proposal

[Guest guest]

Hi all,

Catching up on posts, and will post some hopefully constructive

suggestions here.

I decided to 'feel out' my female internist on the fibro issue some

months after becoming her patient. She is thorough, kind, and up-to-

date, also teaches at a local medical school. When I told her my

Ultram, Advil, Amitriptyline regimen wasn't really handling my fibro

pain, but I didn't want to complain...

Her response was that Fibro is a well-documented, real medical

condition and nobody should suffer needlessly. She immediately

discussed trying different meds, and we started on the

Cymbalta/Ultram/Amitriptylin regimen (replacing my Fluoxetine

antidepressant with Cymbalta). She explained the Fluoxetine was a

SSRI, but the Cymbalta is chemically a bit different, being a SNRI,

which has a two-fold antidepressant effect, and the side effect of

helping pain from Fibro and various Neurpathic conditions. At that

point, I knew I had a winner!

May I propose we focus our energy on a database of caring, helpful,

enlightened physicians that we can all access to add our

recommendations to, and organize it by state, city, then by physician

and specialty. This would enable new persons on the list as well as

persons who relocate to a different geographical area to access the

list to find doctors who keep up on current medical practice and

studies. Perhaps allow a one-line comment from the poster. This could

be something like: posted by girlsaylor2000, doc teaches at thus and

such...or ...good patient education...whatever

By doing this, we focus our limited energy on positive suggestions,

which can not only help others, but may reduce the very heavy traffic

on this board. Not to say that we shouldn't vent, but maybe this is a

service we can provide to other Fibro sufferers. Also, I may be alone

in this thought, but I have a bit of concern publishing anything

negative here which gives a specific physician's name, for legal

reasons. Yes, we need to speak out against the horrific treatment

many physicians give Fibro patients. But we can help make change by

making our primary care physicians aware of who works well for fibro

care and which docs we are being referred to who just don't get it!

If others think this would be helpful, or can expound on my idea (or

even don't want to do it as a group), maybe someone here is good at

organizing a file that we can fill info into.

girlsaylor