After almost 20 years of my life facing a diagnosis of epilepsy as an adult where I have had many questions as to the reality of that determination, I have come to the resolution to take my health into my own hands over the past few months. I understand that I had episodes as a teenager that were easily diagnosed as absence seizures and they occurred for about a year and then were gone for almost ten years before some strange episodes randomly returned. And the immediate presumption for all doctors was to state them to be seizures again and continue shoving various seizure medications down my throat.

However, as the years went on I had many questions arise and realized over and over again that none of the medications prescribed to me were any longer working to control the episodes I was facing. As my questions were brought up to doctors I realized that none of them would listen to me, considering testing for other issues than epilepsy, and would only consider treating me for seizures. They would only consider testing me for seizures, prescribing me seizure medications, and even try persuading me to have brain surgery! 

Doctors Never Listen

I have tried several doctors over the past 18 years or so in an attempt to find a neurologist who would listen to my questions about the odd symptoms and nature of my episodes and who might care enough about trying to stop my episodes that they would listen to my desire to have tests for other issues like narcolepsy and sleep issues. But for some reason that seems to be a completely closed medical industry that isn’t of concern for the patients’ best treatment and only for the best gain of their business. 

I couldn’t even get a recommendation to have other issues tested for the benefit of my own overall health and well-being out of any of those neurologists. All I could ever get was the request to prescribe me more medication or attempt to get me to spend an incredible amount of money to have a piece of my brain cut despite the fact that I keep trying to tell them my lack of confidence in the epilepsy diagnosis. 

Can We Get Doctors to Care About Our Safety?

How can we get doctors to listen to patients? To care about the overall health and safety of patients? I’ve had neurologists basically sign off on me driving simply because I take the medications they prescribe for their diagnosis, though it’s become clearer than ever to me that my questions to them about my episodes not being seizures at all were absolutely true. They were questions that should have been listened to by all of my doctors. 

Anyone Else Faced Troublesome Doctors?

Have any of you out there faced this with your doctors over the years? Have you been ignored about the true details of your symptoms when visiting a doctor? Maybe ignored when it comes to the true needs for your health and overall wellness? Does it ever seem that doctors are more concerned with prescribing a medication to you that may benefit their business? 

I have to swear that after everything has become so much more confusing over the years and has become even more complex over the past few months there is much more to take forward with my concerns of healthcare in our country today. I would love to hear anyone else’s story about past diagnoses and treatment from doctors!