Posted by Racer on September 8, 2004, at 13:03:39
In reply to Losing time and money: ignorant doctors, posted by Dave001 on September 7, 2004, at 19:10:16
Problem number one is that your doctor has an ego, which is probably conflicting with your ego. If he/she is also insecure at all, that's gonna be magnified.
Problem number two is that you're walking in with ideas of your own, which are in conflict with your doctor's ideas. This is probably a subset of the first problem, of course, but since you can't do an ego-ectomy on either of you, this is the problem to address.
Now, how to do that? First of all, that ego thing means that the doctor doesn't want you walking in and self-prescribing. Part of that is pure ego: he went to the time, trouble, and expense of going to medical school, so he gets to make these decisions and have his name on the prescription pad. That, a pretty diploma, and a mountain of med school loans are pretty much all he brought out of med school, so he's going to hold on to it pretty tight.
The other part, though, really is worth keeping in perspective: because he went to medical school, he's got the foundation and the context for all the information you may be picking up on the internet and in a vacuum. And no matter how thorough your research is, you're just not going to have that same level of understanding that he does. He really does know things you don't know -- even when he's being an idiot. Try to keep that in mind when you hit that conflict.
So, with all this background, how do you handle the problem? Well, diplomacy. It's sad and unfair, but at the time we are least capable of being ambassadors on our own behalf, we most need to be just that. The way to handle it is to ask for information, rather than making suggestions. For instance, the most effective I ever was with a doctor was when I first started Effexor six years ago. I knew it wasn't working, and I was in lousy shape. I also knew that adding a low dose of an SSRI was probably a pretty good bet. I cried to the doctor (because I couldn't stop crying anyway) that I just 'wished there was a way to get the bit of good that the Effexor was giving me, while still getting the good that the SSRIs had given me, without the bad from the SSRIs..." She took the bait, and suggested that we try adding a very low dose of Prozac to the Effexor, which might avoid the side effects I'd had on the SSRIs, while still providing the benefits. It worked well enough, for a while, and I didn't have to butt heads with her. Sometimes asking for information about something works better than asking for a new med outright. It allows the doctor to feel in control, and that prevents the conflict from turning into a contest about who can outstubborn whom.
Out of curiousity, what are you on and what are you asking for?
Best luck.
poster:Racer
thread:387810
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/20040904/msgs/388067.html