My second opinion Pdoc appointment yesterday:

The doctor was hard to understand with his accent. Plus he wasn't looking at the screen, he was looking down at notes or his computer, I'm not sure which. Because I am hearing impaired I had to say, "What?" several times and it made me feel bad.

As for the medications.....he said I am on a lot of medications and I am not better (which somehow made me feel judged--like it's my fault). He said if I was his patient, he would take me off of three of my medications and up the dosages on two of them. He didn't understand why I am on two antidepressants and two antipsychotics. But to be fair, my regular Pdoc is a neurologist psychiatrist so he knows a lot about the brain. He may know that different medications work on different receptors in the brain.

He said he would take me off of the Vyvanse because it is contraindicated for people with schizoaffective which is what I thought he would say. It helps so much with my ADHD and it helps a lot with my fibromyalgia symptoms that I cannot hardly function without it. So that part I am not going to bring up to my pdoc although he probably knows it.

He said the rest of my medications were fine. So the next step is when I see my pdoc on September 1st to go over what this pdoc said and ask my pdoc if he thinks I would be better off being on one antipsychotic at a higher dose and one antidepressant at a higher dose. (I'm sure he's thought of this though so I'm going to feel like I am questioning his intelligence or something.) I don't want to do that. My pdoc I feel is pretty good so I don't want to upset him.

Yeah, my pdoc doesn't take insurance so he is expensive, $200 a visit. And he's far away so it is hard to see him in person, which I don't even know if he is doing in person right now anyway. But he has been my pdoc for a long time now and I feel like he knows me. This other pdoc spent 35 minutes with me. I don't feel like he knows me after just 35 minutes. He didn't do any sort of diagnostic testing of his own, except what I had filled out in the paperwork which I am not sure that he read because he made me tell him all the medications that I am on.

Actually though the appointment made me feel really bad about myself. Like I'm so messed up because I have to take all these medications and I am not better. But I know that is wrong of me to feel that way because I wouldn't feel that way if someone else were on the medications. I would just want to know how I could help them. So I've been struggling with some pretty heavy depression since the appointment. My pastor's wife told me to not be so hard on myself. Ha. Easier said than done.