Saturday, September 02, 2006

New doctor… again

I finally made an appointment to see a physician who is a fibromyalgia specialist.  A few years ago I had a great general practitioner who was very knowledgeable about FMS, and who kept up-to-date on current trends and treatments, but she left her practice and moved out of state.  I was later given a referral to Dr. Dean Mondell by my endocrinologist, but Dr. Mondell’s office told me he wasn’t seeing any new patients.  That was a frustrating time for me—my internist had moved out of state, and my endo was about to move out of the country—and having my referral “rebuffed” was about all I could handle.  I simply decided to treat myself, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the past three years or so.  I’ve felt that I’ve been stagnating lately, though, and I’m not happy with my general sense of “going downhill”, so I picked up the phone and called Dr. Mondell’s office again.  I realized he wouldn’t see me, but I was able to make an appointment with one of his colleagues.

On September 29th I’ll be seeing Dr. Joseph Gnoyski at Rehabilitation Associates of Nevada.  I’m still a bit disappointed (yes, still, three years later!) that I can’t see Dr. Mondell himself, because he’s really the local expert in FMS, but I’ll hope that Dr. Gnoyski has picked up some helpful tips during his time in the same office wink Just getting this appointment at all took a bit of wrangling, because the person doing the “screening” wasn’t very happy that I might not be able to get all my medical records.  I told her I’d try, but I couldn’t promise anything, but she was pretty nice about it after I explained how I’d lost my previous doctors.  I also hope she understood that as a cash-pay patient, I can’t just be running off to different doctors all the time looking for referrals.  Frankly, there’s nothing in my previous medical records that I can’t tell the doctor, anyway (unless someone noted that I was a lunatic or something).  I have a suspicion that one of the first doctors I saw when I moved to Nevada recorded his assertion that there was nothing wrong with me but depression, and I don’t need biased information like that getting passed around.  I’d really like to start with a fairly clean slate, and I hope I’ll have a good rapport with this new doctor for a very long time.

The rehab clinic sent me all their intake forms via snail mail as per my request—I didn’t want to fill them out the day of my appointment, as I’d invariably forget something.  They arrived yesterday, a thick envelope of papers, including a diagram of the body where I have to mark the places which hurt.  In my head I’ve already just coloured in the entire diagram with red, blue, and purple (as my body often feels like it’s red, blue, and purple from top to bottom), but eventually I’ll have to be more specific.  I’ll try to make a note on the diagram everytime a new spot occurs to me, and I’ll be starting with the soles of my feet, because they ache like someone has been beating them with sticks.  I don’t think “bottom of feet” is a standard fibromyalgia point, but I’ve got to start with what I know.

My first visit will cost $200, and all subsequent visits will be $75.  I hope the very expensive lab work I had at my last doctor’s visit in August will suffice for this appointment as well, but I won’t be surprised if I end up needing more bloodtests.

Posted by Leigh-Ann on 09/02 at 08:12 PM
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