January 04, 2013

Adventures in medicine

I went back to the doctor's office this morning. On his last visit, my physical therapist took my blood pressure and it was about 175. Myself, I've been finding numbers as high as 210 since last Sunday, but now I have evidence that my measurement device has been reading high.

Still, it's too damned high, and Gil (the PT) called my doctor on Wednesday and got me an appointment this morning. My own doctor is on vacation, and I saw someone else in the office.

The upshot: they increased the dose of two of the medications I've been taking. My own doctor (an intern, it turns out) said she was going to do that for one of them, but didn't actually do so. The prescription I had coming out of the rehab was for two 10 mg tablets per day, and her prescription was for one 20 mg tablet per day. As of this morning, that's now increased to two 20 mg tablets per day, which really is an increase, but her original prescription doubled the size of the tablets but didn't increase the dose I was taking.

However, in my records she wrote that she was increasing it, and to my frustration today, this doctor read that and kept talking about it as an increase. I kept objecting that it wasn't an increase. It took me something like four times  to get her to look at the numbers, and finally realize that it was not. I sat there and seethed for most of the appointment because of that. I guess there ain't a lot of math required for an MD, eh?

Another reason I was seething was because I had gone around on this exact point twice in phone calls later in December, and didn't manage to get the point across. The people saw the word "increase" in my record and didn't bother to look at the actual numbers. grumble

That particular drug apparently doesn't really have much effect when increased, so they also doubled another one, which meant I had to visit the pharmacy yet again. Since I left the rehab I have gotten 11 prescriptions filled, and none of those was a refill.

So anyway, I'm supposed to log my blood pressure and email the result to my doctor once a week.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste in Daily Life at 02:30 PM | Comments (10) | Add Comment
Post contains 388 words, total size 2 kb.

1 Hope the blood pressure comes down and it was just the result of the strain + medications. 

As for the dosages, I'd take a solid guess that they saw "Increase" and "20 mg" and just naturally inputted the "x2" in there.  Probably 80% of the time they deal with medication changes, it's at risk of abuse, so, sadly, that's likely their default method of thinking.  (Legislation, Lawsuits and a Drug War make for a very negative point of view in medication issues)

Posted by: sqa at January 04, 2013 03:05 PM (iCuS2)

2 Ow. Good luck!

Posted by: The Brickmuppet at January 04, 2013 03:32 PM (vp6an)

3 These are not the kind of drugs that anyone abuses. (Blood pressure medications are not generally psychoactive.)

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 04, 2013 04:27 PM (+rSRq)

4 One of the few blessings in all this is that none of these medicines is particularly expensive. Most of them are generic.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 04, 2013 04:29 PM (+rSRq)

5 Sometimes doctors, I think, also suffer a bit from the "I'm the doctor, not you" syndrome.  I used to take an extended-release form of a drug, and a few years ago, when I moved to Texas and naturally switched doctors, the new doctor kept forgetting to write "XR" on new prescriptions.  I reminded her three or four times over the next year, and she kept not doing it, and it actually didn't seem to make any difference so I eventually gave up.

Posted by: RickC at January 04, 2013 06:01 PM (WQ6Vb)

6 Everything about the way modern doctor offices are run would tend to reinforce feelings of self-importance. Everything is run to optimize the doctor's time; patients are cued up in examination rooms, and everybody else working there does their best to take load off the doctor. I imagine it could leave you feeling a bit like royalty.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 04, 2013 06:23 PM (+rSRq)

7 I imagine it could leave you feeling a bit like royalty.

Right up until the time a baby horks three weeks of strained peas up on you followed by examining an 85-year-old man's hemorrhoid.  "Yay, royalty."

Posted by: Wonderduck at January 04, 2013 06:53 PM (cymHZ)

8 Wonderduck, remember that all doctors have to dissect a cadaver. Nothing they're going to run into in regular practice is going to be as awful as that.

Posted by: Steven Den Beste at January 04, 2013 07:14 PM (+rSRq)

9 Eh, I'm with Wonderduck. The cadaver politely lies there and waits on you. As opposed to the occasional patient that is actively trying to spray nasty fluids around.

Posted by: Boviate at January 04, 2013 10:16 PM (v5nUi)

10 I remember saying while at my wife's Dr appt one day, "We think it's cerebrospinal fluid that's leaking out of her nose." A couple months later, she went through her second bout of meningitis due to the CSF that actually was leaking out her nose.  At least after that, we were able to finally get it tested and confirmed. I can now say I know my wife has brains, because I've seen 'em on the video of the patch being applied plugging the leak!

Posted by: Chad at January 05, 2013 04:57 PM (7NOAt)

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