Tingling and numbness down my left arm and into the hands. Guessing it’s pinched nerve... at the neck??? Salene muscles or something? Been a week or so, gonna see a doc and maybe get a deep tissue massage.

Did you get to see anyone when you were over here?

It sounds like you have to make a bit of a nuisance of yourself, unfortunately, but not because you’re a nuisance patient, because you aren’t getting an appropriate response.

What appears to be the problem?

equinox_code wrote:

Apologies for repeating a question I asked a while ago, but I’m growing a little anxious over some recurring health problems. What am I actually supposed to do when a problem is persisting and worsening without diagnosis? It seems the doctors and specialists I see just run down their list of obvious things to diagnose and then shrug their shoulders when it’s evidently something else. I don’t want to be a nuissance patient. I suspect my local doctor already thinks I’m a hypochondriac. But I also find it hard to accept that I just have to live with this deterioration.

The answer partly depends on the nature of the problem.

The quick answer, as others have said is to see someone else, or return to your previous doctor again.  It's slightly tricky to advise because, as you know, the health system there is fundamentally quite different.  

Some broad advice though - It can be helpful to be relatively blunt (though polite).  Ask them outright if they have any idea what's wrong.  Equally if there's something you're specifically concerned it could be, tell them exactly what that is, and ask them how they know it isn't. 

There are problems that simply can't be explained from time to time, but I would expect them to say precisely that (as well as a conversation about whether there might be any psychological elements) - but even then there are usually things you can do symptomatically.

Whatever it is, I hope you manage to sort it.

So then....

There’s been so many times I’ve almost written stuff in here about my health and always decided against it. There were times it seemed to me I’d be flippant to do so with the cancers and the serious mental health stuff or that I was trying to one up the people complaining about a bad wrist or something.  I’m also pretty private about most stuff and my health is one of them.  With noxy posting the stuff above I guess now seems apt.


I got super ill from a virus about 7 years ago and was admitted to hospital.  I stayed there for a while, had a load of ups and downs and then came out.  Things however never seemed right from then on.  I started to find it difficult to stomach large (well normal really) amounts of food for meals, I suffered pretty quick weight loss, loads of horrible lower back pain, weird nerve pain, leg weakness, loads of stuff.  Went to the GP who said all was fine, stop worrying but here have this permanent prescription for Tramadol, Amytryptiline and quite a few others.  This obviously helps with the pain but I don’t want to be addicted and have to now chose days of when I can tolerate the pain or when I can’t.  I’ve lived like this for around 6 years.
Over the next two years this carries on in much the same manner.  Other things seem to come and go.  My hearing was a huge problem for around a year.  I suffered massive weakness on my right hand side.  Loads of stuff that I kept visiting the GP for and been told not to worry about.  Nothing there. Don’t worry. You’re very young, strong, fit.  Carry on.  “I can up the tramadol if you need”?
Around 2 years ago I went to the gp with both my hearing being wonky and seeing a kind of a pink smudge within my vision - kinda over and around stuff.  My normal GP had left the practice and a new guy taken her place.  Really young guy. Keen and responsive and I guess not yet broken by the system.  I explained my problems, he looked at my records (which I’m guessing is a good length) and explained that the hospital however many years ago had diagnosed me with Mulitple Sclerosis and he just wanted to check what my gp had put in place for this.

I was kinda shocked.  Nobody at any point had ever mentioned MS.  I’m a firm believer in non google-ing medical problems so perhaps it’d have come up sooner if I had.  I was kinda dumb founded though, in that I’d felt shit for years and getting gradually worse - Not by huge amounts, and I’m still sort of fit and strong and healthy and fast but all the above, all the shit that I live with and had raised soooo many times had never been kinda looked at as a whole.  It all felt like loads of non specific pains and problems.  Before the current GP I used to feel stupid calling up the doctors for ANOTHER appointment - I was certain they thought I had some kind of psychological problem and it started to make me question myself.  My wife and I used to argue over it all because I used to complain and hurt, and cry and fall over and all the other stuff but because my gp had never told me why I had this and did that we had nothing to blame.  No name of an illness or whatever.

And then once we’d been give a couple of letters to put in place of all my symptoms everything became clearer and smoother.  Up until a pretty recent trial I’ve applied for there isnt a great deal that can be done to make me better.  As of where I stand now, things will probably slowly get a bit worse as I get older.  There’s no medication to make me better or make the bouts of pain any less shitty but the weight lifted from me of actually having something formally diagnosed to me, explained to me, confirmed to me that I wasn’t imagining this shit, that I wasn’t a hypochondriac means that I’m kinda happy to have what I have.  It has certainly has shitty symptoms and it’s gonna probably make me worse as time goes by but now at least it has a name and that has made things SO much better.

So yeah, I can really feel for Noxy. I’m not saying he’s in the same boat as me or that he’s receiving shitty care but to be consist ally told that you are fine when you think you aren’t is a real fucking drain on your health.

Ooh shit, a good friend of mine has MS and things get pretty rough for her as it is, I cant imagine living with that without a diagnosis.

That is a shocking tale. My sympathies to you Uncle.

MS is already an absolute bastard without your doctor messing you around as well. Sympathy to you, Uncle.

Friends of mine with MS have found that one of the most helpful things for their mental health has been to talk to other people with MS. I bet there are places online you can do that.

Wow, that’s some horrible story Uncle. I feel for you. GPs can be so shit. But occasionally you’ll find a good one.

My mum, who has all the usual hypercholesterodiabesity issues, is currently being seen by a young new GP who is putting her through lots of tests and new appointments and follow ups to see what can be done to help her improve or at least not get worse. She is also complaining of other issues. . Previous GPs never bothered trying to do anything.

At least you know what's up. Not knowing, as you say, can be draining and would contribute to the situation in a negative way.

Hard to fathom why the GP didn't tell you - perhaps he thought that the hospital had told you. If you view it from that perspective then maybe he was trying to re-assure you. 

A poor show overall. In any profession, poor communications so often cause the biggest problems.

poprock wrote:

I know this is just the human desire to see patterns … but is it a thing that newly-qualified GPs can be more responsive to patient needs/queries? Is eagerness a factor?

There's a bunch of stuff.  Firstly, they have literally been to medical school more recently.  Whilst GPs should be keeping up to date (We have an educational meeting every week, as well as  various courses, reading etc) there is a risk of them "doing what they've always done" and thus missing new developments.

It's also worth remembering that registrars usually have more time - our trainee at present has 20 minute appointments for instance - whereas I get 10.  

They're much less likely to be burnt out.  The longer you do the job, the more likely you are to become burnt out - GP registrars/ new GPs have only had to endure a few years of medicine by the time they arrive in the surgery.  As doctors burn out they start to see their patients as obstacles to be negotiated, rather than fellow humans to be helped.  (There's a good reason why most doctors retire early, and it's not "laziness".)

Registrars usually get the easy stuff.  Because they're new, trainees don't have hundreds of chronic complex patients under their belt - so again they have more time to handle them when they do arrive.  (And regard it as an exciting novelty.)

A "new" doctor often benefits from having no prior misconceptions.  Having continuity with a doctor is usually a good thing - you get to know them, and they get to know you.  But it also tends to reinforce blind spots.  A new doctor has to look at everything again from scratch, and sometimes will notice something that their predecessor dismissed as "already addressed".  I will sometimes ask patients to see one of my colleagues just to check I'm not missing something.

tl;dr  It is a thing, and there's a reason why I tell my relatives that it's a good thing if they're booked in to see a trainee.

poprock wrote:

That’s all really interesting, thanks for taking the time Tin. Some of your points are pretty much assumptions I was making, but I try to keep a lid on assumptions when I really don’t know a damn thing about the area.  It’s all totally understandable too. Not one of those points would be something to complain about, they’re all absolutely fair.

To be fair, I could make a similar list of points as to why you're better off seeing a GP that's highly experienced.  There's pros and cons to both, but your observation was definitely a fair one.

yourfavouriteuncle wrote:

I’m almost delighted to have an actual discernible thing that’s recognised by the medical community whereas before this point I really really questioned myself. I couldn’t think of a reason that I wanted all these ailments but it seemed that no-one else thought I had them so perhaps I was making them up?

I only have a sample of a few friends who suffer from it, but from what I hear that’s a common story for people with MS. Maybe because it’s not fully understood yet? As far as I understand it, MS still isn’t fully recognised by all of the medical community – so it’s not always readily diagnosed.

What a thouroughly shit situation. Keep your chin up Uncle, you'll always be my favorite.