with factual data, and he gives real answers, not this “buy my book and read it there” crap. I switched to mostly keto diet 6 months ago and feel so much better. Brain fog, fatigue, migraines, aches and pains…all gone.

Western medicine is largely clueless on the fact that our food supply is the issue. They go to medical schools that are paid for by big pharma whose sole intent is to turn out doctors to sell you their pills. You can fix this yourself.

[SCM1959]

I will need to disagree about care in Charleston. The Medical University of South Carolina has an amazing Rheumatology Division. Research, clinical trials, patient care, education events. They are super specialists. AND the specialists in other divisions (cardiology, gastroenterology, pulmonology, etc.) work closely with the rheumatologists to treat the patients, particularly those with autoimmune diseases. It’s an amazing healthcare center.

[RMJacobs]

And it was two hours or more one way from my home. That is just not practical, especially when I have a hip bursitis flare and need an injection immediately to be able to walk. I spend a large percentage of my time at medical appointments these days, across multiple specialties. If it were not all local to me, it would not be possible to get the care I need.

I said in my previous post that people I knew in Charleston had bad experiences. At least one of those bad experiences was at MUSC.

I have stellar care here in Northern Colorado. I am very happy I moved back. My doctors here were very surprised at the lack of care I experienced in SC. When my kidneys were failing, nothing was done to try to preserve function. And no steps were taken to get me on dialysis when I’d been in Stage 5 for quite some time.

Rebecca

[StarPattern]

We eat pretty good - a lot of fish, eggs, fruit, vegetables and water. We tend to eat egg noodles or rice, but if I have it in the house, I’ll swap with spaghetti squash.

I tend to follow a reduced gluten diet verging on more paleo. I know my body doesn’t like a lot of processed food or sugary things, so I try to avoid them for the most part.

[tbchick84]

Wow, you’re already avoiding processed foods/sugar and still experiencing all those symptoms. That has to be very frustrating. I’m baffled why any doctor would suggest an anti-depressant for that list of symptoms. I already have no faith in western medicine since they’re all just legal drug pushers in my book.

I have had almost all of those same symptoms over the years and I can’t believe what a difference the KETO change made. It got rid of everything except the fatigue to some degree. Some days I have more energy than I can manage. I really went hard core KETO though. If it turned into glucose once it hit my mouth, I didn’t eat it.

I have one suggestion which I basically found by mistake. I started doing PEMF (Magnawave) on horses and dogs. I was noticing how effective the PEMF was in relieving pain, so I tried it on myself. I never slept so well the first night after using it. Everything relaxed, no pain anywhere. It only lasted a few days, but wow what a difference. Maybe try one of the PEMF mats they make for humans or find an equine bodyworker to do a session on you.