My Neurologist Yelled at Me Multiple Times
Okay, I have never experienced being yelled at by a medical professional or probaby anybody in a professional setting. I have a complex medical situation involving visual and sensory problems and dizziness that is pretty debilitating. It's caused me to drop out of law school, be unable to drive 3/4 days, and I'm really worried I'll never figure it out. I have seen every relevant specialist and they all punt me off to somebody else after the appointment and won't even posit, "hey lets just rule out the easy stuff." It has been 9 months and we are exactly where we started. My neurologist I've seen 3 times. She is rude at every appointment, but we were still mostly cordial.
She suspected I was having migrained and originally prescribed a bunch of meds for that. I took them but to no avail, and actually had kind of a weird reaction to one where my jaw was cramped for like a few hours. The others we tried hadn't helped at all. She refferred me to a neurosurgeon to have brain surgery because I had a a chiari malformation and so I got the surgery (like I said, i'm pretty desperate for answers). I had to wait 3 months after surgery to see her and my symptoms are worse than ever. My vision has flashing lights, dim spots, dim periphery, my eyes spasm randomly and it's very disorienting. Anyway. I got a follow up MRI for my surgery, where 2 15mm lesions were found bilaterally in the occipital lobes. around 12 days before our appointment I messaged her office saying "previously you were concerned about MS, and said we ruled it out, I would like to ask your opinion about the findings on my new MRI at our next appointment and see if it provides us any insight or not."
She never responded, so I assume: Okay we're just going to talk about it at the appointment.
I walked in she was polite and said
Her: "I don't think these lesions have anything to do with MS, different mri sequences highlight different things."
Me: Right, I'm not saying I think it's MS, I just remember that was your original suspicion, but the MRI was clear and now it is not.
Her: "MS lesions have to be in specific parts of the brain, which I am not going to tell you, and these are not in that part."
Me: Okay.
Her: Look at this *Pulls up radiopedia and shows me an extremely advanced demyelinating disease* See, yours does not look like this. You can look at radiopedia if you want.
Me: Yes I have seen those slides on radiopedia.
Her: You went on radiopedia?
Me: Yes.
Her: *raising voice* YOU DONT HAVE ANY BUSINESS GOING ON RADIOPEDIA OR LOOKING AT YOUR MRI'S.
Me: Well I never said I was a radiolo-
Her: EXACTLY.
Me: Okay, look I don't care if this is MS or not I just want to solve my problem and -
Her: *Interrupts me again* THEN YOU SHOULD HAVE SAID THAT BEFORE PATIENTS COME IN HERE WITH THEIR OWN DIAGNOSIS AND WANT TO EXPLORE IT EVEN WHEN I SAY NO.
Me: *tries to deescalate the situation* I absolutely understand what your saying, I am only interested in solving my medical issues. I have been being bounced between you and 3 other specialist, each of you telling me to see the other. I am losing faith we can solve this, so I decided to see if maybe my MRI provided insight, which is the original question i asked you."
Her: Silent for the rest of the appointment, forcing me to continue talking as she types on the computer.
Her: See me in 2 months. *describes migraines to me and prescribes lamotrigine.*
Guys, when I say she yelled. I mean It was shockingly loud for a doctor. I was in there being as polite and humble as possible, but I am just trying to get help. I feel abandoned in this moment. Is this a normal reaction from a neurologist when you ask about your own MRI? I never once tried to insinuate that I knew anything. I simply asked if SHE knew anything.
EDIT: There's a lot of replies to this, so I want to thank you all for the supportive replies. I also want to add some details that actually make this even worse lol. So here it is if you're interested.
At the beginning of the appointment she also said "Let me know if you want me to request another read of this to see if another radiologist can identify exactly what these are, but you will be paying for it out of pocket."
I told her, I would like to find out what they are. THIS is the point where her attitude changed and became adversarial and the aforementioned conversation took place. Before leaving the room at the end she did say
"I am not sending this over to radiology, even if you pay for it because...." *waiving her arms in a sweeping motion* .... Bye"
Then she left the room. I take the sweeping motion to be a condescending "this is ridiculous and not worth my words." Or a flagrant "IDK WHAT'S GOING ON" motion.
Anyways. Thanks for the support. I will attempt to get a new neurologist but this has left a bad taste in my mouth and now I'm scared to even talk to my other doctors because I just can't be yelled at again without flipping my lid. I'm tired of being the one to calm everybody down when I'm the one with the problem. It's funny I actually spoke with my counselor about whether or not to bring up the MRI to my doctor because I was worried of being labeled annoying or as a self-diagnoser and he assured me that this is relevant enough that I deserve an explanation of some kind.
Final Concern: I'm worried about starting lamotrigine because to come off I would need to wean off and if I lose her or she gets pissed again I worry she'd withhold care.