Trust issues

[buffalogreen]

My question pertains to benzodiazepines.

My neurologist prescribed clonazepam for my tourette's and tremors, among other things. (Antipsychotics are out due to dystonic reactions) It was overly sedating. I happened to bring the issue up with my psychiatrist, who suggest lorazepam as an alternative and proceeded to write a small trial-script. Fast-forward a few weeks to a general check-up w/ the primary care doctor, having been scheduled a few months prior. We discussed the various meds I needed to be refilled, as is routine, and mentioned the lorazepam. Seeing she was not the inital prescriber, the primary care doc had to call the pharmacy to verify that I was on lorazepam, and what my dose was. She wrote the same script that my psychiatrist had written. The next time I saw the neurologist (not often), he was happy I found a med that I could tolerate, and switched me from clonazepam to lorazepam entirely. I'm assuming it's for more of a long-term use, with "holiday" periods, though I'm not positive.

Fast-forward again to now. I've done my best to keep all my doctors on the same page. It has come up that I've gotten scripts from different doctors. The primary doc thinks I was drug-seeking and manipulative. The Psychiatrist took the opposite view, and felt I had no malicious intent and was not trying to con him into writing a script.

Sorry this was so long, the background info. Here's my question: when the primary doc saw that I had multiple docs, she called each of them and informed them, obviously with an angry tone if she feels she's been conned somehow. I've called my neurologist multiple times at multiple sites when the event combusted, in an effort to touch base with everyone involved and get their take on it. The secretaries even confirmed that the Neurologist got my messages. I left messages as "urgent but non-medical." I think he's avoiding my calls, but he's also busy.

Could this be a sign that he's upset with me? He's returned calls before in a timely fashion previously, for medical issues. I'm also bipolar. All of this combined means many and varied medications and various times. I only see him on 3 month intervals, and call every month for the new script. Any input would be great. Thanks!

[clinicalguru3]

You should remember that whilst you only have a few doctors, we have literally thousands of patients and although, admittedly, we may occasionally appear irritated or too busy to deal with certain issues, in my experience doctors do not "get upset" with their patients for more than a few minutes at a time as something more urgent or important grabs our attention.

In any case...as far as you are concerned here is what I would recommend:-

1) Get into the routine of seeing your primary care doc regularly with pre-set appointments.

2) Request that the primary-care doc gets into regular contact with the specialists involved in your case.

By this means the docs will be dealing with you through the normally accepted channels at a time when they are supposed to be devoting themselves to you and not between all the other stuff.

In principal this is the ideal...that the patient should have easy access to the primary care doc who should have easy access to the specialists. Most issues (e.g. changes in drug dose etc) can be sorted-out on this level, and if the primary care doc feels you need to be seen physically by a specialist then they should (hopefully) help arrange this.

Hope that helps.
Let me know if you think it makes sense