Wow, was my last neurologist visit a trip and I don’t mean trip as in a long distance, I mean trip as in what a freaking joke. My neurologist wanted to see me after my little hospital visit in Feb, so I called and got an appointment with his PA as I couldn’t see him until June. This is where it started to go south.

I got to the office and the PA was basically 100% clueless about her role and what she was doing. Now I fully understand that a PA is just a Physician Assistant and not an MD, and most don’t have a Ph.D., but usually, my experience with PAs in the past has been positive. But this time, wow, during the visit, she asked me three times what is my pain level right now. It wasn’t as though she was trying to see if I was changing my answer, she honestly just didn’t either recall she asked or she was going off a “script” in her mind and she just got stuck on that one question. She had no clue what Aleve was, I had to tell her as it was, I’m talking about the OTC medication that is all over TV, I’m talking about the NSAID known as Naproxen. She didn’t know that Gabapentin is a capsule, which is like the go-to drug in the Neuro field.

She wasn’t familiar with the side effects of Cymbalta that it has a long list of drug interactions nor that it was a capsule. She told me on both Gaba and Cymbalta that I could just cut the pill in half. She couldn’t even follow my description of what I went to the ER for. Then insisted it was probably just the flu, even though the hospital ruled that out. She was a trip, it was sad actually if it wasn’t my health we were talking about I would have honestly laughed several times in the office.

She asked me if I had any depression and I had some during my recent trip and pretty much off and on since my recent trip, which she boldly told me that I needed to see a psychiatrist. Wow, a freaking psychiatrist for my neurological pain. I described that the more pain I’m in the more I tend to get agitated and depressed. I told her about my long list of symptoms, which she only keyed in on the numbness and told me that there isn’t anything that they can do for the numbness.

So we didn’t make any progress, instead, I was so pissed off and it showed. Her nurse wasn’t much better, the two of them couldn’t find the stethoscope, which they never used. The nurse performed the world’s fastest set of vitals ever, I don’t think she pumped the BP cuff pump more than one and a half times. It was sad really, but this is my health we are talking about. She looked in every cabinet in the room for a cotton swap so she could poke my skin with it. It was crazy, to say the least. It was almost like it was a reality show and the idea was to see how long until the patient blew a gasket. Like the producers of the show picked two people off the street to play a nurse and a doctor, it was sad.

Leaving the office was even a joke, I walked out the door and the PA said, Take a left, I turned to the left and she said, “Your other left”, to which I replied, oh so my right? She didn’t comment but put her hand on my shoulder to turn me around to the right. LOL

So needless to say, no progress was made on this trip.