My Adventure With the Endocrinologist

I want to add a bit more to my post from yesterday about my experience with doctors. Please understand, I know that there are good, conscientious, respectful doctors out there. My brother is married to one. My headache specialist, chiropractor, and dentist are three more. My new internist, though her wait times are terrible, is also a good doctor — she’s worth tolerating the wait. But on the whole, I just seem to encounter more bad doctors than good ones.

And patients need to start speaking out when doctors’ attitudes and practises are not acceptable. I’m not talking about obvious malpractise. I’m talking about doctors who treat their patients as less than intelligent adults.

That’s where the endocrinologist comes in. But first, a little background is necessary. Until I was 27, I was rail-thin. Effortlessly so. When I got married in June 1996, I weighed 110 pounds. By the end of 1998, I weighed 230 pounds. Now, granted, I had two babies in that time. But I also endured enough stress to kill a bull elephant. From 1996 through 2006,  I had eight consecutive years of 200+ scores as measured on the Holmes-Rahe Life Stress Inventory. Four of those years were 300+ scores. My doctor told me that I was a walking miracle simply because my stress scores were so high that I should have had multiple strokes or heart attacks, or a nervous breakdown.

Anyway, I began trying to lose weight in 1997, after the birth of my first son. But my second pregnancy disrupted that plan. One thing and another over the ensuing years, until I hit my peak weight of 248.

Now, understand that I was dieting for most of this time. I started a strict low-fat plan in late 1998. I gained 40 pounds in six months and decided that this was only making the problem worse. So I began casting around for something else.

My sister-in-law introduced me to the Atkins Diet, and I began losing. Rapidly. I dropped 35 pounds in eight weeks, and kept losing at a more reasonable pace until several well-intentioned friends talked me into giving up the diet because they believed all of the misinformation that was circulating about it. It didn’t help that I was desperately craving a croissant. And once I gave in to that craving, well …

After a few months, though, I began to research. My hypoglycemia was getting worse and I was worried that I might be slipping over the line into diabetes. And then I began seeing signs of thyroid dysfunction. I found a list of symptoms online, and checked off more than three-quarters of the problems I was experiencing. So I decided to have an endocrinologist check me for diabetes and thyroid dysfunction.

It was a disaster. I took my 1999 glucose tolerance test results to him, and told him all of my symptoms of both hypoglycemia and hypothyroid — the most telling being that I suddenly could not lose weight. Even on the very strictest level of the Atkins Diet, which had worked so well before.

He laughed at me. Told me if I would just cut calories and exercise more, I would lose weight. Told me to cut back to 1100 calories a day. Now, even I know that 1100 calories is not a healthy approach to eating. More than that, I reminded him that I had hypoglycemic episodes, and that eating less than 2000 calories a day was known to cause me to black out or have “the shakes.” He said that was all in my head, and that hypoglycemia wasn’t a “real” disease.

He also told me that there was no way I was restricting myself to 2000 calories a day, as I claimed, because if I was, I would be losing. I showed him my eating journal, with the calorie counts. I showed him the pages from when I was low-fat and eating 2000 calories daily, and how my weight kept going up and up. Then I showed him the pages from when I was doing low-carb and eating 5000 calories a day and losing weight like crazy. I asked him to explain, because from everything I’d read, it made no sense.  He said, flat out, that I was not accurately recording either my intake or my exercise. In other words, “Ms. Editormum, you are a big, fat liar.”

I was so angry that I immediately got up off the exam table, put on my clothes, and walked out. Three days later, his nurse called to tell me that all my test results were normal. Insult to injury.

I went online and looked up natural, non-prescription remedies for low thyroid function. Started sprinkling all my low-carb salads and meat dishes with granulated kelp, added some new minerals and vitamins to my already-impressive regimen of daily supplements, and started using coconut oil in my cooking. It helped, and I did start losing weight again.

In the ten-plus years since I encountered this incompetent and patronizing jerk, I have heard stories from others that indicate that I am not the only one who has had such experiences. I know at least four people whose doctors have called them liars.

It’s got to be stopped. Doctors have got to be made to understand that most patients are not trying to hoodwink them. Most of us really do want to be whole, and well, and healthy. And most of us will try to follow their instructions to the letter. So when their pet plan doesn’t work, we don’t need to be scolded like a child or accused of lying, we need help. We need the doctor to dig deeper. To question further. To examine and explore alternatives.

For example, I have learned in recent years that the usual test for thyroid function is not sufficient to catch low-level thyroid dysfunction. Specific tests are needed when a person presents with symptoms of thyroid dysfunction but has normal test results. What is “low-normal” for one person might, in fact, be dangerously low for another.

Human bodies are not mass-produced machines like Toyota Celicas, where every one is exactly the same. Human bodies are, each and every one, prototypes. No two are exactly the same, and different stimuli will affect each person in a different way. Doctors need to rcognize this fact, and stop telling people that there’s nothing wrong just because the tests came back normal.

More than that, they need to stop acting like they know absolutely everything about other people’s bodies. If you don’t live with it, you don’t really know it. And while there are, undoubtedly, some hypochondriacs and some complete idiots out there, most of us aren’t. We’re normal, intelligent adults who want to be treated like we have brains and common sense and an ability to reason. Or, at least, that’s how I  would like to be treated.

Tags: challenges, Diet, doctors, Low-Carb, medical issues, obesity, overweight, rant, respect, True Stories, weight-loss