I Feel Like My Doctors Ignore Me :/

[Raguel]

As the title says.

I mean that in general but right now I want to talk about a specific issue and I'm hoping one of the doctors here can help me understand what's going on.

I have breathing problems. I have chest pain, more than likely coming from my sternum (it's not heart related; I've checked with a specialist). I've been overweight all my adult life and most of my childhood so I understand, from a doctor's POV that's probably why.

Here's the thing though: I started having this problem when I was around 15 years old. After exercising (and sweating a lot in one of those old foil like sweat outfits) I went to sleep in front of a fan. When I woke up I had shortness of breath, wheezing, etc. I was hospitalized where they diagnosed me with asthma and bronchitis.

I used an inhaler for years when I couldn't take deep breaths. I generally don't use it when I can take deep breaths, but usually even when I can it feels really hard.

I have no memory of having this problem before this incident and I don't remember ever not having this problem, even during the times I lost a significant amount of weight

I have yet to meet a doctor who seemed to take my childhood story seriously. Is there no logical connection between the two?

[Nebu]

Do you see a GP regularly?
Does your GP feel that your issue merits a referral to a pulmonologist?
Have you seen an allergist?

There are hundreds of questions that need to be asked/answered but will likely only be done by a GP that has a significant track record with your history.  If your current GP isn't helping, the first step is to find a new one.

[Kail]

Here's the thing though: I started having this problem when I was around 15 years old. After exercising (and sweating a lot in one of those old foil like sweat outfits) I went to sleep in front of a fan. When I woke up I had shortness of breath, wheezing, etc. I was hospitalized where they diagnosed me with asthma and bronchitis.
[snip...]
I have yet to meet a doctor who seemed to take my childhood story seriously. Is there no logical connection between the two?

There are a lot of stories about the dangers of sleeping in front of fans, especially in Korea, but as far as I know the evidence supporting it is really dodgy and it's not considered an issue in most of the rest of the world.

I'm not a doctor or anything, but that might be partially why they're not taking it seriously.  Whether that's your intention or not, you're drawing parallels with an urban legend, and someone who wants to treat you would probably want to focus more on what your problem is today rather than risk getting drawn in to a debate about your beliefs.

[Nebu]

Here's the thing though: I started having this problem when I was around 15 years old. After exercising (and sweating a lot in one of those old foil like sweat outfits) I went to sleep in front of a fan. When I woke up I had shortness of breath, wheezing, etc. I was hospitalized where they diagnosed me with asthma and bronchitis.

My opinion is also that the events have nothing to do with each other.  Could be that the exercise may have exacerbated a preexisting issue.

Edit: a strictly non-professional opinion by the way.

[Rasix]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fan_death

Could have been worse. 

[Raguel]

Thanks guys for answering.

Nebu: Oh I finally got an appt with a pulmonologist and the first thing out of his mouth was my weight, but after some needling from me he did the same basic test everyone does ("breathe deeply while I listen") and then told me to get my primary to make a referral for a stress test. He also wrote a prescription for an inhaler, which works a bit. At least now I no longer cough when I take a very deep breath (I guess I should have asked is it normal to cough/feel an urge to cough when breathing deeply).

I was mainly asking why no one took my childhood story seriously.

Kail: I had no idea it was an urban legend. It's literally what happened. I went to sleep normal and woke up with asthma/bronchitis.

[Raguel]

Here's the thing though: I started having this problem when I was around 15 years old. After exercising (and sweating a lot in one of those old foil like sweat outfits) I went to sleep in front of a fan. When I woke up I had shortness of breath, wheezing, etc. I was hospitalized where they diagnosed me with asthma and bronchitis.

My opinion is also that the events have nothing to do with each other.  Could be that the exercise may have exacerbated a preexisting issue.

Edit: a strictly non-professional opinion by the way.

Almost every doctor seems dismissive of my story so that appears to be the consensus (but no one has ever said that outright). I guess I won't bother saying it anymore since it doesn't sound relevant.

[Paelos]

It's unlikely there is a connection this far down the line in your life. In fact, I'd tell doctors the same story and leave out the fan. It's not relevant and makes you look like a nutter.

If you're not getting listened to I'd recommend somebody who does holistic medicine. You're usually paying them per hour since they don't do insurance, but you get the time you pay for with a doctor actually listening to your concerns. They also deal with nutritional concerns and a combination of traditional and alternative testing.

It's possible your symptoms could have food triggers. It's possible your symptoms could be stress related. If you've been checked for heart conditions and those come back normal, it's possible you have problems with apnea. These are all things they would consider.

[jgsugden]

Taking medical advice her is as bad of an idea as taking legal advice here is.  That being said, licking a cat will cure most ailments.  You just need to lick long enough.

[Selby]

I have yet to meet a doctor who seemed to take my childhood story seriously. Is there no logical connection between the two?

There are a lot of stories about the dangers of sleeping in front of fans, especially in Korea, but as far as I know the evidence supporting it is really dodgy and it's not considered an issue in most of the rest of the world.

I've slept in rooms with fans since I was crawling.  Never died.  My Vietnamese coworkers were AMAZED and convinced I was lying about it.  Believing that fans can somehow cause problems is a real thing in Asia.  Doctors aren't taking you seriously because it has nothing to do with your problem.  It's almost like talking about an alien abduction or bigfoot ;-)

[veredus]

Have you gotten any x-rays? PFTs done? What kind of inhaler? A twice a day steroid? Or an as needed albuterol? It really sounds like asthma but way to little info to be anything other then a guess.

[apocrypha]

makes you look like a nutter.

I'd recommend somebody who does holistic medicine.

a combination of traditional and alternative testing.

 

[Samwise]

Make sure they check your chakras.  You're supposed to get them aligned every ten thousand miles.

[schild]

Holistic medicine is for assholes.

[rk47]

Assholistics.
AHAHHAHAHAHAHA
Thats so funny. HHAAHAHAHAH

[Paelos]

A good holistic doctor does the same tests your regular GP does, without pushing a whole bunch of weird crap on you that you aren't comfortable with. Most of you are thinking of Seinfeld witch doctors. That's not what this is.

As an example the guy I see did his residency at Emory. He runs the same bloodwork and analysis, while also doing nutritional suggestions and allergy testing. They aren't suggesting fucking chakras.

If you've got a problem and you've gone through the regular medical gauntlet already, it's not that expensive to try something else who actually will listen and evaluate your problem, rather than giving you the 10 minutes insurance demands.

[Cyrrex]

My wife's mother's side of the family have all been hyper-sensitive to any kind of moving air.  Open window in the house, a slight draft, air conditioning in the car.  Being outside on a windy day.  A fan?  Hahaha, it might as well be shooting lasers straight into your face.  What I am saying is that I know for a fact that this is a thing.  It is probably sinus related in general, but it is more specifically due to having very sensitive ears (the eardrums and whatever other innards come into play).  Two of my three kids are also pretty susceptible.  

Not that I think you can fall asleep in front of a fan and wake up with face cancer.  But I have no doubt it can temporarily fuck you up, or maybe cause a hidden issue to surface.

Honestly, though, you cannot just dismiss the fact that the doctors are pointing at your weight first.  I have no idea how overweight you are, but there is every chance that this a possible cause of your problem, or at least something exacerbating it.  Any doctor who doesn't automatically hone in on this as a potential source of your problems is either a fool, or someone who is too afraid to be honest with his patients.  It's like going into the doctor with a knife stuck in your gut and complaining that it hurts when you pee.  Or some other colorful metaphor.

[Paelos]

The weight thing is why I suggest nutritional help. Most likely you need to overhaul your diet, working in the foods you love sparingly, and retooling the regular daily aspects of your eating habits.

If you're over 200 pounds, you don't work out, and you're under 6 feet tall, your doctors are probably going to look at your weight as a cause.

[01101010]

Probably Lupus. 

As an aside, I cannot sleep with a fan blowing on me. It is just very uncomfortable - if I have at least a sheet on over me, I can manage. It cools me down too much and that leads to shivering, achy muscles, and hypersensitive skin reactions similar to having sunburn. It is odd... but easy fixable.

[Raguel]

Honestly, though, you cannot just dismiss the fact that the doctors are pointing at your weight first.  I have no idea how overweight you are, but there is every chance that this a possible cause of your problem, or at least something exacerbating it.  Any doctor who doesn't automatically hone in on this as a potential source of your problems is either a fool, or someone who is too afraid to be honest with his patients.  It's like going into the doctor with a knife stuck in your gut and complaining that it hurts when you pee.  Or some other colorful metaphor.

I'm not dismissing the weight issue at all. Like a lot of people I've tried to lose weight only to gain it back again so I know the affect it has. I'm just saying that this started one day as a teenager and it's been persistent. If it was just a weight issue I would think it would be a gradual thing.

My inhaler is albuterol.

[Hawkbit]

My personal experience with doctors has been pretty varied. In Ohio my GP was an Internist who would sit and listen to me patiently explain every little ache and pain, including my past medical history if necessary. She was awesome and really helped me when I went through a tough time in my life mentally.

Here in Seattle, my GP is just a machine that spits out things I can find on WebMD and writes scripts. He literally won't take history into consideration unless it's part of his actual record. I usually know what's wrong with me before he does (so far). Sick visits to him are less than 5minutes long and physicals are no more than 15 minutes. He's always pushing to get labs and tests done, anything he can bill to insurance. The guy has my best interests at heart, but only so far as he gets paid.

I know that's not helpful, but I was trying to say that my experience has been that different doctors have different tactics they use to solve problems.

[taolurker]

Serious discussion of this, I also have had completely varied experiences mostly based on doctors exactly like Hawkbit's. Some doctors are just shit and look at you like you are crazy (one doctor said my intestinal issues were psychosomatic). Then 6 months later another doctor rushed me to the emergency room.

I'd also like to ask, just because in my case it was relevant, what type of insurance is involved? For me, the quality of care went from decent to shit EXACTLY BASED ON HOW GOOD MY INSURANCE WAS. The larger my out of pocket expenses or co-pays and it was almost like doctors were happily listening, and it declined as your financial ability does. I also can say having experienced it, that fighting for a 6 month waiting list through the medicare/charity care system to have inept/dis-interested doctors does not assist that.

I'd post to depression thread, but I somehow feel very meh about everything, and happily endure the torture that's proof I exist.

[Selby]

My inhaler is albuterol.

That's a rescue inhaler, if you have chronic problems there should be a daily use steroid (Advair, etc) aimed at preventing asthma rather than fixing it as it comes up.

[lamaros]

Get a good doctor. After 4 years my partner has just been told that she probably doesn't have a thyroid condition, and even if she did there is no benefit to what previous doctors had recommended. Three earlier doctors, that is.

[Paelos]

Exactly, keep looking. Be your own advocate. There's more than enough information out there.

Best thing you can do is keep a journal of your symptoms, what you were doing when they started, what seems to make them better. Track your eating habits and your symptoms together. Track your stress.

Those items will empower you with information the doctor wants to make a good diagnosis. If they dismiss your journal, they are awful doctors and you need to move on.

[01101010]

One more thing to note, you might want to poke around to see what kind of doctor you are seeing. From my experience, research-oriented doctors have a lot of resources at their disposal, but have horrible patient interactions and bedside manner. Well, maybe not horrible, but subpar for sure. Clinically-oriented doctors are much better about listening and diagnosing your symptoms. The research docs I work with are fantastic for me as a data manager since they understand how to get the data out of a patient, but they are very sterile in their interactions with patients and try to get to the lowest common denominator in terms of diagnosis. They have a tendency to overlook other factors because they focus on certain datapoints to make diagnoses. Clinical docs aren't so much tied to defined datapoints and consider other factors.

Also one thing to note, once docs bill for stuff, they tack onto your medical record the ICD9 (or ICD10) code - this is problematic in those unique cases as ICD9s are mostly one-size-fits-all and frequently used by other docs as the real diagnosis. That is like herpes and will follow you around until an act of god removes it from your MR. So if you are misdiagnosed with something, other docs are going to see your MR and see that ICD9 code and already be looking at the symptoms that result in that conclusion. Finding a doc that has a critical eye and will be open enough to the idea of a misdiagnosis is key if you feel your treatments are not getting to the core issue. In that case, you might want to find a D.O. and try that avenue. They'll still review your MR, but won't necessarily tow the line. (anecdotally, I have tension headaches that were coded as migraines and I still get misdiagnosed as having migraines NOS even though the symptoms do not present like a migraine - but every doc I been to since the initial diagnosis hears my symptom list and reverts back to the original migraine ICD9).

[Sky]

GPs suck. Maybe you can find one in a really swank small town or in a metro, but in the rust belt, they suck.

I'm lucky enough to be healthy as a horse, but I ditched my shitty GP last year because she was the most apathetic and unhelpful person. And nobody I talk to will recommend their own GP to me. So I don't currently have a GP because I'm not just throwing money away to say I have one and get weighed and my bp checked (and ignore any actual questions I have, or give lazy answers).

Specialists, I've got amazing specialists.

[Shannow]

Specialists, I've got amazing specialists.

Cause that's where the money is.

[Sir T]

How about a colloidal Silver enema? 

[Count Nerfedalot]

My former GP sucked, to the tune of literally laughing in my face when I complained about having occasional episodes where my heart seemed to do flip flops and felt like a bird was trapped in my chest and maybe even I'd get a little bit dizzy. Two years in a row I complained about this. Three years later, having talked his PA into fitting me with a harness for a 24-hour ekg/eeg/whatever thingy and rather than tell me everything was fine over the phone they made me come in to talk to him about the results. (NOT a good sign!) Not the PA who ordered the test, mind you, she wasn't allowed to actually diagnose anything that important I guess.  So the GP comes into the room with my chart in his hands, grousing at me for bothering them with this as he obviously looks at it for the very first time when he stops mid-sentence and his jaw nearly hits the ground and he asks me what I was doing at 1am that night. (sleeping, duh!)  Yeah, turns out I have some slightly worrisome heart arrhythmia which I inherited from my Mom (who tells me, oh yeah! she has that too AFTER I tell her about mine!) and which probably disqualifies me from being an astronaut or something.

So, no, most GP's don't listen, and there are very few of them left who are even competent because both Medicare/Medicaid and private insurance pays less than their actual expenses (a significant chunk of which is hiring the staff to handle all the paperwork for Medicare/Medicaid and private insurance!) so all the decent ones have gone specialist.  And good riddance to my slack GP who has moved on to a new bigger group where he gets paid more for spending even less time with each patient while I now exclusively (so far) see the PA (Physicians Assistant) who actually gives me much more time, attention, and good doctoring than he ever did.

So, keep looking for a good doctor. But don't ignore the fact that if you are overweight by much you may already know the answer, painful as it may be. 

Best advice for sustainable weight loss is simple. Stop drinking sodas (diet or diet-free or energy or whatever) and start walking.  And the best advice for achieving that is to do it gradually. I switched from coke to tea or bottled water, and started gradually reducing the amount of sugar in the tea or using filtered or even tap water instead of bottled over time. I started walking a short block and back once a day. Not around the block, just up one block then back, and I was winded and exhausted at that! I gradually worked up to a mile once or twice a day and now am adding exercise/aerobics in the evening, starting at 10 minutes per night and working up from there (up to 20 so far).  Fortunately, I work in the suburban fringe of a fairly small town (and live in the suburban fringe of a VERY small town) so there are no issues with smog/exhaust fumes and only rarely troublesome ozone levels.  That would NOT be a good exercise plan in Beijing or Mexico City or Paris without a full-face oxygen mask!

Aim for improvement every day/week/month, not perfection.  Don't let failing to be perfect give you an excuse to give up. Do let improving even just the littlest bit since last week give you the encouragement to keep at it and do a little better this week.

[Paelos]

Excellent advice, well put

[Montague]

As the title says.

I mean that in general but right now I want to talk about a specific issue and I'm hoping one of the doctors here can help me understand what's going on.

I have breathing problems. I have chest pain, more than likely coming from my sternum (it's not heart related; I've checked with a specialist). I've been overweight all my adult life and most of my childhood so I understand, from a doctor's POV that's probably why.

Here's the thing though: I started having this problem when I was around 15 years old. After exercising (and sweating a lot in one of those old foil like sweat outfits) I went to sleep in front of a fan. When I woke up I had shortness of breath, wheezing, etc. I was hospitalized where they diagnosed me with asthma and bronchitis.

I used an inhaler for years when I couldn't take deep breaths. I generally don't use it when I can take deep breaths, but usually even when I can it feels really hard.

I have no memory of having this problem before this incident and I don't remember ever not having this problem, even during the times I lost a significant amount of weight

I have yet to meet a doctor who seemed to take my childhood story seriously. Is there no logical connection between the two?

Definitely not a doctor, but have you ever been checked out for Hyperventilation Syndrome?

http://www.familydoctor.co.nz/index.asp?U=conditions&A=32893

My anxiety sometimes manifests in this way, and it sucks. Can never get a deep, satisfying breath and I get a constant dull ache in the center of my chest. Fortunately my GP was on the ball and recognized this before I went to the ER fearing a heart attack and told me to lay off the caffeine and get more exercise. I still get it from time to time but now that I know what it is I can usually slow down my breathing enough to calm it down.

[Sophismata]

Even after moving to the city I will drive for an hour to see my GP. I can be frank and will be treated as an adult. In return I pay a lot more than the standard bulk billing practices.

So while in Australia Medicare is supposed to cover your GP expenses I've found it doesn't if you want a good GP.

[Raguel]

As the title says.

I mean that in general but right now I want to talk about a specific issue and I'm hoping one of the doctors here can help me understand what's going on.

I have breathing problems. I have chest pain, more than likely coming from my sternum (it's not heart related; I've checked with a specialist). I've been overweight all my adult life and most of my childhood so I understand, from a doctor's POV that's probably why.

Here's the thing though: I started having this problem when I was around 15 years old. After exercising (and sweating a lot in one of those old foil like sweat outfits) I went to sleep in front of a fan. When I woke up I had shortness of breath, wheezing, etc. I was hospitalized where they diagnosed me with asthma and bronchitis.

I used an inhaler for years when I couldn't take deep breaths. I generally don't use it when I can take deep breaths, but usually even when I can it feels really hard.

I have no memory of having this problem before this incident and I don't remember ever not having this problem, even during the times I lost a significant amount of weight

I have yet to meet a doctor who seemed to take my childhood story seriously. Is there no logical connection between the two?

Definitely not a doctor, but have you ever been checked out for Hyperventilation Syndrome?

http://www.familydoctor.co.nz/index.asp?U=conditions&A=32893

My anxiety sometimes manifests in this way, and it sucks. Can never get a deep, satisfying breath and I get a constant dull ache in the center of my chest. Fortunately my GP was on the ball and recognized this before I went to the ER fearing a heart attack and told me to lay off the caffeine and get more exercise. I still get it from time to time but now that I know what it is I can usually slow down my breathing enough to calm it down.

I'm still waiting for my stress test but I'll bring this up. It's more of an every day thing than an occurrence here and there though.