Your worst menopause encounter with a doctor

[jacksfullofaces]

Started feeling ropey saw my practice GP - male and sympathetic but due to protocol he had to rfefer me to female gynaecologist in practice. I was suffering depression, hair loss, joint pains, vaginal atrophy, incontinence of both kinds and insomnia. I was told to take menopace to cure the symptoms and she never examined me or did blood tests - husband accompanied me and was furious. He grew so worried he begged me to choose a specialist to see privately - after some research I did this and never looked back. I was given oestrogel, emerita progest, testosterone and DHEA.
I never looked back.
Jacks

[Countrycottage]

God too many to mention in the last year and a half. The best was a disgnosis of generalised anxiety (it wasn't it was low oestrigen) and for my total insomnia a diagnosis that i was Traumatised by hysterectomy and bso and mourning the loss of my womb. I nearly gave up at that point. Refused sleeping tablets and sent on my way. Now see nick Panay thank god and discovered more oestrigen lets me sleep X

[Robyn]

I’ve had two bad incidents with doctors, both male btw.

The second was the minor of the two, so I will tell about that one first. My normal GP is a woman and she works in partnership with a male doctor. My female GP, who is totally lovely and very supportive, was unavailable on a day I was feeling particularly bad and really needed to talk to someone, so I opted to see her male counterpart. I thought if they were in partnership surely they shared a similar outlook on things. Boy was I wrong.

I was complaining about my usual problem of insomnia and my HRT not working (this was before I found out I was prog intolerant). His response was that the only reason I had insomnia was because I was depressed, and instead of giving me HRT, his solution was to get me off HRT and on to ADs. I could not make him understand that my depression was a RESULT of insomnia, not the CAUSE of my insomnia. Why do some doctors just not get that? Anyway, in future no matter how desperate I am to see my GP I will wait until I can see her. I never want to see that idiot again.

My first negative encounter was a doozie though. It was right at the very beginning of my menopause journey. I was seeing a completely different GP back then and after getting my blood test results back she gave me a prescription for HRT. At the time I’d been listening to Oprah and her cronies about compounded bio-identical hormones, and I had a friend who was using them and she talked me into seeing her doctor who prescribed them. She warned me about his bad bedside manner, but she was prepared to put up with that to get “the good stuff” as she called it.

Anyway, I went along to see him, and he was a bit brusque about things, but I didn’t think he was too bad. I got my compounded cream and everything went really well for two months, but then it all stopped working. I assumed in the early stages this could be quite normal because compounded HRT is supposedly all about getting an individualised treatment and that can take a bit of tweaking. So, I went back to see him and all I got was a mouthful of abuse.

He told me there was absolutely nothing wrong with his prescription. That all my problems were being caused by “other issues” (ie read that as psychological) and nothing was going to change for me until I got those “other issues” sorted out. He called me a very “angry” person simply because I tried to disagree with him, by saying that I didn’t have “other issues” going on. As far as he was concerned he knew what was going on in my life better than I did. Basically he was psychoanalysing me when he wasn’t a qualified psychologist and he’d spent exactly 20 minutes of his life talking to me. He was actually blaming me, the victim, for all my menopausal problems.

I couldn’t believe that a doctor could be so heartless to a woman going through menopause. Afterwards I just sat in my car and cried because I felt so alone. Anyway, it was just after this encounter that I found my current GP, and she is the sweetest most supportive doctor ever. She never tires of dealing with my meno-meltdown days, even to the point of returning my phone calls, sometimes as late as 8pm after she’s had an exhausting day in her surgery….lol…..

[susan]

I've posted my experience of a vaginal scan and hysteroscopy on a separate thread.

My experience of GP's hasn't been too bad. Although I have been mis-prescribed three times.

a) was given FemSeven 50 by male GP who admits he knows nothing about meno, for goodness sake man I have a womb I need to protect and have had two previous kinds of Conti HRT's.

He seemed very impressed with himself that he had worked out that FemSEVEN meant the patch lasted for Seven days because he mentioned it twice.


b) asked for 6 months of vagifem pessaries and got 6 months of ortho-gynest pessaries - phew you should see the size of those babies compared to a vagifem.


c) bit more worrying as it is the GP I think knows what she is doing. I wanted a can of oestrogel to take on my holidays, so I didn't have to mess about with a patch. I was hoping she would say to just forget about progesterone for the week. I vaguely suggested I might need utrogestan 100 mcgs or provera 2.5. She looked in the 'big book' and said no you need this and gave me a script for 14 x utrogestan 200 mcgs.

I just left I couldn't be bothered to argue, and ended up wearing patches on holiday. Doh!

Really I think I should just write it all down on a bit of paper and give it them at the outset, but they seem to like to think they have sorted it out for themselves.

xxxx

[jacksfullofaces]

Susan
I doubt it would have hurt to leave the progesterone off for a week
Jacks xxx

[susan]

That was what I was going to do Jacks but was worried I might get a bit of spotting and I was gonna be wearing a lot of white.

As it was I had a stroke of luck. At the same time a lady I had helped on the mother ship sent me all her spare FemSeven Contis through the post as she couldn't get on with them and went back on a tablet HRT.

So my time over there wasn't completely wasted, I manged to get some contraband. Must have been one of my pm's that the Fab Four didn't read.

xxxx

[jacksfullofaces]

She sounds pretty decent Susan
Jacks

[susan]

Aug 26, 2012 17:53:46 GMT jacksfullofaces said:

She sounds pretty decent Susan
Jacks

She seemed nice Jacks. I think she had the sense to go on there find out what she needed and scarper.

Hi Pinky I don't know how it would have worked for me, as I am on continuous progesterone and don't cycle. It would have been the first time I hadn't had a daily dose of progesterone for two and a half years. Probably would have been OK but getting sent extra patches kind of dealt with it.

Also on reflection changing over to oestrogel and utrogestan just for a week might not have been the best plan. I think if you change it should probably be a more considered decision.

Infact the decent GP who in fairness to her did try to sort it said ' you should have come to see me sooner than three days before you were going on holiday, and changed this sooner'

I think she had a fair point. That's why I quite like her.

It was a kind of spur of the moment thing on my part.

xxxx

[Robyn]

Good for you Lainey..lol... Some of these people can be so clueless..