Fire or Negotiate with your Doctor???

I have fired several doctors who will not listen. I will continue to do so whenever it feels like they are hopelessly imbedded in belief systems that do not support me. 

Some have been so very talented in other areas that I also value and need, that I have been willing to "put up with their short-comings" where dealing with patients with chronic pain is concerned. 

Some doctors have proven to be trainable--if I am and they are willing to go the distance with me about my care. 

I always feel especially sad when I have found an excellent doctor like James Boesiger, PhD

https://www.facebook.com/lasvegasPA?fref=ts

 --who practices as a Physician's Assistant-- and who knows more about and deals with my issues with Fibromyalgia and chronic pain from two spinal fusion surgeries better than any doctor or other person has EVER been able to do--who has left a practice of dealing with Chronic Pain and Fibromyalgia patients due to the difficult climate for practitioners in this field.  Dr. Boesiger sincerely tries to provide cutting-edge care for the chronically pain afflicted. 

Doctors can get very frustrated because the powers that be in their practices, pushed and manipulated by insurance companies, are often forced into doing things in ways they wish were otherwise.  They often meet with difficulties in being able to provide the care that they feel is of the greatest help.  They are often forced into the least amount possible because it costs less and money is the bottom line issue when it comes to health care and insurance.  

This causes doctors that really do care a great deal of difficulty.  It has been my personal experience that this causes them not to stay long in a practice of this nature.

This experience causes equally as much, if not more pain for the patient who becomes relegated to someone else's vision of what needs to happen for them, simply because it fits a monetary model better--not to mention the upheaval of constantly changing of doctors that work with them.

When I find a doctor as talented, compassionate and helpful to me as Dr. Boesiger has been and then I lose him to the controls and manipulations of the health care system, to the callousness of bottom line dollar signs, it can feel so very hopeless and flat-out grief-filled for me.   

I miss Dr. Boesiger SO MUCH!

It has been my personal experience that this "do the least possible where difficult to treat, vague illness patients are concerned" often fuels the "Kill The Messenger" (the patient) mentality that doctors sometimes embrace.  When a doctor is confronted with a patient like me that can take too much time and effort for them to participate in the healing work that is truly needed, sometimes doctors begin to rationalize that a patient is nuts and not in physical pain at all!  Sometimes a patient like me gets them in touch with their own feelings of inadequacy on some (usually unconscious) level, and they can lash out and be mean, manipulative, controlling, and worst of all, extremely judgmental.

I have to work on my own feelings about these experiences in order not to go to that same place with these doctors.  I find myself at risk of becoming judgmental about the judgments of others!  

It can be so very frustrating, down-right heartless to be the patient under these difficult circumstances!!

But I can also see that it is very frustrating and just as hard for a doctor that really does give a damn, too!

Nothing happens by accident. I am sure of it. There is/are some piece(s) of my personal healing work in all of these experiences.

For me, the empowerment in standing up to doctors and letting them know how I feel about their lack of support when I am met with it has been very growing and empowering for me.

Being my own advocate and taking responsibility for saying what I need to say to doctors and for asking for what I need is WONDERFUL--even if some doctors have gotten very ticked, dismissed me and sent me on my way.

There have been a few doctors, (a very few, but still some,) that think it over and then try a little harder the next time we interact over my care again!

Very often though, it feels very isolating and challenging, because I have, [any of us that experience this kind of lack of health care support must] find ways to mostly "go it alone." This has been my personal experience of the way that the system works around Fibromyalgia and chronic pain syndromes, anyway.

I have great hope that I will become increasingly more empowered and shift these kinds of experiences with the medical community to a much higher plane.

Love & Hugs & Blessings,

Barbara

 

© Copyright 2009-2013, Transformation Of A Mystic | Barbara F. Manning. 

All Rights Reserved

Thank you Google Images for the Commercial Reuse of your Images!