Thursday 7 July 2011

Letter to my GP

I have written this letter to my GP and will get it to the surgery tonight.

Dear Doctor,

I just wanted to write and thank you for believing me when I approached you about the possibility of my CFS symptoms being caused by Lyme Disease.

I have since had an appointment with an Infectious Diseases Consultant at Nottingham City Hospital, on the 4th of July. Sadly the young male consultant has already got preformed ideas about Lyme disease and stated to me that he did not believe I had it because of the following reasons;
  • My test was negative.
  • According to him, Nottingham is not known for Lyme Disease so it couldn't be that! (well it won't be if so few diagnoses are made!
  • As the NHS does not recognise 'Chronic' (that is, long term) Lyme Disease then of course, neither did he! People who contract it must miraculously make recoveries then when untreated yet still retain the symptoms!
  • I should not believe everything I read on the internet – people have only to look at the symptoms of a disease after all and they assume that they have it! (So I am imagining it? Nice!)
So basically, he IGNORED my history – I gave him a copy of the time line from rash to symptoms to CFS diagnosis plus the list of my symptoms and photographs of the rash. He did decide to repeat the Lyme Serology test, denying of course that it is unreliable. He also decided to run other blood tests, the nature of which I cannot remember, He had an ECG performed on my heart on account of the palpitations I occasionally get. He examined the results of the ECG afterwards and my heart is absolutely fine.

So anyway, thank you for what you have tried to do for me. Should you be able to get me a second opinion with a consultant who knows a bit more about Lyme Disease then I will happily go. But if you can't then at least we have tried. If only I had realised what that rash and subsequent symptoms possibly were at the time, I may have been taken more seriously then.

I never expected a cure – I just expected to be believed. You believed me – he didn't.

Yours sincerely

...

No comments:

Post a Comment