@mckinney3 I have heard that the more general groups are harder to get into at Mayo such as neurology because there are many patients with neuropathy asking for help. If your wife was to get into Mayo for a more specialized issue, then once a patient, her providers could refer her to other specialists. From my own experience, I came into Mayo as a surgical patient for spine surgery, and later came back to Mayo after I broke my ankle and needed surgery, and also to see a pulmonologist about asthma. In both instances, I asked my spine surgeon (who was my first contact Mayo doctor) and he referred me to the other specialists. When I was at Mayo about spine surgery, I was referred to a thoracic surgeon for evaluation because I also have thoracic outlet syndrome which creates overlapping symptoms with a spine problem, and I was referred for neurology testing related to spine surgery. Could your family physician possibly suggest a specialist direction that could be related to your quest as a good place to start?

In my case for spine surgery, I had been turned down 5 times by local spine surgeons for something that was easy surgery to fix, but because the local surgeons misunderstood connecting my symptoms to the problem on the imaging. Essentially, they missed the diagnosis, and my surgeon at Mayo understood that relationship. It probably helped me gain acceptance at Mayo because I was getting worse and no one would help.

One place you may want to try starting is with an environmental medicine or functional medicine doctor because they look at causes for problems instead of trying to treat symptoms with drugs. You could look at https://www.aaemonline.org/ where there is a practitioner search. That may help you determine a direction and path after which you could either work with the new doctor or approach Mayo at a more specialized level of entry. I know that is frustrating to ask for help and not receive it. I went through that with the 5 surgeons who would not help me. Doctors need to see a problem they recognize and can fix to become interested in helping. They don't want to fail or tell you they don't have an answer. I can tell you, Mayo is a wonderful place with compassionate doctors. I have had 3 surgeries there and was very well taken care of each time. My recoveries from surgery have been good too. I didn't know it could be like that in medicine.