[TheatreKid]

I have a comorbid anxiety diagnosis along with bipolar, and it's hard to get a doctor to take me seriously.

A while ago I was having a lot of medical problems with my kidneys, and I started experiencing massive anxiety. I went to the ER twice with lithium toxicity, but when I got there, found it was just mild toxicity. The ER doc said I'd done the right thing but my doc thought I was overreacting. I started having chest pain later on and a racing heart, and it was only anxiety, but at the time, my doc said "I'm not going to send you for tests. I don't want to overmedicalize you." At the time I was getting several blood tests a week as well as urine tests to sort out the kidney problems, so I can kind of see her point, but at the same time now I feel like I can't go to her with problems.

I've been having various levels of pain in my right leg for a week now. I've always had problems with that achilles tendon, when I started walking as a toddler I walked on my toes and my achilles tendons never stretched enough to walk heel first on my right foot. I won't have time to see my doctor this coming week, I'm in a play, so I went to a clinic to get it looked at. The doctor basically told me to walk on it, said it was fine, and to take tylenol. I've been taking the max dosage of tylenol for a week and it's not helping. My achilles tendon aches and the pain radiates up the back of my calf. It keeps me awake at night.

I could go to my GP but she's the one who doesn't want to "overmedicalize" me so she'll probably say everything is fine too. But everything is not fine. My leg shouldn't be between a 7 and a 9 on the pain scale for a WEEK or more.

I feel like if I didn't have bipolar/GAD on my chart I'd get listened to.

Just wondering if you have a psychiatrist who could coordinate care with your physical medicine doctors? You seem to be saying that your chart does not show that you have bipolar and anxiety. If you had a psych-doc, perhaps your physical docs would know more about how to respond to you re your leg and kidneys. Hey -- that's so cool that you're in a play! Tell us more about it, please!

[TheatreKid]

No, I DO disclose the bipolar and GAD diagnoses when I see doctors. I feel like THAT'S what makes them dismissive. My GP gets regular updates from my pdoc.

The play is fun. I'm the composer so I wrote a bunch of music and I'm playing it live during the show.

[r010159]

My doctors listen to me. If they ever stop listening to me, I will be assertive and persistent. If that doe not work, I would basically say to them " yer outta here!".

[HALLIEBETH87]

I somehow have an amazing Dr right now. She always listens.

[~Christina]

As far as your leg pain goes ,... I dont see why tylenol?.. You need and AI like say advil .. to reduce imflamation and hot/warm moist compresses.

To actually try to resolve the problem or at least learn ways to help it when it flares .. You need to see a Physical Therapist to show you exactly the correct stretching exercises that will help with the problem would only take a few visits for them to teach you.

I hope your feeling better very soon

[TheatreKid]

Thanks. Yes, someone suggested Advil to me today and I'm going to switch to it as soon as I can. I don't have any money for probably another week, and tylenol is all I have for now. Nothing SEEMS inflamed, there's no swelling or bruising or any visible sign.

I will talk to my GP about seeing a physical therapist. Unless she can swing me a free one, I can't afford it though.

[Mikeyboy]

Originally Posted by r010159

My doctors listen to me. If they ever stop listening to me, I will be assertive and persistent. If that doe not work, I would basically say to them " yer outta here!".

Same. Thankfully I have found a good Internist to help me manage an autoimmune disease, and the psychiatrist I've seen several times(separate from my therapist), and they both listen to what I am telling them very well. If they didn't, I'd make them listen, or I'd find someone who would.

[TheatreKid]

My pdoc listens to me. I trust her completely. It's just that, since I've had a psych diagnosis, suddenly all my physical illness is discounted because I have a psych diagnosis.

[vonmoxie]

I would recommend visiting an orthopedic doctor if you can. If your GP is indeed factoring in your psych diagnoses to her overall assessment of your observations, then the specialist training (and less generalistic viewpoint) of an orthopedist could make all the difference.

And if an orthopedist says you're fine (though I think it's more than likely you will be able to get a better idea of what is causing the pain), then no harm no foul. Discouraging you from addressing physical concerns is a dangerous game though. I honestly don't much understand the reluctance to perform tests to rule out possibilities where there are genuine concerns, as being "overmedicalizing." That's what tests are for, to confirm or rule out~and just because a given concern may ultimately be ruled out doesn't at all make the test unnecessary. That just makes it good news.

I've had the same trouble only with pdocs. I had one ask me "how" it was that I came to know that I have bone spurs in my neck, when I told him in detail about my spinal condition, which has been developing over decades now and is quite complicated. (My neck, is a wreck.) It's possible that my eyes started doing that sarcastic slow-blink at that point, in a manner that expressed "really?" Obviously the only way one would know about the existence of bone spurs would be from MRIs (and possibly xrays, though I don't recall.. they tend to prefer checking out my crazy set of spinal conditions in all available detail), and as confirmed by highly qualified physicians.

Not that it even mattered that much in the context. I was just explaining I was in a lot of physical pain that day, not trying to get mired down in another of his explorations into questioning my grip on reality. Down another rabbit hole, with no rabbit.

After explaining that indeed the information I was sharing was the result of advice from many fine surgeons and orthopedists over many years and not from my own imagination, I offered to bring in the images if he was interested to see them, and he said that he was. I later reconsidered though, when I realized it would take some effort to track them down in my house, and for what reason did I need to upend my world to locate them? To prove physical reality? He asked me another time "how" I knew my hair was falling out, which I'd told him had sadly become the case ever since my previous neurologist had prescribed me depakote for migraines. To which the answer is a simple preponderance of observable physical evidence; for instance besides the handfuls of it coming out, the fact that only half of it was left anymore. By the time I left therapy with him I was wondering if he would ever have gotten through the unnecessary process of checking to see whether I fabricated truths, so that we could work on my actual problems. (I did eventually ask him this outright, in a non-challenging manner, but he professed ignorance, and I can't work with someone who refuses to at least occasionally pull back a veil which is transparent to me anyway.

Anyhoo. Going forward I suppose I would hope to have the presence of mind right at a time I'm being challenged, to ask "what kind of verification do you need?" ..and then if I feel the request is unreasonable, "why" that level of verification ..and then straight up "what is your assessment of what I've told you?" At best I would hope to make reasonable headway in this manner, and at worst I would expect the questions to at least be an indication of my presence of mind.