Time to Find a New Doctor!

My heart ultrasound came back perfectly normal, and better yet, everything is just the way it should be. Even my blood pressure is back to normal. Not a thing wrong, thank God!

It's just how the rest of the appointment went that is pissing me off.

I've been feeling kind of tired lately, and my toes feel like I've been walking on snow. My skin feels cold, and when I take my temperature, it's well below normal. So I told the medical assistant, and he starts asking me if I'm coming down with a cold. I don't have any of the usual symptoms that I get, so he starts asking me some other stuff. Yep, have the dry skin thing, tingling in my hands, sore throat.

He tells me, hmm....maybe thyroid problems?

My blood work came back normal, but....he then whips out a card with symptoms of thyroid deficiency on it. I've got at least 3/4 of them.

Let's ask the doctor.

Ok.

Doctor comes in, looks at the blood work, and says, nope.

Then comes the part that pissed me off.

He starts insisting it is depression. I don't think so, and tell him why (never heard of being cold all the time as a sign of it, and it's not like I feel sad/weepy about anything. Just tired.) He's ready to whip out the old prescription pad right there. It has to be, he says.

Ok, I say....explain why I feel cold all the time in Florida.

He says because it's winter. Very funny.....why do I feel that way even when I am wearing a pair of sweatpants under two blankets? And the furnace is on?

He looks confused.

Early menopause?

I thought you had hot flashes, not constant cold.

Finally he agrees to have me take some more tests. In January. He then asks me if I still had that Singulair stuff he prescribed. I said yes, but I stopped taking it when my arm went numb and woke me up from a deep sleep. The pharmacist told me to stop taking it immediately, and the medical assistant had said that numb feeling meant I was allergic to it.

The doctor then said, well, we'll try it again later.

WTF????? I remember very well how nervous the pharmacist sounded when he called me back after looking up that side effect. The drug site for Singulair even has that bolded on the side effects page.

And this guy wants me to take it again?????

Let me get this straight. I spend December nervous about my damn heart and blood pressure(I pretended it was ok, really....but c'mon. I was more scared about it than I wanted to admit), I get smart answers when I ask what's going on, he's ready to pass out Prozac like candy, I have to fight with him to get a test to rule out thyroid problems, and...he wants me to continue a medication that gave me a bad reaction?

Uh, no. No way.

So, I drove off to the beach, cranked up the seat warmer and the car heater, and watched the waves to calm down. I'm going to see another doctor next week. I hope he'll take me seriously, at least.

It's not the possibility of depression that bothered me. My mother had it, I'm sure of that. I'm sure I had it after my parents' deaths, and it could come back again. If that's what it is, ok, I'll take Prozac or whatever. But somehow I doubt it. (I want to go do things and see places around here. I still get plenty accomplished. Whenever I felt depressed, I just wanted to hide or run away, and nothing got done.)

I could have handled it if he told me that maybe I just had a really weird cold. If he would have bothered to look at my throat, to see if it's just a regular old sore throat, that would have been great.

It's just the total dismissal of what I was telling the guy that torked me off. The suggestion about trying Singulair again didn't help, either.

I'm almost afraid to go to the gynecologist he recommended for my annual checkup later this week. What if he's as bad?

Maybe I should go ask my dogs' vet for a reference. Why is it so easy to find a good vet, and not so easy to find a good human doctor?

Well, I got to go and crank up the furnace.

I sure hope it's just a cold. A very weird one. Will keep you posted.