Rheuma-Fail

The Rheumatologist appointment Friday left much to be desired. The doctor was in a hurry because they were busy, and his bedside manner was horrid. He didn't even do a full body exam ( me being a brand new patient he'd never seen ). He was dismissive and condescending and didn't listen to anything I had to say. My mother was with me and she tried to keep interjecting as well. He handled me very roughly the whole time, despite realizing as a Fibromyalgia patient I experience a lot of pain on top of normal pain people feel. He wasn't taking anything seriously, and it wasn't until I insisted he look at my feet, took my shoes and socks off and he saw my feet and ankles and how bad they were that his attitude changed at all.

He ordered autoimmune bloodwork, but I am worried some of it is the same testing I have had done a million times before, which will come back negative as the belief is I am sero-negative. I expressed this concern to him asking to go right for the biopsy instead because I know bloodwork will come back negative and because I am paying out of pocket, NOT through insurance, I am trying to save on costs of unnecessary testing because that is all I have dealt with for years. I am sick and tired of being ignored because bloodwork "looks okay" yet present multitude of symptoms that do not improve, but have only gotten worse over time. He brushed off my concerns and said we had to do those tests first. I am waiting for the results, should have them next week. If they are "okay" ( which is typical of my bloodwork over years of dealing with this ), then my next appointment isn't for another 3 months. Otherwise they want to refer me to a dermatologist for my skin issues. I am hesitant to think anything helpful will come from it.

The only remote good thing of the whole experience is that I was right on one self-diagnosis all along. I have De Quervain's tenosynovitis in my injured wrist. He squeezed it and it hurt so much the way he did, I saw red and it started to trigger my pre-syncope symptoms.

He'd actually gone on with the other stuff at first and not even bothered to tell me anything about how to treat my wrist and had ended the appointment before we were even finished, and we had to call him back into the room and say "Okay, well what am I supposed to do for it?" He tells me do do the same thing I have been doing for months, and at this point I am furious and frustrated from his dismissive attitude during the rest of the appointment and I snapped that I *HAD* been doing that with little improvement and was sick and tired of not being able to function with that, on top all the other crap I deal with.

He finally decided to give me a corticosteroid shot into the wrist / tendon sheath and oh my gods did it hurt from the pressure going in, but it had a numbing agent mixed in, and after the initial jolt my whole hand went numb. Was told not to use it for up to 48hrs. Easier said than done, but I have taken it easy since.

I am really of the mindset to file a complaint about how poorly I felt treated as a new patient seeing a strange doctor for the first time, but I am not sure who to file the complaint with. I only saw him specifically because a friend recommended him and liked him, and since she is sero-neg I figured he might have further insight and actually be able to help me. But all he succeeded in doing was upsetting me more than I was already upset to begin with.

I'll wait and see what the test results say this week, but I am feeling like it was a waste of time and waste of money that could have been spent with a Rheumatologist that would actually listen to everything I had to say and give me a proper exam, since you know, I am *paying* for it.

So now I need to probably find a new Rheumatologist that I can go see. It's really infuriating having to "shop around" to find a good doctor and not have medical coverage, because the cost of appointments on top of actually waiting for appointment openings is insane.