What now?

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I've been struggling with how to write this post for over a week now. I've written and deleted, written and deleted, and finally I decided just to say what's on my mind.

I am angry at my rheumatologist.

There. I said it. It took months to get in with this doctor and now neither he nor his nurse will return calls. I had another panel of blood-work done two weeks ago and they still haven't answered my request for results, even though they said the results would be available on the seventh of March. I had a steroid shot on March fifth, which was supposed to be repeated every two weeks, but my rheumatologist has decided that since it took a bit longer for the steroid shot to work - seventy-two hours rather than forty eight - my pain must not be related to my medical condition.

And that's just stupid, folks. It makes me want to scream and kick something, except I can't stand to kick anything, because my toes and feet hurt too much.

The last thing I wanted to do was have to search for another doctor because it will - again - take months to get an appointment. I never expected to be cured or to have the first treatments work wonders, but I also never expected that my condition would not matter to my doctor, and that he would ignore my pain and refuse to discuss options for better management of the disease.

So what now? I guess I begin this process again. I have decided to wait until Wednesday morning to give the nurse time to respond to my most recent request for information about my lab-work and scheduling a time for another steroid injection. If I don't hear anything by then, I will go back to square one and start calling for appointments. But let me just state how ridiculous this entire process is - the disease markers are there. The symptoms are there. The proposed treatment did affect beneficial change. So how in the world could any physician say, straight-faced, "Your pain isn't a part of your disease process"?

It's insane.




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