Being strung along by dr

Have you gone into the online portal to view the results? It’s my understanding that medical professionals are legally required to provide that information online subsequent to a test or visit.

Can you get a referral to pain management or physical therapy? I agree about the portal. I get all my test results there.

Yes, I was also going to say check your patient portal.
You may want consider talking to your doctor's nurse. Although not ideal, she may be able to shed light on this strange delay. Or have them set up the first available appt with the doctor and ask him directly at that appointment.

Definitely time to move on. I was in a similar situation. Pain doc who manages my pain pump did very little to nothing to "manage" my pain. The pump has never given me any relief. I have asked, begged him to go down other avenues, throw my problem out to his colleagues. No, Not going to do it. Finally, about two and a half months ago, I went to a new pain doc. He gave more information and hope in twenty minutes than this other guy did in over a year. If you have a P'CP ask for a referral to another pain doc. Check out the ones given to you on a website like Health
grades.

Unfortunately, Celia, not every doctor uses an on-line portal. Many individual practitioner where I winter actually still keep paper records! And those who do use portals seem to each have a different one, so health records do not get integrated.

@tjjordan1 Is the doctor part of a clinic or group practice? If so, get the main number and call the Director of Practice for help. Or, are you perchance dealing with a larger bureaucracy like the VA or a hospital? If so they have a Patient Ombudsman or similar person to help you navigate communication issues.

First of all, you have a right to view the test results from where ever they were taken, and what heathcare professional did the results. I often go right to the horse's mouth (we used to say). With doctors like that, who delay badly and repeatedly, it's my standard response. And I get good info that way. Call "Medical Records" for the places you had those tests done, and find out, in each place, how to get your own copy of the test results. Then, look them up. Though it can be scary. I've often discovered stuff that looks very bad, but hasn't turned out to be. The cost should be minimal. Ciox normally charges like $2 to $4 max. for a copy of test results. I've been doing it for years, even when I like my doctors, and so far most have been free (the first set) or so seriously cheap that I can pay with my bankcard, afterwards.

Still, you can't begin to take charge and be responsible for your own health without being informed. As for your doctor, if I had a doctor that left me in the dark after about 15 tests, they would not be my doctor after about 4 tests. Life is too short to let them treat you like that.

You need to move on. It does not take that long to get results from tests. Please find a functional medicine clinic. They do a lot of labs and help you fix what is wrong with supplements and change of diet. You can get referrals to doctors that help you not strung you along. I'll say a prayer for you because I know what it is like to live with chronic pain. I never sit down long because of the pain it causes. Cannibus helps a lot with the nerve pain.

It sort of depends on what you want to do… I’ve been in this situation and I agree, it’s beyond frustrating. I’m the kind of person that does not like to leave loose ends.

It’s not clear from your post if you’re dealing with an independent/smaller clinic or a larger medical system. A larger medical system would be more likely to use an online portal, and as others have said, it’s worth it to make an account if you haven’t yet because any organization that uses Epic/MyChart usually automatically releases test results there.

Even so, you’ll need a physician to interpret the results. Especially if you have imaging, the level of “degenerative” changes or damage in imaging is not always in direct relation to pain and vice versa. Two people can have the same level of damage and one can have no pain, while another person can have a lot of pain, and orthopedic surgeons or some physicians aren’t always great at explaining this in my experience.

But, if you can obtain your medical records, you can take them elsewhere.

When this happened to me before, I got really upset and when I wasn’t getting an appointment or response, I asked if I could schedule with her NP or PA if she had one, or if I could see one of her colleagues if she wasn’t available. I still didn’t get a satisfactory answer; I ended up calling and leaving a message from her team and asking if I could speak to someone. When no one responded, I asked to speak to the practice manager and eventually I did get an explanation.

If this is a large medical center, most hospitals also have an ombudsmen or “Patient Experience” office—basically a line you can call to complain. I have had luck in those cases with getting communication opened up, but the outcome in almost all cases wasn’t what I wanted… I’ve done this maybe 4 or 5 times? (I swear, I’m resourceful and a patient, patient. I just think changing chronic illness or pain in this medical system…it’s a broken system and it’s sadly common for stuff like this to happen). In all but two cases, it turned out I decided the provider wasn’t a good fit for me. I didn’t feel comfortable working with providers who either thought it was acceptable to treat me that way and/or if the structure of the office is set up in such a way that there’s not enough coverage for some to even tell me what was going on.

This is a long way of me saying, I’d try to get the records myself, escalate your concern somehow, and if you’re not satisfied or don’t want to do any of the above…move on.

It sucks and it’s not fair, but to your point, you’re the one in pain =(. The sad part is we have to advocate for each other and ourselves. But I guess the good thing is we have the right to “fire” a provider if they’re not meeting our expectations.

I’m not sure where in your chronic pain journey you are, but for what it’s worth, I’ve gotten the most traction from seeing a physiatrist (physical medicine and rehab specialist; they can make referrals if needed but look at things holistically) and working with PT (they’re also both way easier to get ahold of and look at more than just the x-rays). Conventional medications, treatments, etc. have helped once we had clarity on diagnosis but something that helped me immediately is a pain neuroscience approach to treatment such as using the app, Curable (I’m not saying the pain is in our heads, but science shows that calming the nervous system can improve pain perception over time). But I agree it’s important to make sure you’re clear on the biomedical potential causes of pain before focusing mainly on psychosocial interventions (if we’re talking “biopsychosocial” model of pain).

Thank you ! I'm dealing with a large pretty famous place. The real problem is it's so specialized, there are very few that deal with this. I though I was finally in the right place. The Dr is so good and picky on his patients not knowing if he could help me, or not, seems like I'm just no where on his priority list. He said I could get another opinion, but didn't have any suggestions on where that would be. He is the only one at this large practice that does this. Just no where to go. This has been going on for many years, finally got a diagnosis last year, but now seems like I just can't get help anywhere. After much research, Pt since 2016, pain meds etc, honestly just don't know where to go, what to do. The last thing I wan to do is piss off a dr who might?? finally help. So just keep hanging on. I just wished I could get help with a very specialized Dr who actually cares.