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GP appointment - am scared & anxious & need to get it right

55 replies

MiscellaneousAssortment · 02/07/2015 19:27

I have booked a double appointment with a GP I've never met, on Monday.

Please help me get it right. I've got loads to cover and he's never met me before & I need to give a good impression and make him understand and not dismiss me or refuse to engage with me.

I've have terrible experiences with GPs who've abdicated any responsibility for helping me manage my complex and horribly disabling condition.

Ideally I wouldn't have so much to cover but unfortuneately several things are now urgent since I plucked up courage to make the appointment :(

It's really last chance saloon time to get gp to actually to their job. Someone from the hospital has spoken to him about the practices failure to engage with me or do their jobs, which has jeopardised my health and my mental health through the neglect and refusal to help me access medical care. I've never met this particular gp and apparently he's agreed that my condition needs management and he prepared to do it.

So now I have to go meet him and I'm terrified. I need this to work. But I am having pretty much daily panic attacks (I don't normally, it's the thought of the GP), and I'm on the point of collapse anyway... Which makes it very easy for me to get dissmissed as a hysterical pathetic waste of time :(

Here's what I need to cover... But clearly can't in the time...

  1. introduction to my situation including complex systemic condition with multiple secondary conditions and issues
  2. introduction to me and my personal situation (& my terror of gps!)
  3. What the GP is going to do to help me manage my condition re. Referrals, drug management & plan of treatment/ contingency plans (as they've refused to treat me on numerous occasions in an emergency which just isn't ok). See below as this involves lots...
  4. Intervening in the terrible hospital situation I'm in, need an operation urgently but cannot have the consultant who was terrible (see previous thread)

--

3a This involves a complaint about the constant and awful mistakes with repeat prescriptions which in recent weeks have fucked up me trying to Titrate down off a drug but had to go back up you're Xmas levels due to them fucking up (& many more examples all recent)... And what he's going to do to ensure this doesn't keep happening
3b new prescription from consultant appointment yesterday
3c how he can help manage me going onto a drug that was prescribed months ago but I haven't taken due to terrible side effects last time which no one spotted and they forced me to keep taking for months before I realised on my own what was making me so ill
3d chase up pysch referral as I think he's just referred me for big standard councelling which isn't appropriate - they just can't cope with the amount of stuff going on and aren't qualified with the specialist stuff which happens when you lose your whole life, identity, future and self. Oh and 2 close family members to the same condition, and your son is now showing symptoms. And that's just a couple of things there's loads more which has given me bad ptsd and more...
3e. An agreement to work with adult social services and not against them
/ against me especially when they give inaccurate info based on nothing but their own prejudices & preconceptions... So not to do anything yet but be aware lots needs doing and be ok with talking to me another time about this
3.f be aware and agree to do the vast amount of blood tests, scans, gynae exams that they've been asked to do and have so far refused to. Again not do anything about it now but agree to start doing them ain the future
3.g. Be aware I have other medical needs beyond my condition which is like some help with eg smear test (but can't get on the bench thkng to have it done, & they will injure me unless they do it v carefully), and various lumps I need checking out (which probably should be urgent but I can't face dealing with it), and
3.h I'll need an appontment to talk about my son and options for him going forwards

OP posts:
PausingFlatly · 07/07/2015 18:01

That sounds really good! Fingers crossed this is the start of better things.

Ha, yes also in the "rather rubbish club", though nothing like as severely as you (probably not EDS, though HMS, POTS, add-acronym-here).

MonstrousRatbag · 07/07/2015 18:11

I'm another person who handed over a written list of symptoms and a short history to a doctor, to good effect.

I'm pleased to hear the appointment was ok.

Can I suggest that when you can, you write that short history, plus a checklist of symptoms and prescribed drugs (dosage, when you take them, how long you have been on them, drugs you used to take but don't any more, and why)? Always have a copy with you and one in a prominent place in the house.

When my father had cancer my mother did this and made sure both of them and us children always had up-to-date copies. She put one up at home as well. That way it was always ready for any emergency. It's too hard to do when things flare up.

MiscellaneousAssortment · 08/07/2015 01:23

Got a confession to make, after totally freaking out on you lot here and being completely unreasonable to the gp who said the wrong thing by accident,,, I then spent til 3am writing a document for the GP Blush

Based on suggestions here then filled out with my own stuff... And then brutally edited with the delete button in the morning. Then edited some more by the printer, when Ds decided to 'help' and promptly broke it, so only 1.5 pages printed!

Will copy and paste some into Herr when on my computer... It had an intro, a contents which had a few diff topics but only 2 filled out, and I suggested that if he felt it was helpful if do other couple of topics for another appoint... He didn't say yes exactly (kinda how he was all the appointment), but he quickly booked another appointment.

I'd done a 3 sentence summary. I have x which is difficult to manage. I also have x which is also difficult to manage. Then I had pancreatitus and need gallbladder op.

Then I'd included an excerpt from a paper that says eds is systemic and gives a few examples. Didn't go through it, just left it there. And then the meds list and my qs / actions around the meds.

I also has a bullet point list of my own symptoms which is long as, well, it's systemic! So wasn't going to attempt to go through that anyway, unless he wanted to start there... And lastly I wrote a few paragraphs on how disabled it all makes me and how low quality of life is needing carers, bedbound 24 hrs x 5 days a week, 20hrs x the other two days etc, whixh didn't waffle (unlike
On here!) but didn't pull any punches either. which would have been useful to read out when I got stalled about the mh stuff, as its h&f to explain (justify) why you're on the edge unless you understand how shit and all encompassing my illness is, and the high stakes (my son & me. No safety net, no support. No alternative for Ds if I go)... but that's all what the printer ate!

Anyway, I didn't do a good job of explaining a lot of it but he helped anyway, so maybe, for a while anyway, he's reserving judgement and acting like I'm reasonable whatever else he really thinks... Long may it last!
God I'm relieved it wasn't my worst fears.

Anyway the short doc really helped when I was busy behaving like a lion in the Gp office .., ha! Typo meant loon not lion but either gives the right impression of just not being at my most rational (though I didn't actually growl at him.., I think?!)

He was being very very careful to keep himself very wrapped up and sort of removed somehow, don't know how to describe it exactly, but I initially found it difficult to deal with as am used to it being the exact opposite, me trying to get heard above the internal assumptions and external voice that was speaking much more importantly than mine. Was expecting the same so was utterly wrong footed. But as you lovely people are giving me the space and listening ears, am thinking it through now, and maybe this will be better for me.

Ah, I have another way of describing it. It was like his deliberate reticence left a vacuum in the room that I'd in a more normal frame of mind get sucked into the floor to fill the vacuum. As I was v nearly having a v quiet breakdown, I felt the pull but had no trouble resisting it as I was busy imploding into my self as a defense mechanism as well as a freaking out thing. It's definitely a strategy on his part, as I was undr no illusions who really had the power in the conversation, and he was the opposite of a push over, and I saw him put it on (iyswim) when he was trying to clock who I was and I was introducing myself and the Physio talking to him. So I don't know what the Physio said, or maybe he didn't even remember but just clocked how nervous I was, but either way, I hope he carries on being like that and doesn't change tack when he decides about me...

I wonder if he was mirroring me actually? I actually hope not as I don't know where I stand with him and whether I can rely on this experience being any indicator of the next.

OP posts:
PausingFlatly · 08/07/2015 09:52

Grin at loon / lion!

Sounds like he was spending time LISTENING to you.

It's really difficult, isn't it, when you're that on edge and the stakes are so very high? It feels like everything the other person does has significance - when actually they're just scratching their nose or something.

So glad that the short doc did the business for you. Sounds like you did a heroic job pulling all that together, and doing both documents.

Hope you get a bit of a break now for some days.Flowers

MonstrousRatbag · 08/07/2015 16:58

Sounds as though you did pretty well, actually. Whatever happens from here on, your history and issues are on record with the GP, he has to take account of them.

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