Interpeting Non-helpful Eye Doctor’s comments

[hannidan]

These are my opinions and mine alone, based on what has happened during my little journey through the land of eye disease. Just so you know where I’m coming from I had Lazik 7 years ago after being assured by 3 eye doctors that I was an “excellent candidate”. Following Lazik it took two and a half years and six eye doctors to get an accurate diagnoses. I told each and every one of them what I (correctly) thought was wrong, they just “couldn’t” see it. Finally, with the correct diagnoses it took me another two years and eight eye doctors before I found someone to effectively treat me, each one could have done so but would not. Two years nine months after Lazik I realized one of my prescription medicines was the primary cause of my eye disease. The seven eye doctors I had seen up to that point couldn’t be bothered to tell me, unfortunately by this time my eye problems where quite advanced and multifaceted. In short, I’m firmly convinced that I was the victim of malpractice and fraud committed by these eye doctors just to generate more office visits and charges to my insurance company. I would be delighted if my following interpretations helped some of you.

So here are some of some unhelpful eye doctor’s comments and what I think they mean:

“I don’t know” ............. This means if they answered my question it would be helpful to me in understanding what was going on.

The blank stare …………..I would get this in response to a comment or complaint I made and it means the eye doctor doesn’t have a good lie prepared, so they would just say nothing.

“I don’t know what is wrong with your eyes”…………..This lie was actually cause for hope, if I had only known what the eye doctors were really up to. It meant the cure for my eye disease was so easy (early on) that if they had diagnosed me the eye doctors would have lost a lot of billable office visits. Not to mention the opportunity of creating a chronic condition out of any easily cured one, which is what eventually happened.

“How can that be”…………….I would get this response after telling the eye doctors how I had “cured” my eye problem for a few months. (Early on and just by luck, I had stumbled across an effective therapy). I now realize this eye doctor comment is another hopeful one. It meant that I was so close to figuring out what was wrong with my eyes that the eye doctors were afraid I’d catch them in a lie, so they would just get me to talk and they could find out how much I’d actually figured out.

Please feel free to add more eye doctor interpretations, you’ve worked out, and best of luck to all of you.

[Guest]

I'm not naive enough to think that ALL doctors are saintly overworked creatures who really badly want to do good, but, I think most are doing their best. Unfortunately, often their best is simply not good enough to fix us.

It is my firm belief that my LASIK surgeon was interested in nothing more than covering his own a$$. But I've seen many doctors since then who are caring people and have done their best to help me.

Our current medical system sucks, and the pressure to see more patients in less time ruins a lot of doctors who would have been good ones if only they were in a different environment.

They are rushing through patients at a ridiculous rate, and some problems, like dry eye, has so many possible causes that it takes TIME and a lot of thinking to figure it out. They really don't know what the cause of our problem is, or how to make us better. There are just too many possibilities and not enough time to figure it out in a 5 or 10 minute office visit. And then dry eye also doesn't sound like a serious problem, so there is still a lot of misunderstanding out there as to just how bad it can be.

Take the doctor I just saw here in Penang... he said to me "Well, at least your vision is perfect, so that at least makes up for the dry eye, right?" (ie. in response to finding out LASIK caused my problems)

He was trying to be nice. Really, he was. But, he was a young doctor, and I believe he honestly had no idea how horrible it is to live with this on a long-term basis. He just didn't know. So thinking as he did, at first glance, he would assume that any patient like me is not in dire straights.

So, for his educational purposes, I nicely told him how horrible this was and that it was the worst thing I'd ever gone through in my life, that LASIK was the worst thing I've ever done, and that FOR SURE, the dryness of the eyes was so bad that it did not make up for the perfect vision. The guy had to be told... so now he knows. He's human, so he may not be convinced, in fairness, he doesn't know me well, so has no idea if I'm prone to exaggeration or melodramatics... but I figure at least I provided him with food for thought.

When considering a doctor now, I look first for their area of expertise... and second, I look for someone that seems to have a heart - I don't stick with them unless they have both. And also, I find that finding a doctor is a bit like dating... you have to get to know each other first. They won't listen to you until they trust you, and they have to get to know you a bit first for that to happen. It takes time, and a few appointments to get there.

And yes, if I need a corneal specialist here in Penang again, I'd go back to see that guy I mentioned above again - he has the expertise, and he seemed to have a heart. So I think he'd try his best to help me if I needed it.

Anyhow, I'm sorry for what you've been through, and I hope things get better for you!!!

[Rebecca Petris]

Random thoughts....

It's an emotional topic... how we interpret doctors. Usually pretty heavily colored by the extent to which they have succeeded or failed in meeting our needs - medically and emotionally. Fact is, we're a needy lot, and IMO, the majority of eye doctors by and large aren't all that well equipped to help us - try as they might. And I suspect most of us would sooner forgive their lack of medical skills than their lack of compassion. When you're really hurting, and you feel you're being treated dismissively, it just adds such insult to injury.

I've seen both far ends of this spectrum. I think of the doctors at our little dry eye zone conference in Tampa back in 2006. (Oh how I wish we could have another of those someday!) I remember one doctor-speaker-guest there who I've always thought of as one of the most compassionate I've known - he listened to a moving talk by a patient about dry eye pain and what it does to you and told me afterwards it fundamentally altered his understanding of the seriousness of dry eye pain. Phew. - On the other end of the spectrum, I will never forget attending a LASIK complications session of ESCRS in Paris back in 2004. I sat there quietly chewing on my tongue in revulsion as some of the best-known, most respected corneal specialist LASIK surgeons in the US laughed heartily at the story of one particular patient with dreadful vision complications. She was a double PhD, they said, and presumably was really smart - so how could she have been so stupid as to get LASIK done not just once, but twice, despite having a high hyperopic correction? And I remember the way the American surgeons looked absolute daggers at me when I was invited by some Greek surgeons to give a talk at a cornea conference in Greece back around that time. Their faces said, who the !@#$ let this patient in here to spoil our gloat-fest by talking about complications?

Then there's everybody in between the extremes. I personally find it a lot easier to extend some grace and understanding and give the benefit of the doubt to almost any type of doctor other than the LASIK surgeons, frankly. I've seen an awful lot of heartlessness out there in LASIKland over the years - as well as so many failures to properly diagnose and treat dry eye or vision complications that to this day I still tend to encourage people who are being treated by their surgeon to move on to a specialist unassociated with their surgery if they are not getting adequate treatment. It's hard not to be very heavily biased when you see so much physical and, perhaps even more, emotional harm that is done - even though I KNOW my views are skewed by hearing from all the exceptions and not the successes. Somehow the successes just don't compensate for those that are harmed. They really don't.

Thankfully I also talk to people who absolutely love their doctors or describe their history of diagnosis in treatment in such a way that I know they're being taken care of to the best of their doctor's ability and these things help put things in perspective and give me hope. It also helps that I hear from multiple patients of the same doctor. I remember the first time I heard from someone who absolutely loved DrX (name withheld to protect the innocent or guilty). I had such a thing about this particular highly reputed doctor at a highly esteemed eye center. I had heard horrific stories about his/her coldness, heartlessness and even lack of interest in patients who went to see him/her. Then someone I know and trust described how much she loves this doctor and how compassionate the doctor was. My jaw hit the ground. It was a potent reminder to me not to be too quick to stuff any doctor into a box labeled Irretrievably Bad In Every Way.

EDIT: Hannidan, I am so sorry for what you've gone through. I am sure I'd be feeling the same way if I had. It's so hard when you're harmed by medicine (drugs, surgery, devices, whatever) and are dependent on the very same system to help... or harm further as the case may be. As a LASIK patient (13 years) who's now been struggling for nearly a year with a painful complication from a plug put in for my LASIK induced dry eye, I "get" that... for sure.