DrugBuyers.Com: Been labelled a DRUGSEEKER

Red:

You gotta' love Angelrat's suggestions of simply taking your medical records and walking out of the office with them

. Guess it depends on how mad you are. Most doctors I have seen put my records right outside the door in that little bin. What a hoot it would be to crack the door, put them in an oversized handbag and walk out casually. My doctor is so busy, they probably wouldn't even notice!! You know how they put you in the exam room and make you wait 7 hours anyway

!!

I admit that I can empathize with your feelings of being labaled a "drugseeker." I imagine that you feel rage, humiliation, confusion, astonishment, and disgust. I know these feelings because of something that happened to me about 18 years ago.

When my son was about 3 years old, his head circumference started to grow out of proportion to his body. His head was measured at the 75th percentile, then the 100th, then the 135th, then the 200th percentile finally. You get the picture. He was of normal intelligence and a darling little boy, but looking at pictures of him then, one would immediately see that his head was too big for his body. He had no other symptoms, e.g. headaches, vision changes.

Well, the first thing the doctors suspected was hydrocephalus a.k.a "water on the brain." This is normally a condition that causes mental retardation because the brain is growing at a rate that the skull cannot keep up with (simply put). Some children are born like this; others develop it in early childhood (much rarer).

This was a dark time in our lives. The pediatrician did not know what was causing this, so we were sent for x-rays, CAT scans, an MRI, etc.

He referred us to a pediatric neurologist in a very large town about two hours from where we lived. At the time, we lived in a town of about 50,000 so the town was equipped with a very modern hospital, and there were about 50 or so docs in town. Not primitive medicine by any means but the pediatrician set up an appt. with a pediatric neurologist in 8 weeks time.

A radiologist from this town of about 50,000 read the MRI, CAT scan, and skull x-rays that we were to hand carry to the specialist.

After getting all of the films and medical records copied to take to the pediatric neurologist in the "big" city, we anxiously waited two months for the appointment. We read the medical records.

The radiologist's report reported "...normal sinuses...normal xxxx, skull negative for fractures. The increased head circumference is a sequential finding indicating maternal deprivation syndrome...

What!? I had a bad feeling in my stomach about this so-called "diagnosis." We immediately went to the library (no internet back then ) and researched the term.

Maternal deprivation syndrome is another term for "severe neglect and abuse of an infant." Everything we read defining the term described this syndrome as severe neglect of the child (baby), child suffers from NO mental stimulation, love, handling, bonding; child is typically not held, is malnourished, ignored, never bathed, etc.

I cried. And cried and cried. I had nightmares of Tarzan. Then I was furious and could only see rage. I felt sadness, confusion, shock, a whole gamut of gut splitting emotions. My husband was stupefied.

Here was a statement in his "official" medical records that would affect my child from that point forward in his life every time he saw a doctor. Here was also a statement that had a damning effect on me as a mother for the rest of my life. Can you imagine?

Here was a "Doctor" that dwelled in his ivory tower, sight unseen, and "diagnosed" a child he had never SEEN, much less examined. He knew nothing of the mother or child. Had he no idea of the RAMIFICATIONS of those three little words Maternal Deprivation Syndrome?

That was probably the 30th x-ray he read that day.

I thought "Thank God my husband is a lawyer." My husband (now ex-husband ) wrote him a letter on his firm's letterhead demanding that those words "maternal depirvation syndrome" be struck from every single one of his medical records. He had the letter hand delivered.

We waited an anxious tow months to see the neurologist. After an extensive exam and a quick glance at all of the films, she diagnosed my son with a "benign" form of hydrocephalus that would clear up in about a year or so with NO lingering effects whatsoever. Sure enough-he "grew" into his head within the year. This year, he earned his undergraduate degree and is planning on graduate school.

The neurologist stated that the radiologist's diagnosis "was the most ridiculous thing she had ever heard of." I requested that she make a note to this effect that we could put in all of his medical records. She agreed whole-heartedly with this plan of action.

We never heard anything from the radiologist.

After a while, our lives returned to normal and we shortly moved back to the big "city." I pondered the situation and could only shake my head in disgust at the end of the day at this radiologist's "God-like" actions picturing his sheltered existence in a dim room ruining peoples' lives with a few choice words spoken into his hand-held recorder reading x-ray, after x-ray, after x-ray…

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