Here we go again. Those of us with lupus are on another list of "diseases that are hard to diagnose."
Check it out:
http://www.insurancequotes.org/13-most-difficult-diseases-to-diagnose
The list includes:
- ALS (Lou Gherig's)
- Fibromyalgia
- Lupus
- Crohn's
- Cushing's Disease (which is basically the same effect as being on a lot of prednisone, only your body is creating the cortisol)
- Celiac Disease
- Chronic Fatigue
- Lyme Disease
- Parkinson's
- depression and bipolar disorder
- hypothyroidism
- MS
- Mesothelioma
IMO, this article, while interesting and a good jumping off point for debate, is full of excuses.
Patients are needlessly suffering untreated for years on end not because these diseases are hard to diagnose but because our system and its priorities are seriously messed up.
And now, my 9 *real* reasons these 13 diseases are hard to diagnose:
1- Assumptions. Doctors don't take patients' concerns seriously and assume they are "just depressed," so it takes several visits before they even start looking for an actual physical problem. This is markedly worse when the patient is female. If you aren't bleeding profusely, you're probably imagining your problems and you just want attention (oh yeah the doctor's office is where I go when I want attention. HA!)
2- Ridiculously short time with patients. The cost of overhead (rent, office staff, etc.) is so high and insurance companies put the squeeze so hard on doctors by discounting allowable payouts, that if doctors spend more than 8 minutes with a patient, the doctor is losing money.
3- Priorities are upside-down. Doctors do not realize or believe they are in the business of customer service, and that without patients, they have no medical practice. And yet, when we go into their offices, we are last priority. After the office staff, the insurance company, the pharmacist, the lab techs, the drug reps and the pizza delivery guy have all been taken care of... OK, now we can see you, Mrs. Jones. Oh she left? Well there's more where she came from. She's probably a hypochondriac anyhow.
4- Patriarchal CEO attitude. Most American doctors want to operate in a top-down, giving orders kind of manner, rather than a cooperative partnership with patients, even though the patients may have more knowledge than the doctor on their own condition. Some doctors are threatened by empowered knowledgeable patients and get angry when we go looking for answers in chat groups and on Web MD. I had a doctor fire me as a patient because she didn't like me "challenging her authority" by bringing in articles and asking questions. And she mocked me for trying alternative medicine. Many don't want to listen to us when we ask for specific tests or for them to consider we might have a certain disease. Look I've got all day to check it out and my life depends on it, so let me be involved!
5- Poor listening. American doctors (as a group, with some exceptions, but as a group) have terrible listening skills. How can you figure out what is wrong with me if you won't listen? I had doctors tell me I had bronchitis- and I wasn't coughing! I had no phlegm! I've had bronchitis at least a dozen times, and this was not bronchitis. But they wouldn't listen. Then they gave me antibiotics which made me even sicker.
6- Gadget-happy. American doctors rely so much on technology and fancy tests that they have lost touch with their intuition. They have a reputation among the international community of being test-happy and making every event far more expensive than necessary.
7- For-profit health care. As long as making a buck off people's suffering is the number one priority- and it is for big pharma, insurance companies, and even hospitals- the priorities are going to be screwed up. The kindest doctors in the world can only operate so effectively inside this system. If they want to be free of the demands of these hungry hungry hippos, they have to operate a cash-only, no insurance, no office staff (no overhead) practice. And then they can spend all the time they like with patients, relax, and let it be all about the patient's suffering and how they can ease or end it.
8- It's never lupus. Thanks a lot House, MD, for your one-man led anti-awareness campaign.
9- Reluctance to diagnose. doctors don't *want* to diagnose these diseases. Lately it seems to be harder and harder to get and to hang onto a lupus diagnosis. I can't speak to whether that is the case with MS or ALS or Parkinson's, but from what I'm hearing from other lupus patients, doctors seem to be going out of their way to avoid diagnosing people with lupus, and even trying to un-diagnose people with lupus who have been living with it for years. It used to be simple- if you have 4 of the 11 classic symptoms, you were diagnosed with lupus. Now it seems they want you to have all 11 plus certain blood tests (ANA, anti-DNA, C-reactive protein, etc.). It's like they've run out of room so they had to raise the standards. Like when a university has too many qualified applicants, so they raise the minimum SAT score.
I don't know if the government is pressuring doctors to avoid the lupus diagnosis so they don't have to give disability status, or if the CDC doesn't like the statistical trend of exploding rate of autoimmunity, so instead of making people healthier they tweak the numbers by refusing to diagnose... Call me a conspiracy theorist, but there's something weird and fishy going on here when the same symptoms that would have got you diagnosed 20 years ago are no longer sufficient for definitive diagnosis. I'd really like to know what's going on behind closed doors on this one.
And those, my friends, are my 9 reasons which these 13 (and many other) diseases are supposedly hard to diagnose.
Carla Ulbrich
The Singing Patient
