I am dealing with so much stress right now it isn't funny. A little over a year ago my primary care doctor, Dr. R, retired so I had to find another one. For most people, this wouldn't be a big deal but for people like myself who have lots of chronic medical conditions and medications, it isn't. After meeting three different primary care doctors who all treated me like shit. They didn't want to keep my 11-year medication regime.

Finally, after seeing three doctors that made me feel like I am a disgusting human for being on all these medications and not wanting to change them, I found an amazing doctor, Dr. T. She agreed with me to not change something that isn't broken. She was very compassionate and really listened to me. She made me feel a lot better about myself.

Those three doctors I saw before Dr. T, wanted me off from Ambien CR, Xanax, and cut down both my Zanaflex and Gabapentin and add another antidepression medication.

It took me a little over three years to find the right combination of medications.

I know I am on some pretty heavy medications: My pain doctor writes for my Fentanyl, Percocet. My primary care doctor writes for my: Ambien CR, Zanaflex, Atenolol, Remrom, Trazadone, Phenergan, Gabapentin, Linzess, Xanax, Tylenol PM, Mortin.
These are scary medications for doctors to prescribe because of the whole stupid opioid epidemic and drug crap.

64%

The increase in the percentage of people using antidepressants between 1999 and 2014. In 1999, 7.7 percent of the population took the medication. (By the numbers: Antidepressant use on the rise by Lea Winerman. November 2017)

2 Times

Women are twice as likely as men to take antidepressant medication (16.5% compared with 8.6%). Women are more likely than men to take antidepressants in every age group. (By the numbers: Antidepressant use on the rise by Lea Winerman. November 2017)

I have been going to Dr. T now for one and a half years. Sadly, in August of 2019, Dr. T told me I need to start looking for another primary care doctor because they are closing the clinic and she doesn't know where she will be going. Tears started falling down on my cheeks. She told me it will be okay, but I told her about the doctors I saw before finding her. I am extremely terrified.

One week later, I started looking up doctors. The first doctor, Dr. C, was a rude uncompassionate asshole. Before even asking me questions about my medical history she told me I need to go off from my medications because it is a deadly combination. I have been taking these medications for 11 years now. If something bad was going to happen it would have happened by now.

She asked me why I am on all of these medications. I told her it's because of my Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy, Gastroparesis, Celiac Disease, Fibro, Severe Scoliosis, Arthritis, and my inappropriate sinus tachycardia. I told her about my surgeries. She acted like I was lying about my surgeries. To prove to her I pulled down my pants to show her my wound. She acted surprised. Then she looked in my ear and again was surprised I had a tube in my ear. WTF!? I am not lying. My mom was in the room with me. Dr. C got very annoyed my mom was asking her questions. She wasn't very nice to my mom. After she looked me over she gave me options. Option #1 she will treat me but she will take me off from 50% of my medications. Option #2 keep looking for another doctor. I choose option #2. When I got into my car tears started. I couldn't help but wanted to give up and jump out of the car at that moment. I don't want to go back to the days when my RSD pain was way out of control.

A week ago, I saw Doctor #2, Dr. K. She was nicer but still wasn't listening to me completely. I don't want to figure out a cure for my illnesses because there isn't one. I just want to keep my 11-year-old medication treatment regime.

She is worried about the Ambien CR 12.5 impairing activities that require alertness such as driving. Ambien isn't a new drug to me. I haven't driven on my Ambien CR 12.5 in 11 years. Plus I don't drive because I am terrified my legs might go numb while driving ending in a car crash, so if I don't have to drive I won't. Thankfully I have an amazing mother who drives me where ever I need to go. Also, I have not done any other sleepwalking activities Ambien CR can cause such as cooking a meal while out of it. I don't live by myself. I live with my parents, so no worries there.

Dr. K wants to up my Trazadone from 50mg to 100mg in place of the Ambien CR 12.5. I told her I DO NOT do antidepression medications well at all. I get very suicidal, aggressive, and extremely depressed and my anxiety is 10x worse. When we were trying to figure out the right medication combination I tried Trazadone 25mg and did nothing so they increased it to 50mg which helped some. Then they increased it to 75mg. 75mg was way too high of a dose for me because I had a severe groggy feeling all day the next day on top of feeling agitated, aggressive and depressed so they knocked me back down 50mg. I told Dr. K that but she didn't listen to me.

Dr. K wants to replace Xanax with propranolol which is a blood pressure/beta-blocker. I don't know if she understands I am on Atenolol for my tachycardia not for anxiety. I had to laugh at her because she told me tons of celebrities take it for performance anxiety. Here is the thing, Propranolol has many side effects two of them include a very slow heart rate and low blood pressure. In some people, it caused a really high heart rate. In some cases these side effects became permanent. I don't want a pacemaker. Finally, my heart rate is under control. I have fewer tachycardia episodes. If I take propranolol and it screws up my atenolol I won't be happy. When my heart doctor tried to ablaze my heart when I was first diagnosed with my inappropriate sinus tachycardia they couldn't do it because my heart cords are hooked up wrong and they would have slowed the heart down but also paralyzed my left lung.
I don't feel at all comfortable taking Propranolol. I already always have low blood pressure so this medication will make it even lower. Basically, Dr.K doesn't realize she is killing me with these medications.
The care plan she wrote for me said nothing about tapering my Xanax and Ambien CR. All she said was to start taking the 100mg Trazadone and the 20mg Propranolol. I am worried if I take these medications on top of my Ambien CR and Xanax I might die. I know for a fact both of these drugs need to be tapered down to help minimize withdrawal. Plus these withdrawals can cause my RSD pain to increase and cause other problems with my body. If my medications weren't working this would be different, but my medications are working perfectly. She is so concerned about the name of my mediations and the medical textbook she isn't seeing I am not a textbook patient and have been on these mediations for over 11 years. Everyone is different. We all handle medications differently. We all have different DNA. I told her I DO NOT WANT QUANTITY of life,  I WANT QUALITY OF LIFE.

She asked me if I have seen a nutritionist. Many times but I found them to be a waste of time and money because 95% of them have no clue about being gluten-free. If I listened to them I would have been glutenized on numerous occasions. She said she will be my nutrition doctor because she specializes in nutrition. She is sending me to a sleep doctor for my insomnia. I have insomnia because of my scoliosis back pain, my RSD, and my stomach pain. Ambien CR has given me my sleep back.

Again I left another doctor's appointment crying and feeling hopeless. I am mad and upset. I don't feel like I am being heard. At this moment I just don't know what to do. I feel like I am a drug seeker.
I don't want to go through withdrawal from these medications to find myself going back on them. I also worry if I go off from one of these medications that are helping me to try another medication. If the new medication doesn't work I go back to the original medication that worked well but ends up it doesn't work anymore because the new medication screwed something up.

It is easy for doctors to say do this and that but they don't have to deal with feeling horrid. I tried so many different things to help try to put my health conditions into remission but every time I tried to cure it something else goes wrong. I can't go back to the past to undo what I did to try to fix my health problem, instead, I have to suffer from a new health problem added on to the other health problems I tried to fix. I have learned to accept my health won't get better it will stay the same or get worse. It is exhausting thinking something will help me but, in the end, it only made me worse. This is why I don't want to change my medication combination at this time because they are still working.

I am seeing Dr. T in a couple of days so maybe she found another clinic to hold her practice. Crossing my fingers. I ask you to pray for me.

I can't stress enough to the doctors I DO NOT WANT QUANTITY, I WANT QUALITY OF LIFE. I am 33 and if I died at the age of 34 I would be fine with it as long as I have a quality of life. If I live to be 90 I am fine with that too as long as it is quality of life. The feeling of hopelessness and frustration is my middle name right now. We don't make our pets suffer so why do we do that to humans? It is not fair. I am not afraid to say this. If the doctors don't want to help me have a quality of life I will take my life. RSD pain on top of all my other conditions isn't worth it. My family and friends understand that.

Good compassionate doctors are really hard to find.

Patient Bill of Rights

In the early 1970’s, the American Hospital Association drafted a Patient Bill of Rights so people would know what they could reasonably expect when they were hospitalized. Since then, a number of similar measures have been developed. These are designed to:

Empower people to take an active role in improving their health, including making informed decisions and the choice and right to have an advance directive .
Strengthen the relationships that patients have with their health care providers.
Establish patients' rights in dealing with insurance companies and other specific situations related to health coverage and payment of services.

Patient Rights:

Physicians can best contribute to a mutually respectful alliance with patients by serving as their patients’ advocates and by respecting patients’ rights. These include the right:

1. To courtesy, respect, dignity, and timely, responsive attention to his or her needs.

2. To receive information from their physicians and to have the opportunity to discuss the benefits, risks, and costs of appropriate treatment alternatives, including the risks, benefits, and costs of forgoing treatment. Patients should be able to expect that their physicians will provide guidance about what they consider the optimal course of action for the patient based on the physician’s objective professional judgment.

3. To ask questions about their health status or recommended treatment when they do not fully understand what has been described and to have their questions answered.

4. To make decisions about the care the physician recommends and to have those decisions respected. A patient who has decision-making capacity may accept or refuse any recommended medical intervention.

5. To have the physician and other staff respect the patient’s privacy and confidentiality.

6. To obtain copies or summaries of their medical records.

7. To obtain a second opinion.

8. To be advised of any conflicts of interest their physician may have in respect to their care.

9. To continuity of care. Patients should be able to expect that their physician will cooperate in coordinating medically indicated care with other health care professionals and that the physician will not discontinue treating them when further treatment is medically indicated without giving them sufficient notice and reasonable assistance in making alternative arrangements for care.

Prospective Patients

Code of Medical Ethics Opinion 1.1.2

As professionals dedicated to protecting the well-being of patients, physicians have an ethical obligation to provide care in cases of medical emergency. Physicians must also uphold ethical responsibilities not to discriminate against a prospective patient on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation or gender identity, or other personal or social characteristics that are not clinically relevant to the individual’s care. Nor may physicians decline a patient based solely on the individual’s infectious disease status. Physicians should not decline patients for whom they have accepted a contractual obligation to provide care.

However, physicians are not ethically required to accept all prospective patients. Physicians should be thoughtful in exercising their right to choose whom to serve.

A physician may decline to establish a patient-physician relationship with a prospective patient, or provide specific care to an existing patient, in certain limited circumstances:

(a) The patient requests care that is beyond the physician’s competence or scope of practice; is known to be scientifically invalid, has no medical indication, or cannot reasonably be expected to achieve the intended clinical benefit; or is incompatible with the physician’s deeply held personal, religious, or moral beliefs in keeping with ethics guidance on exercise of conscience.

(b) The physician lacks the resources needed to provide safe, competent, respectful care for the individual. Physicians may not decline to accept a patient for reasons that would constitute discrimination against a class or category of patients

(c) Meeting the medical needs of the prospective patient could seriously compromise the physician’s ability to provide the care needed by his or her other patients. The greater the prospective patient’s medical need, however, the stronger is the physician’s obligation to provide care, in keeping with the professional obligation to promote access to care.

(d) The individual is abusive or threatens the physician, staff, or other patients, unless the physician is legally required to provide emergency medical care. Physicians should be aware of the possibility that an underlying medical condition may contribute to this behavior.