I remember my parents, towards the end of their lives, saying that they fully trusted their doctors. They didn't ever question their doctors, and my head almost exploded. Welcome to the Only Child Diaries podcast. I'm your host, Tracy Wallace. Have you ever felt like you didn't receive the how-to brochure on life, that you didn't get enough guidance about major life issues? So did I. You don't have to be an only child to feel this way. In my podcast, we'll explore some of the best ways to better navigate adulting, while doing so with humor and light. Welcome everyone to the Only Child Diaries podcast.

Today I'm going to talk about doctors and doctor visits. It seems that when I think about the majority of my life, it's working, taking care of the animals, the pets and doctors Doctor visits for my husband and for myself, but mostly for my husband. Having a chronic condition, a chronic illness and other conditions that go along with that being a type 1 diabetic for over 50 years causes a lot of issues. So this last week we finally had an appointment with a pain management doctor that we had seen before. My husband has occasional flare-ups of nerve pain in his feet and it's been a real issue to try to manage that pain, mostly because the well. We've tried everything, we've talked to many doctors about it and they've prescribed different things for him, but nothing's worked. Obviously, the doctors are not interested in prescribing narcotics. That's become a very touchy subject. I don't know how the addicts, or anyone that's addicted to a narcotic, gets them these days. It must be a trick, but nothing else has really worked for some of his bad episodes. And he doesn't have it very often, I would say maybe once a month, maybe once every two months. It's very occasional, luckily so that every time it would trigger the nerve, I guess, would trigger the pain, he would have a physical response and he would jerk. So he was unable to sleep, really unable to do much of anything, and you could see that he was really in distress, he was in physical pain. So again, we've talked to several doctors, almost all of his regular doctors about it and, the world being what it is, doctors can't just prescribe narcotics anymore. Maybe you all know this, but doctors can't prescribe narcotics unless there's a very compelling reason for it. Because when they do prescribe narcotics and I'm not talking about anything, I mean I don't think anything too bad. We're not talking about loads and loads of pills. We're talking about. You know, Tramadol or Norco, maybe you know 10 or 15 of them. They're flagged by, I guess, the FDA or well, whoever monitors this, I'm not sure. So unless there's a surgery or like a broken bone, maybe they can't prescribe pain meds like that, so they send you to a pain doctor.

Now, we had seen this one particular pain doctor. We we've seen another pain doctor in the past and that went a lot easier. But the doctor that led us to that pain doctor, we don't see him anymore because, well, because he, because well, because he didn't take great care of my husband at that point. So that's another tricky subject. But we had seen this particular pain doctor a year ago and he did not want to prescribe anything for Bill that you know, any of the narcotics. He wanted to try a lidocaine IV treatment where they would run lidocaine through your body. That didn't seem very attractive, but hold on, very attractive, but hold on. He wanted to do a surgical procedure where they would put electrodes at the base of Bill's spine which he said would stimulate, I guess, something that would counteract the pain. But in order to do that you would have to go through psychological testing or something. Okay. And then there was another Qutenza, which was treatment applied in the office and it's like a patch or a wrap that you put on the affected area and basically what it is is it's derived from hot peppers. We've tried that before as a topical and it doesn't work.

Now, the two other treatments the lidocaine and the electrodes we didn't really like those ideas. We didn't really like those ideas. But we went back to Bill's doctor, who acts as his primary physician, and talked to him about those and he said no to both. He said that those were bad ideas for Bill. So we didn't follow up with the doctor on those. So we saw Bill's podiatrist recently and we had a long heart-to-heart with her and she said you know you should go back to the pain doctor, I'll have a conversation with him. And okay, bill didn't want to. It made him mad, I don't blame him and she said I'll have a talk with him. And I felt really bad because I talked Bill into going back and I said it'll be okay. Long story short, we went this week and it was bad.

You know, we've seen together probably close to 100 doctors in our lives together and some of the doctors have been second opinions. Some of them have been doctors that we saw for a while. Some of them have been the doctors that we have now, and so we have a lot of experience with doctors and I think there's a baseline where you need to, first of all, be true to yourself. You need to remember that the doctor is still a person. He's not a god. She is not a god. You need to hold them accountable for how they're treating you and you need to try to communicate and have them communicate with you. I remember my parents, towards the end of their lives, saying that they fully trusted their doctors. They didn't ever question their doctors, and my head almost exploded at that, because, of course, you should question your doctors. Doctors can make mistakes. So we, we went in and I and I reminded Bill this is funny because I reminded Bill beforehand to remain calm. He can, he can have a temper.

Uh, we, we tried to, you know, communicate with the doctor about what had happened, about the, the two day pain episode, why we were back. He brought up again. He brought up the lidocaine, he brought up the electrodes, he brought up the cutenza patches and he seemed unwilling to really discuss narcotics and this was counterintuitive to what we had, what I had discussed with the, with the doctor's office, the podiatrist doctor's office, and I realized that you know, there's a there's a point in a conversation, when you're going back and forth, that you realize that the other person isn't listening. And listening is really key to a conversation with a doctor. Let's face it. You need to be heard and you need to be listened to, and that doctor needs to, and that doctor needs to really understand where you're coming from, to treat you appropriately and to be a good doctor.

Right, the other thing that this guy was doing was he would start talking over the end of all of our sentences, all of our sentences, and there's nothing that really ticks me off more than somebody who will not let me or my husband finish a thought, finish a sentence. I don't know about you, but that is annoying, especially when you're not trying to speak for an hour or 25 minutes, or you're just trying to get out one sentence. You're trying to communicate one idea and somebody is not letting you finish and somebody who's treating you, somebody who is a medical professional. So I went what I call full on Tracy. I started being well, showing my frustration. I started telling him that he wasn't listening because I could see it in his face. He is like his eyes were empty. He wasn't listening and I told him you're not allowing us to finish our thoughts or sentences. You're not listening. You need to listen to us. You know why aren't you listening? And he was just infuriating.

And I also know that, and I had this conversation with Bill the other day. When we go to the doctor or a doctor, sometimes I end up explaining more about it all than Bill does and I know sometimes people think, oh well, she's probably too controlling or oh, she's taking over, or oh, I should be listening to the patient. But, as Bill explained to me, he doesn't feel like he communicates as well. He doesn't feel like he's more shy, he doesn't like to talk, he's just, by nature, he's just a quiet person, unless he's mad. Um. So I kind of took over and I was explaining to this guy that that he wasn't listening and I didn't think that this was going to change his mind in terms of prescribing narcotics.

But I also could tell that he was young and there's there's nothing wrong with being young, because there's a lot of doctors that are young, that are very good at what they do. But being a doctor means that you need to listen and you need to show compassion. And at one point I asked him why did he want to become a pain management doctor and he said that it was because he wanted to treat people who had pain and he wanted to work to end the opioid crisis. That was one of my first clues that he wasn't that old, because the opioid crisis, in my mind, is something that is newer than older. Right when we got home I looked him up, because I'd never actually looked him up. Usually I look up doctors. There's health grades, there's reviews that you can find on doctors. He doesn't have any reviews on health grades, by the way, and you can find out how old the doctor is and where he went to school, which I think is kind of important sometimes. And he's only been practicing medicine for two years Now.

Again, just because you're young doesn't mean you're bad. We've actually been to doctors who have been very young and have really been on it, and they've been excellent doctors. For Bill this guy not so much. Now, how do other people feel about it? I don't know, but we ended up having a conversation with Bill's endocrinologist afterwards and she's more seasoned. She also really knows us very well and she's very compassionate and she's probably one of the smartest people I know, and she said she agreed with us that we were not treated fairly. But she said that people just don't understand my husband and they don't understand his unique needs. And how would people know that? How would a doctor know that? Well, from listening right. So I think the lesson here is that if you have any condition that you need to see a doctor for, you need to be heard, you need to feel listened to and you need to feel like they're really trying to address your issues right, and if you don't get that, you need to try to find someone who will listen to you.

I know that I've had much better luck finding doctors to treat my husband. I mean, granted, we've been through a lot of doctors for him to find the team that we have now, but for myself it's not always been so positive of an experience. I've really struggled to find somebody who is a general practitioner or an internist. For myself, I do have an internist now who does my physicals, but I don't really feel a connection to her. She's a little sarcastic, which I don't mind. Sarcasm because I'm sarcastic. Little sarcastic which I don't mind.

Sarcasm because I'm sarcastic, but I had my physical recently and as soon as that 15 minutes was up, she was in the room with me. As soon as that 15 minutes was up, she had her foot out the door and any additional questions that I had I got very short answers with, and that's. You know, that's not the kind of relationship that I'd like with my doctor. I guess maybe she feels that I'm doing okay, but I guess I would like a little bit more input on my own health. That's a little frustrating, but I keep trying to find somebody. It's hard to find somebody good, I think that's knowledgeable. I talked to her about at least one of my issues that I've seen a specialist for and she said I don't know what that is. So that was okay. Well, maybe you didn't read that chapter of the book. Okay, well, maybe you didn't read that chapter of the book. So we keep persevering. Anyway, that's my medical story for the week.

I hope that you feel comfortable with your own doctors, whatever your conditions might be or whatever they are in the future, and again, advocate for yourself and advocate for your health and advocate for the health of your loved ones, because there's a way to get people to listen to you and to get what is it? The squeaky wheel gets the grease when your loved ones need help. They need medical attention. Sometimes they also need you to get the attention of the doctors right. You need to get the treatment. The better treatment, the better doctors. So that's what I have for today, folks. Next week, well, we'll tackle another topic together. I hope you'll join me. If you like this episode, please follow the Only Child Diaries podcast on Apple Podcasts or other platforms you might listen on and consider rating Only Child Diaries and writing a review. It helps others to find us. Please share it with a friend you think might like it as well. Visit my Instagram page Only Child Diaries or Facebook Only Child Diaries Podcast. Thanks for listening. I'm Tracy Wallace and these are the only child diaries.