MarioMasher
Well-known member
I had to get some vaccinations today for an upcoming overseas trip, so I made an appointment with a new doctor that had been highly recommended. I really wasn't planning to get into it about BFS with him, but the subject came up during my visit and I thought you guys would be interested in what he said.First off, he took my blood pressure and said, "Wow, it's high. 145/100. That's not good." He asked if I had ever had high blood pressure before and I said it had been borderline in the past but I had had it tested as recently as 3 months ago and my previous doctor said it was okay. He said, "There's no way your blood pressure was normal three months ago. What have you been doing?" So I told him about all the twitching and jelly legs and weird leg weakness. I said I had pretty much been obsessed with my symptoms 24/7 for the past 8 months, and it didn't surprise me at all that my blood pressure was high. I told him that numerous doctors in the past (including my neurologist) had told me that I had a problem with anxiety, and even though I had never taken any drugs for it in the past, I felt like maybe the anxiety was starting to get the better of me.Right off the bat he said that he didn't want me to leave his office until I started treatment with an SSRI. He said there's no way you're going to feel good until you get your symptoms under control. He asked about my previous doctors and visits, and what they had said, and he just nodded his head. I told him that my neurologist basically sent me out the door after saying, "I'm not concerned about your symptoms at all." My doctor said, "Afterwards, did he give you any suggestions on how you were supposed to deal with it?" I said no, it seemed like he was just trying to reassure me that it wasn't serious. My doctor just nodded again. He said that the problem with going to neurologists for things like anxiety is that they really aren't trained to help with that. A neuro's job is to just rule out the big things. Once they can tell you don't have a life threatening condition (like ALS, for example), in their mind, their job is complete. So it didn't surprise me at all that my neuro really never did anything to help me with treatment.Again, I don't remember my doctor's comments word for word, but he told me that the problem with neurology, and all brain sciences, is that there's no way a neuro can tell a patient that his symptoms are all coming from his brain. If a neuro does that, it makes it sound like he is saying the patient is crazy. And he said that doctors are very sensitive about implying that about anyone. My doctor said that take a man who has his hand amputated, for example. Every so often, an amputee will get a phantom itch in his missing hand, or a pain in a hand that isn't there. He goes to the doctor and complains about it. Now the doctor knows full well that the patient doesn't have a pain in the missing hand anymore, but it's hard to explain to the average layperson that the pain is actually coming from your brain. Your brain remembers what a hand pain is supposed to feel like, so it might misfire and give you that sensation in the future. And since you're used to feeling it in your hand, you have a hard time accepting that it is actually coming from your brain. Once your brain makes pain and nerve associations, they can become very powerful. So he said that is the issue that neurologists run into all the time. They know full well that you have nothing seriously wrong with you, but how do they say it in way so you won't feel like you are crazy? It's the neurologist's Catch-22.So anyway he started me on Lexapro and scheduled me for a 4 week follow up. I said I had heard bad things about SSRIs and being harsh at first, and he said that with the newer SSRIs that generally isn't a problem. He said just start with the sampler size (10 mg) at first and I probably won't have any bad reaction at all. And then if I do show improvement, he will know we are finally on the right track with this. He seemed pretty confident that once I get the anxiety down, my symptoms will start to go away as well. He laughed when I said my legs were buzzing so strongly right now that it was vibrating my vision. He said, "Well then there you go, that's a good sign."What's funny is that even though we talked a lot about anxiety and twitches, he was MUCH more concerned about my blood pressure. Even though we talked for 20 minutes about anxiety and neurology and my worries his only real concern at the end of the visit was getting my blood pressure down. So he put me on some BP medicine and told me "NO SALT!" until I get everything back down under control. He said that long term anxiety can be a problem, but I really don't want to deal with long term hypertension issues. Once I get stuck in metabolic syndrome, it's hard to get out of it. Again, it's possible that we are all just worrying about the wrong thing on this board.So anyway there's my doctor visit report. I'm on an SSRI for the first time in my life, I'm on BP medication for the first time in 3 years, and I have a follow up with him in four weeks to see how I am doing. And I have also (for obvious reasons) decided to take a four week vacation from this board. I'm gonna take a four week crash course in non internet OCD and see how it treats me.I'll be back in a couple of weeks to report how I am doing.Stay well.-MarioP.S. Oh yeah, and the phrase "BFS" never even came up once during the entire visit. Maybe that's a good thing. 
