Another date, another milestone

[darkoosh]

After many, many problems with my primary cardiologist, today was a milestone.

After a fairly short conversation with my first card, I successfully fired him. He would tell you that he fired me (for being non-compliant and second guessing his decisions) but that, I suppose, comes with the territory of the 'informed'.

My battle has been to link up with a doctor who recognized that I was in fact symptomatic and chose NOT to wait for symptoms (such as irreversible heart damage) before moving on to surgery.

I'll make a long story short and spare you the details....the second opinion cardiologist jumped right in, accepted me as a patient, got the existing echo and cath records, made a referral to Dr. Oury in Montana AND got things set up for a consultation with him in 9 days (August 27).

For those of you new to this saga, I have battled for 5 months to get the type of care I wanted with lots of false starts. In 3 short hours, with a 'good' cardiologist, I got records switched, support that I needed, referrals made, and a date set.

It just goes to show that it's worth being persistant and demanding to be heard when it comes to taking care of ourselves. Being informed and vocal about ones wishes it is not necessarily a blessing when you are in a small, political community.

The net effect of this is that none of us should settle for less than the best when it comes to our own care. This group helps us know what questions to ask and what type to care to except. Hopefully, we will learn to be persistant and keep searching until we find the answers we want, need and expect.

It's your life. You are entitled to the best. Go for it.

Deb

 

[hensylee]

I check into about.com (Dr Rich, who is an electrophysiologist cardio) and we hear all the time about drs. not listening, not telling us the whole story, when we are informed enough to question his/her diagnosis and prognosis. We, over there, encourage to get a new physician if we don't get what we need from the current one. At least the second one will either agree or disagree with the first and then we have some basis to work from. Congratulations and hope you get the care you need now. God bless.

 

[martha]

Dear Deb,

Good for you! This is your heart and valves we are talking about. So many doctors feel invaided when we start to talk sense. We are supposed to say yes doctor and that's it. Well poo to that!
Good luck with this new one.

 

[Jean]

YEAH, DEB!

YEAH, DEB!

You go girl. You are right , we just have to take care of ourselves. We are entitled to good care...we hire the docs not the other way around! Don't you feel so proud and empowered for taking that bull by the horns! YES!

 

[KristyW]

Deb,

Congrats on finding a Cardiologist that you are comfortable with. That is more than half the battle

I do have a question for you though. You mention in your post that your previous cardiologist didn't agree that you were symptomatic. What symptom(s) was he not recognizing?

I know that my cardiologist agonized about ordering tests because I wasn't showing any symptoms, BUT he saw the numbers on the echos changing. So...even though I was asymptomatic, he and I both agreed to more testing. This testing showed that things were much worse than my lack of symptoms indicated. The ONLY symptom I had was fatigue, and I didn't even realize that I was fatigued until I got my brand new aortic valve and had something to compare to.

Keep up the good work though!!! I'm so glad you found someone to work with

Kristy W