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On 12/06/96 19:55:34 Brian Black wrote: > >The other day my wife and I went to an appointment with my neuro. >All went well except his treatment of my wife. Basically, he ignores her. >She tries to ask a question, and he almost pretends she doesn't exist. >Does anyone out there have this problem, and if so what have you done about it? Hello Brian: I always go with my husband into the examining room whenever he sees our family doctor for a PD related problem. And every time the doctor enters the room he greets Neal and ignores me. I no longer take this personally, although I did at first. I realized that since he is a very caring person who knows me very well, and recognizes me as a fellow health care professional, he is simply acknowledging my husband as the object of his professional attention. After the preliminaries, he listens to, and answers my questions, as he does those of my husband. Our neurologist also initiates our sessions in a similar way. Usually, by the end of the consultation the doctors are talking to me more than to my husband. Probably this is because I am assertive in my interaction with our doctors. I ask serious questions and expect a serious answer. Neither doctor appears to be threatened by my questions, and neither is backward about getting the PDR off the shelf to check up on a medication in our presence. If they weren't open to questions, and willing to check on the unfamiliar, we would find a doctor that was. Our experiences at Stanford, at the Mayo Clinic, at the Parkinson's Institute at Sunnyvale, and at Santa Barbara's Sansum Clinic have been that the caregiver is always included and welcomed in the evaluations. Really confident doctors are not annoyed or threatened by sincere questions. Thinking back over the years since Neal was diagnosed, I realized that, in many cases, we were the ones who have first suggested new medications that have been helpful. And our doctors had no problem adopting our suggestions. These suggestions have included a beneficial switch from bromocriptine to Permax soon after it became available. And recently, we were able to switch my husband's osteoporosis medication from the complicated Didronyl regimen to the newly approved Fosamax (alendronate). If we were not able to keep up on new developments for PD, I am sure the busy docs would keep on re-writing the same old "tried and true" prescriptions. It is absolutely necessary for patients with the kind of complex problems PWPs have with medications to take charge of their cases. We have had many examples here on the List of the dreadful problems that follow when arrogant health care professionals ignore caregivers. The really good docs are not arrogant. Best Wishes, Martha Rohrer (CG for Neal, 76/11)