Medical Profession

My wife has been suffering with a lot of painful medical problems pretty much as long as I've known her but lately it has gotten particularly grim. She's started down the path to try to determine just what is going on. And has run straight into a problem.

Each doctor she goes to is a specialist. Each doctor looks at her problems through the filter of that specialty. If she doesn't have something that fits those filters they cast about trying to find something that's close but still within that specialty. When the give up it's off to another specialist.

We're guessing at the choices of which specialist is the right one. Which specialty is the right one.
Her primary care physician is trying to help. At least I believe she is, but how much can you do in the 10-15 minutes granted by the insurance companies. Not much.

Where's the old school generalist doctor who looks at you as a person and only calls in a specialist when they get over their head? Sadly this seems to mostly be gone. The ones that do exist tend to be in more alternative branches of medicine and often won't call on anyone from "the other side" so you remove half your options right off the bat.

That brings up another interesting point. Most of the doctors we talk to (I'm talking MDs here) are quite receptive to various alternative practices, but the reverse doesn't seem to be true.

I don't know, just overall frustration I guess. If anyone actually reads this and has a good suggestion, I'm all ears.