That is great advice. It’s frustrating when you wait 3 months to finally see a specialist then find out they’re not exactly the right specialist for your case, so you get referred to a different one with another 3 month wait. Add to it the tests and scans that can take weeks to schedule to complete the diagnosis, then the wait to get treatment scheduled if needed. I lost 4 months in a process once with an entrapped nerve in my elbow; with my symptoms, my PCP referred me to an orthopedic doctor who specialized in shoulders. When I got to him 4 months later, he felt bad that he couldn’t help me, because my elbow fell under orthopedics HAND specialty, not Shoulder. So I had a 3 month wait to get to the Hand specialist, who could finally diagnose and treat my elbow issue. If I had researched on my own up front, perhaps I might have been able to avoid going to the wrong specialist first.

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