RE: Re: Adults with Seizures-

[Guest guest]

bug

Sending commiserations! Academic medicine definitely has its drawbacks,

which your experience illustrates. Personally, I am much more comfortable

with an attending physician making these kinds of decisions and

interpretations, or at least someone who knows who I am and something about

my history. This is one of the reasons I have moved most of my care to three

local physicians who I see on a regular basis. They can consult with the

academics, if necessary, but quite honestly we're doing pretty well without

them. I know my doctors and they know me. No more starting all over again

with strangers or being assigned whichever general medicine physician

happens to be on service for that month when I'm hospitalized. It's so scary

to have doctors making decisions about your health that a. Know next to

nothing about your disease b. Know next to nothing about your history other

than a quick glance through a chart. This kind of medicine does not inspire

confidence or trust, which is what the doctor-patient relationship is

supposed to be about, mutual respect and trust.

Anyway, I will get off my soapbox. Though I have to say, on occasion a

resident has been a real lifesaver for me, and I am profoundly grateful for

those interventions. And one of my long-time doc-professors has given me

much support and help for over 20 years. But the system of academic

medicine I find frustrating and especially so for a patient with a rare

disorder, even if it does seem worthwhile to help educate the next

generation of doctors by handing myself over and giving them hands-on

exposure to rare disorders. At this point, I'm tired, I'm ready to lay down

the burden of educating the next medical generation and just concentrate my

efforts on the few who take care of me. No doubt I'm beginning to sound like

an old lady.....

Take care,

Barbara

> Re: Adults with Seizures-

>

> Well, the Resident finally called back and said that he interprets my

> EEG results to mean that I'm more likely to have seizures than the

> average person, but that he isn't sure if I'm having them or not. He

> says my symptoms don't correlate with the results, but I honestly

> couldn't tell him the entire list of symptoms that could be related

> because there are way too many. Some of which may be from my head

> injury 7 years ago. Anyway, he said we should just " monitor " my

> condition and that my symptoms sound like myoclonus. Basically he

> blew me off...getting used to that by now. He thinks they should do

> an EEG at the time of my symptoms when I'm having a crisis in the ER

> (yeah, like the ER is going to give a rat's behind ! ). Ugh, I really

> hate Residents ! This one replaced the last one that I saw, so he

> doesn't know me at all. Half the info in my records isn't correct

> thanks to outsourcing of transcription services to India. They have a

> problem with translation and therefore, the records aren't accurate.

>

> Thanks for letting me vent...

>

> bug

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

A floor with only attendings? I wish! (Was it maybe the top floor, the one

closest to heaven??) The one thing that made the system workable for me was

my main doc/prof who always did what he could behind the scenes to help

enlighten whoever had been assigned to me and to make things move as much as

he could. He had to be very careful though not to breech professional

etiquette and step on colleagues' toes. But he was a great advocate and that

made all the difference. Without him, I'd have given up on the academic

system years ago.

B

> Re: Adults with Seizures-

>

> Thanks so much Barbara for your input. I have to admit, I've had a

> few really positive experiences with Residents. I get extremely

> frustrated when I've been admitted to the hospital though and have to

> deal with whomever is on call...as you mentioned. I agree about

> teaching the future generations and that's why I work with the medical

> school students to help them understand chronic illness. I really

> hate the whole " chain of command " thing when I'm particularly ill and

> want to deal with the Attending. Once, they put me on a floor that

> only had Attendings and I loved it ! Wish i could put in a special

> request for that floor each time.

>

> hugs,

> bug

>

>