Mark,
Well said. It leaves us to manage our own health by learning the options, risks...etc, Then armed with knowledge we have to manipulate these doctors into giving us what we really need.
You helped crystallize my thoughts on this when we discussed my situation with PM and Neurontin last year at your GPN Headquarters. For everyone else here's the story. After more than 5 years of chronic pain a PM resident at Univ of Washington teaching hospital prescribed Neurontin. It really helps me. The PM doctors I saw before this never prescribed Neurontin even though I was a perfect candidate for it. They screened me enough to know I wasn't a good candidate for an injection and they were done with me. Would they offer Neurontin to help me manage the pain? No way, they could care less. They wanted me out of there so they could concentrate on finding patients that qualified for an injection. $$ The last PM wouldn't even take 30 seconds to write a script for a CT/Myleo that Zeegers requested. My super cool family doctor at the time wrote the script.
To my way of thinking the same thinking for PM doctors applied to surgeons. If you go to Post#1 of this thread you'll see my original goal was to return to the UW teaching hospital. I was hoping to have a resident take the time to prescribe some diagnostics. FAIL. I'm back to square one. I suppose I'll go back to my family doc to request once again a referral to UW. I'll start a new thread when I do.
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Jim
2003 L5S1 Charite
1981 L5S1 Discectomy
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