I had a pain in my gut 25 years ago. Called a neighbor to take me to the ER (only a mile away). Gave me pain killer. Didn't work. Gave me morphine. It worked. Went to waiting room and asked person to call me a cab. Fell asleep on the chairs, woke up in the morning and learned the cab had come, they'd called for me, but I was asleep, so they left. Walked home.
A couple years later, same pain. Drove myself to ER Again x-ray, maybe a kidney stone, but couldn't really see one. Went to toilet off exam room. Fell asleep on toilet. Woke up, pain gone. Drove home.
A couple years later, third time. Stayed home. Lay on bathroom floor in agony. Fell asleep. Woke up. Pain gone. I don't know how long I was asleep each time.
Filtered my urine for days each time, never did find a stone in an xray or in real life or hear the clink when it hits the toilet, but they are common with people in their 40's and I outgrew my 40's.
Another time, more seriously ill. Wanted a "better" hospital. Took a taxi to the ER. Got a ride home a few days later.
Went other times too, after bladder biopsy, bladder stone crushing. After I hit my brow with the car door.
I've never waited more than an hour at the ER, and often only ten minutes. Once even on a Saturday night only 10 minutes when there are supposed to be a bunch of drunks and crimes.
But one time, after the bladder stone crushing, at the first ER, they took blood and came a few minutes later to say I was seriously low on calcium and potassium (I think those were the two.) They gave me one big pill of each to take and said I should stay in the hospital. Probably Saturday night at 10PM. I can't sleep on my back and with tubes can't sleep on stomach. Can't sleep well on side. 4AM a nurse has taken blood again and says my Ca and K are normal and that it's impossible that the two pills I took had such an effect so quickly. So earlier, "they must have attributed someone else's blood test to me!!!"
So now I want to leave but another nurse says, Not until there's no blood coming out of the bladder lavage (through a 3-tubed catheter (one for inflating the balloon inside with water, one for water in, and one for liquid out). I tell him I just had a biopsy so of course there is blood and there will be for days. I finally go to the bathroom and for some reason (I didn't do it!, but I should have), the catheter falls out, and I lie and tell them that I was able to urinate normally. Doctor comes in in the morning, a couple hourse later, and I lie to him too. Get to go home around 9 in the morning, sleep all day. By 6, in pain again because I can't pee, despite what I said. Go back to ER. This time I wait 10 minutes, a pretty girl about 20 puts in a new catheter, and I get to go home after 30 minutes total. No one tried to make me stay overnight. I asked her, Does your boyfriend know what you do? She said, Not exactly.
I"m a little confused about details, but the urologist left me in pain for a whole week, I think it was the following week, while he said he was trying to arrange the equipment to break up a bladder stone I had. I told him, "I'll go wherever the equipment is." Also during that episode, the office refused to take a phone message. HIIPA, or HIPPA, or HIPAA rules, even though no other doctor's office is giving me this baloney. So I faxed them with a statement in big letters at the "I WAIVE ALL HIPAA RIGHTS."
But now I'm okay and I've been okay for over a year, wrt urology.
OTOH, because of the hyperparathyroidism, I got osteoporosis, and an endocrinologist put me on generic Fosamax. What she didn't do is tell me that the side effect lasts 10 to 20 to 50 years after one takes it and that is the possibility of osteonecrosis of the jaw if you have dental extractions or implants, and conceivably some other dental work. All she would have had to do is ask if I needed dental work, and I knew that eventually I would need some. I could have had it a year ago with no risk of OSJ, but now I'm screwed and she screwed me. OSJ has no cure btw, only treatment.
She says the odds I'll get it are only 1/200. They've recalled what, 10 million, or is it 50 million Tecata airbags just because of
10 deaths, and I'm supposed to be comforted by 1/200, when I could have had my dental work before the Fosamax.
The drug maker and she say that stopping the drug won't have an effect, but one doctor and one dentist I found online say otherwise. So I stopped 5 weeks ago. The dentist, one crummy dentist with what seems like a public service webpage (I told him I would go to him if he weent' in California and me on the east coast. He's not trying to get my business) gave me a marker which he says is a predictor of who will get OSJ and who won't get it. NTX iirc. Under 100 bad, 100-150 marginal, 150 to 700 good. Mine was 154, but I'm going to wait another 2 or 3 months and hope it goes up some more, and hope it matters. So the dental work will be 4 months later than I would have wanted.
I'm still not sure if as a man I needed any drug for osteoporosis. When a post-menapausal woman gets it , they give hormone replacement therapy but maybe that's not the whole ball of wax. When my parathyroid overworked, they cut out the bad one (out of 4) and now I'm totally normal wrt that. I would think the osteoporosis would reverse by itself, but I have to look into that.
I was so diligent about choosing a good surgeon but didnt' think the endorcrinologist needed second guessing. Stupid me. (Still don't know for sure a different endocrinologist would have done differently, but this is just one of 6 places she mislead me or made a mistake, in only one year. She's only about 28 years old, just a year out of training, and I figured she'd have the most recent information.
That happened to my mom and she died of cancer shortly after (not that I want to scare you or anything). I blame pseudo-medico Sally Fields (aka "Gidget" and "The Flying Nun") who was pushing Fosamax like crazy a few years ago.
I feel for you, man, you got screwed by MDs just like my Mom.
Those are crappy odds for you. I wonder what kind of thought processes they use. My research has revealed time and time again that doctors downplay or almost complete ignore side effects reported by their patients as some sort of hypochondria. This is especially true of statins which doctors give out like candy and which give some people incredible fatigue and joint pains.
That sort of omission might lead me to file a lawsuit just so that the importance of what was done to you is made clear. It's Takata, FWIW.
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Did you get a bone density scan? That's how you can tell but they have now created a new disease called ostopenia which they claim is pre-osteoporosis. What about vitamin D and calcium supplements? That's a safer way to keep up bone density without the horrible side effects that Fosamax (and it's cousin, Boneva - aptly named because patients can say "I got boned by Boneva!")
Time to pull the ripcord. I tend to look for MDs about 10 to 15 years younger than I am so they won't retire out from under me when I have a serious problem. I've used to pick older MDs but 3 of them retired in the same year and left me in a lurch. One of the disappeared 25 years of medical records, too. )-:
But very little clinical experience which is where doctors learn what they were taught often doesn't coincide with reality. At her age she believes in big Pharma and everything the detail men tell her.
I have heard good things about Maryland Endocrine in Columbia. That's pretty close to you, isn't it? I can get you the names of some good ones that have worked with me and my wife's thyroid problems. One of them is a world-renowned thryoid expert, IIRC.
It was invented by Fozzy Bear, and like Bobby says, it was advertised a lot a few years ago, actually last year now that I think about it, by Gidget. There are loads of women taking it, or its generic, alendronate sodium. It's one of several bisphosphonates, all of which have similar side effects. I'm lucky I didn't use the injectable version, one shot for 6 or 12 months, because its tendency to ONJ is worse.
Yes, I read web pages and the enclosure when I started, and noted the possibility, though low, of ONJ, but what none of that said was that one can't stop taking the drug in order to avoid the interaction. When the dental work became important, I wrote to her and asked, How far in advance do I have to stop the aldendronate before dental work, so I won't have the problem, and she wrote back that it wouldn't help to stop.
It's in the manufacturer's interest to say stopping would help if it even might, but they say it won't help. Still, it might.
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J Oral Maxillofac Surg. 2007 Dec. Marx RE, Cillo JE Jr, Ulloa JJ.
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This article appears on the web twice, once in PDF and once in DOC format, and neither time does it have a date. Well, it says April 10, but not the year. Its opening words are "Recent data on the value of the CTX test..." but still no date!!! Just like about 60% of urls, even many with time value. This guy just quotes Dr. Marx above, so it's after 2007. He doesn't claim Dr. Marx is right -- but he's right downtown, and if he wrote this much, he might know if there is any more recent research on the topic (whether NTX level is a predictor of ONJ or not). Most of it online is from 2005, and one article said that up until 2005, they were still trying to figure out what ONJ was, since iiuc it didn't exist until Fosamax etc. were invented. I called him once and left a short message on his machine, and then I decided my plans would be the same no matter what he said, but maybe I'll call him again.
If this were legal research, there would be Lexis, which requires a substantial fee to access. There are *medical* pages that require a fee, which I would gladly pay, but none seem, to my eyes, to be anywhere near as expansive as Lexis. Do you know of any?
I've spent about 40 hours googling and reading, but have found almost nothing later than 2007. Except for the dentist in California. I'm not sure where he gets his info.
There had already been lawsuits btw, so I find it unlikely she didn't know about the problem, or at least unlikely that she wasn't told by her graduate professors. (Maybe she forgot.)
On Wed, 27 Jan 2016 20:42:27 -0500, "Robert Green" wrote:
Posted and mailed.
I'm sorry to hear about your mother.
You're saying she got ONJ?
And one source says the odds are 4%.
Hmm. For the first time a month ago, my internist prescribed atorvastatin (lipitor). So far no side effects. My cholesterol was marginal in the past but this last time it was either far up, or the lab just depicted it that way. I have all the prior blood results but they were on paper and never got filed. They're here somewhere, but since they weren't bad, I didn't pay much attention.
I don't think I have damages yet. The 40 hours I've spent googling and reading when I could have been doing other important things won't count as damages. I don't like thinking about getting this, but I can't help it, and if I do, I'm pretty sure I'll sue.
There had been lawssuits a year or two before she took her training, so he had to know about this.
Good to know.
I got a scan and it was fairly bad. I'm not doubting that I had osteoporosis, but unlike other causes of it, mine was the overactive parathyroid, and now that it's removed, I'm back to normal**. So I'm thinking it would all reach dynamic equilibrium again without any drugs. I asked her lately and got no answer. I've tried googling but don't know how to exclude all the pages about the average man with average osteoporosis.
**Although they do list other applicable causes, like not enough impact exercise (bike riding doesn't pound on your bones like even walking does.), like low testosterone (who knows. When I was considering marrying a girl who had had a hysterectomy at age 28, I had my fertility tested, with a prescription from her doctor, and in his words, "He's off the chart!" So I had great fertility fairly recently, but otoh, I'm 69 and I have a full head of brown hair (no grey except my beard). Doesn't that imply I'm low in testosterone (and that bald guys are high in it?)
The internist 2 years ago prescibed 3000 or 5000 units of D a day, and I was reliably taking it until this past year when for some reason I kept forgetting for weeks at a time. I don't know why.
As to calcium, that's another mistake of hers. She told me to buy some Tums just before the surgery, because when one of the (usually 4) parathyroid glands is over-producing PTH, the other 3 shut down, since their production is controlled, that is stopped, by the level of calcium in the blood, which the bad gland made too high. Once the bad gland is cut out, it can take iirc 3 to 5 days for the other 3 glands to wake up. That they wake up in only 5 days after being shut down usually for years is another one of those biologicial miracles. So I was supposed to take Tums for those 5 days, and I did, and then I had another calcium (and PTH) test, and both were normal, so I didn't need the Tums anymore. I told her on the phone that I was going to give it away, but she said to keep it for December (a year after this all started, about which she mistakenly gave me the impression she expected my treatment to be over.) So I didn't need Tums acc. to her but she never told in any other way to make sure I got enough calcium. Not until September, 9 months in when I wrote her about something else and included, "I know you would have said to if it mattered, but should I be drinking milk every day, or anything like that? " and she wrote back "You should be aiming for about 1200 mg of calcium daily through diet and supplement if needed. Milk/yogurt have about 300mg per serving and cheese about 200 mg per serving. Have a nice weekend, and I'll see you in November." Never said a thing about that before, and I would have remembered.
(In 1971, I broke my leg in Guatamala, and I made a point to drink 3 glasses of milk a day, even though the orthopedist (with a residency in the US) didnt' say anything. After I got back, I tried to find out if this was required, and afaict, it wasn't. So I didn't do anything special this time either, until I finally asked her.)
I'm not going back to her.
That's a good idea. And that *was* my idea too. But I ended up choosing an internist who was 63 y.o. He's about 67 now and doesn't seem to be retiring, and I like him
That's terrible.
Yeah.
Thanks a lot. I looked and they have some really good resumes. (Only one listed osteoporosis (the one from Mongolia! She has a good resume too. Of course so did the one who messed me up.) but otoh, maybe that's so standard that others didn't list it.) My email is in the from if you remove the NONONO, as I changed your 00 to oo. I could email you my phone or you could do that for me. I think I'd get a lot out of talking to you.
The internist recommended this one, he said, because the other in the same practice had a month's waiting list. I want to ask him if that is the only reason.
I don't really have a parathyroid problem anymore. Every test has been normal since it was cut out. The surgeon even tested the ParaThyroid Hormone level during surgery and it had already dropped a lot, to the high end of normal. 5 days later it was a little lower.
Another thing she told me wrong is that Medicare only pays for bone density scans once a year, and that she would send me for one this past December. But in November she said it was every two years, as if she had never said anything different. ...Well they will pay if a doctor says it's medically necessary, and I can pay myself. I called and it was $176 dollars or very close to that. One webpage says it was controversial (or maybe undesireable) to get scans once a year because the error level in the scan was greater than the change in one year, so once in two years is better.
Still, because I'm a guy, and I think I'm superman and nothing can hurt me, I think that even though I forgot to take the vitamin D, and even though I didn't ingest much dairy or beans, and even though I don't get much exercise, esp. bone-pounding exercise, and even though I took this terrible drug, I think I'd pass the bone density scan if I took one this week. But I can't spend $176 every week so I'm going to wait a little longer. I'm already committed to not taking the alendronate for 4 more months -- that will be 18 months -- and then I'll get the scan and pay for it if I have to.
BTW, for the record, the bisphonphonates do contradictory things. IIRC they keep calcium from leaving the bones, but they inhibit new calcium for getting into the bones. Statistics show a big reduction in hip fractures etc. for those who take it. But I should have been warned to get the dental work first. Besides ONJ, some women had sudden for no apparent reason fractures of the femur. (not the hip iiuc.)
Very much so. But it's a testament to how the power of Medicare's huge "customer" base helps negotiate outrageous charges down to the realm of reality. If Congress hadn't wimped out and allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices, we wouldn't be subsidizing Europe who DOES get a big negotiated discount on US drugs for their health care insurers. Getting booted off the formulary is something Big Pharma likes to avoid like the plague so they often cave on outrageously high prices.
Yes, it's so embarassing that the richest nation on earth and the alleged "leader of the free world" would rather spend taxpayers money bombing and rebuilding Muslim countries on the other side of the world.
You'd think we would be mortified that place like Cuba do better than we do in caring for all their citizens. The role of "nation building" is nowhere to be found in the Constitution (spelled out directly, anyway) but "to provide for the general welfare" of our citizens was placed prominently and directly right at the front.
When people talk about American "exceptionalism" I wonder if they ever think about how much better so many other countries are at providing health care to all citizens? The same goes for reasonbly priced high-speed net access (even though we started the internet! For shame!!).
We could learn a lot about how the Germans value training programs to get people back to work but we can't pass a simple jobs bill after the biggest crash since 1929. "American Exceptionalism" seems to mean we're so egotistical these days we believe that no other country has anything to teach us.
And worse, Bush couldn't win a war against insurgents armed mostly with IED's. So the long wars he started in Afghanistan and Iraq have given hope to terrorists all over the world who now know that the American military couldn't prevail against the Taliban and Al-Queda.
Bush made us look weak, stupid and willing to bankrupt ourselves fighting people who had little or nothing to do with 9/11. As soon as we started to pull out, the Iraqis went right back to their old ways and reignited the Sunni/Shia feud. What a surprise! Heckuva a job, Bushie.
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