When it comes to dealing with Drs, we hear all the time that we are our own biggest advocate. You hear this in relation to docs in general, even when you aren't talking about someone with Fibro. Unfortunately, while the docs do have more knowledge than we do, we know our bodies better. They can't know what questions to ask us, unless we give them clues. The more info we give them, the better questions they can ask to help get to the bottom of the situation.
With the wealth of information that is now available to patients online (and through other sources) there is no reason that you should wait and let the doc do all the research. I was just reading a couple of articles from Adrienne Dellwo on Symptom Clusters and she made some important points about why we should be keeping a symptom journal. I did this for a while in the early days after my diagnosis but I haven't kept up with it. Sometimes it's hard to know if something is even a symptom to consider in a cluster. However, with all the info that is available to us it is easy to figure out.
If you have what seems to be a new symptom, do some research on that symptom using resources like WebMD and WrongDiagnosis.com to see what issues may be related to that symptom. From there, look the other symptoms related to those diagnosis and see what other symptoms you may have. You may find that you have several different symptoms that you hadn't even thought of. Taking that list of symptoms to your doctor will be more helpful than just showing up and reporting that one symptom you started with. It's easy to write off one symptom as nothing, but when you have multiple symptoms they are more likely to look into it further. This is how you advocate for yourself with your Doctor.
While our doctors may write off individual symptoms as just part of our Fibro, it's important that we don't automatically do the same.
No comments:
Post a Comment