This is a post I am putting directly onto this site. It is not really an essay or blog post. I just want to share with any potential readers a bit about Mayo Jacksonville and the fact that I am going back for my third visit there in three years.
Lately, (for the last year) my medical mystery du jour has been upper right quadrant pain. This has blossomed and grown and now become unmanageable and intense. I have tried numerous specialists and tests here in Texas hoping to get the issue solved. At this point, no one in the Austin/San Antonio area can seem to help me and my situation seems to grow worse daily. So, I have decided call on the doctors at Mayo in Jacksonville. This is where my “real” doctors are.
Mayo is the only place I know where they put together the whole picture and do not see a patient as little slices. At Mayo they work up your whole body and consult between specialties to come up with a differential diagnosis. Because I have several over lapping immune diseases which complicate any kind of diagnostic process, it seems I must have this type of diagnostic approach. It is frustrating in the extreme.
I am grateful that I have been to the Mayo twice and know what to expect and how to deal with everything but I am also very frustrated that medicine is practiced in such a half assed manner elsewhere. Without communication and collaboration, differential diagnosis (the process of putting together all the pieces in the puzzle) doesn’t work!
So, here I go again. I cannot afford to do it and yet I cannot afford to not do it. My appointment is a month away and it is way too far in the future. I will call each and every day and ask for a cancellation. That is what the nice lady in Florida said to do…
I hope she doesn’t get tired of hearing from me.
🙂