I had high hopes for rheumy #3. After all, a friend says he diagnosed her with a rare form of arthritis after docs at Johns Hopkins and Boston hospitals failed for 10 years to figure out what was causing her extreme pain and fatigue. And now she (mostly) feels great thanks to Enbrel.
She urged me to see him, even though I said I'd already had every test under the moon to figure out what's wrong with me. I have a variety of abnormal test results, but they don't point towards a single, unifying diagnosis, something all the docs I've seen have trouble overcoming. (What? You think you could have TWO things wrong with you? Impossible!)
So the new rheumy spends 45 minutes or so taking down an abbreviated medical history of my nearly three year ordeal. Then he tells me to change into a gown and, after a 30 minutes (!) break, he comes back to do a physical exam.
About 15 minutes of exam, he then sits down to start a monologue, which he refuses to allow me to ask questions as he goes (and I'm so exhausted that I can't even remember everything I want to question by the time he's done talking, 20 minutes or so later).
I had expected him to want to think about my complicated case, perhaps request some of my medical records from various specialists I've seen.
But no. He said that because the 6-to-8 abnormal objective findings don't add up to a clear diagnosis, the answer is obviously a very complex form of fibromyalgia. He says there's a chance that I have a very complex case of FM *and* lupus, but he strongly believes that even if they treated the lupus, the vast majority of my symptoms would continue to exist because they stem from that "very complex case of fibromyalgia."
Oh, and guess what? There's a guy in Medford who has a revolutionary *cure* for fibromyalgia. No, there don't seem to be any studies that back up this guy's theories, but he has lots of testimonials on his website.
So I asked why, if this guy found a cure for FM, aren't there lots of studies duplicating his results? Why aren't *all* doctors curing their FM patients following his magical psychotherapy techniques?
Sigh. Well, that got me a short lecture on the mind-body connection (which I do believe exists -- but not in a way that can change my blood test results).
When I told him that my other doctors have downplayed the possiblity of fibromyalgia, at least as a sole diagnosis, due to things like my elevated SED rate and CRP, among other things. He told me those doctors, like me, were focusing too much on the physicality of my illness and not enough on the mind-body connection.
I'm feeling really depressed right now. Sigh. I guess I've really been lucky that this is the first doctor to suggest it was all in my head and what I really need is a special psychotherapist. :-(