GP response to medichecks blood results.....

[Elle137]

I received an email from my surgery tonight from my registered GP (who I do not see anymore) sent by an "admin" Dr advises the results are not the normal ranges for NHS so difficult to interpret, advise to contact medichecks for interpretation, iron at 9.3 (10-30) difficult to interpret??? No re test or appointment let alone infusion, plus oestradiol at 2925??? So it's not only our thyroid health that is ignored, what's really sad is I wasn't even surprised 😔

[Regenallotment Ambassador]

oh dear… time to ask for an NHS test to replicate.

They are odd aren’t they, a result and a range…. Result under range = obvious 🤦🏽‍♀️

[Elle137 in reply to Regenallotment]

It seems that if you test privately (saving NHS money plus I can't get T4 & T3 tested) your surgery isn't interested? Very strange attitude 🙄 I asked for re test, not offered so testing privately again 🤷

[Mummybear0213]

I don't know what is so hard to interpret - the result and range is there to see 😂

It's really annoying that GP's aren't interested in private tests. Mine isn't bothered if it's from an NHS lab or not, if the results aren't from the actual GP surgery then they don't want to know.

[Elle137 in reply to Mummybear0213]

It saddens me greatly, this is our health & well being? We are only testing privately because we cannot get it done via our surgeries so effectively "taking care of ourselves" but they are like nope, you can only do as we say & have what we provide......when did this happen 🙈

[Fruitandnutcase]

Oh good heavens - so they don’t use the same ranges as the NHS - can’t your doctor just look at where the results come within the range and go from there? As you say 9.3 on a range from 10-30 should be kind of obvious shouldn’t it. It’s not exactly rocket science is it. It is very sad and as you say so many of us are pretty much taking care of ourselves aren’t we.

[JumpJiving]

Even when I had a life-threatening, time-critical, condition identified by MediChecks in Dec 2023, my GP wouldn't accept the blood test results, despite the blood being drawn at my local NHS hospital's phlebotomy department and the test being done in a professional lab. It took a lot of pressure from me to even get the GP to repeat the test, after which I ended up in Same Day Emergency Care after the results came back. With my GP practice, it is an attitude problem from the senior GP partner that gets instilled in other GPs there (it is a training practice so the attitude will spread elsewhere). After that experience in December and a consultation since, I think the senior GP partner now knows not to mess me about, as since then I have got everything I have asked for. But, to only make them do things they don't want to when I really have to, I play their silly, wasteful game - I've done it today in fact. Two of my blood tests in a recent MediChecks panel (done to monitor the condition from last year, but including other things too) came back way out of range unexpectedly. I used the GP's online appointment request system today to request an appointment and repeat blood tests, rather than ask for an immediate referral (which I am certain is what will happen after they repeat the blood tests). It's unnecessary and wasteful of NHS resources (and my time), but it keeps the GP onside for those occasions that are not time-critical

[Elle137 in reply to JumpJiving]

I'm so sorry to hear of your experience 😔 that must have been absolutely awful for you, how dare "they" decide what they will or rather won't take notice of? We are forced to use private blood tests! My bloods were drawn at our local hospital too.....I guess unless one is poorly we (collectively) have no idea this is going on? I do hope you continue to be well 🙂

[Mummybear0213 in reply to JumpJiving]

I wonder if we're at the same GP practice.... sounds exactly like mine!

[BlueGreenWordyDoc in reply to JumpJiving]

Jumpliving, (NOT directly A THYROID TOPIC, -- although related to our problems with the relationship between our docs and our thyroids. I apologize, but I just can't help responding to your post) In May of 2023 I had surgery for breast cancer and afterwards had a fluid collection in my breast that both surgeons declared, despite my repeated reports that I was spiking fevers twice a day like clockwork, and I have a immunodeficiency, and my breast is hot as a potato, why don't you have a feel? I have an infection!....

No, they said, this fluid collection is a benign seroma. I, meanwhile, must be a whiner or a delusional person who can't take her own temperature despite having an MD.

It literally took until my heart stopped beating (3 times) for them to realize I was septic.

By the time I was actually admitted to hospital and not just turned away at the office or ER, I had a temperature of 105.7 (40.94 C) and my cardiac enzymes were wonko, but my other labs looked "normal-ish" and I had no risk factors for coronary disease and so they concluded that I must have Takotsubo's disease (broken heart syndrome--ie, your heart goes flop because you are sad (it is a real thing, if rare)) and I don't know how they explained the fever because, although I was apparently "lucid" for two days in the hospital while they scratched their chins and I slipped toward death, I remember nothing past my friend buckling me into her car to go to the ER (for the umpteenth time) until I woke up in the ICU ten days later with someone yanking a tube out of my airway and all the nurses who'd given me CPR coming in to give me surprised and gleeful hugs because they were so amazed I had survived.

My lungs, liver and heart all failed from sepsis with multi-organ system failure, but despite them knowing that I had an immune compromise, and despite my going in over and over and over again complaining of severe pain and heat in the breast and fever spikes twice a day (which is what you'd expect for an abscess, ie, fever in spikes, meaning temp of 39.4 C at 8 am and 8 pm but a temp of 37 C at 2pm when you are in the doctor's office-- that's just how abscesses fevers roll if they are going by the textbook (we used to chart fever curves, back in the day)-- an abscess being of course a distinctly less friendly variety of fluid collection than my "seroma")-- their thermometer shows 37 degrees, therefore, I'm blown off like an annoying fly threatening to get into their sterile ointment.

Well, not completely. One surgeon did give me a tube of honey for my giant open surgical wound which only got bigger instead of healing--six weeks out.

THIS summer, I had pneumonia with Klebsiella bacteria (very unfriendly), and spent two separate weeks in the hospital and this time my labs did look rightly-wrong, and my chest CT even showed pneumonia but on CT the pneumonia didn't"look like typical bacterial pneumonia"). So, each admission they put me on sepsis protocol antibiotics, then, after a few days, said "well, your white count is going down and you're not even having a fever here. "It must be that you're TAKING TOO MUCH THYROID at home and that's the reason you look better now than when you came in."

Right. I was definitely NOT looking better now than when I came in because of the giant bags of antibiotics going into my IV.

It's so unbelievable.... it took until a culture from an outpatient bronchoscopy for me to get a diagnosis, and now I'm getting two weeks of IV antibiotics at the outpatient infusion center. And they looked for everything.

I mean, everything. Except what was staring them in the face.

I truly apologize, that was very off the topic (except for the "you're causing this by taking too much thyroid" bit-- and I will refrain from non-thyroid topics in the future. But, I still think it's an important story because it relates to how all these people treat our thyroid disease.

Since I was trained in the bygone days of yore (the late 90s), I do have a theory. Even then this was seeping in, but now it's like a cancer. Doctors seem to have it in their heads that they are something akin to a slightly broken computer. It's as if they walk around feeling like poorly designed AI, desperately wishing for an upgrade. Listen to the patient's story? Noooo.... Do a thorough physical exam.... Why? The blood tests and CTs and MRIs will give us all the answers. (I even had a PET-CT scan--extra radiation anyone?--which just showed... pneumonia. So, I must have exceptionally rare disease number 675, which they should leave untreated until they chase it down. One morning in the hospital they took 21 vials of blood. They took similar amounts every other day as medical boards questions popped into the doctor's minds and they thought of more exceptionally rare things I must have).

But most importantly, as many of you know, if the tests DON'T give them the answer, then, well, you clearly just aren't sick.

It can take three rounds of CPR to convince them otherwise, even if you've spent six weeks doing nothing but scream "I have an infection!"

The first day of medical school I was told "95% of everything you need for a diagnosis is going to be in the history" ('the history' meaning the story the patient tells you). Now, it's lucky if a doc listens to your story for more than one and a half minutes. Why would they need it? They have their blinking tests!

I don't know if anyone else remembers this Monty Python skit, but there's one where John Cleese and one of the other guys are playing the doctor and the husband of a woman in labor. The woman is in the background moaning and delivering the baby by herself or something while they endlessly admire a gigantic metal box with flashing lights on it--'you and your wife are so lucky! You've been given the machine that makes the MOST BEEPS.'

We are there. All the way there. We will soon be delivering our own babies while the doctor stares at a computer. I mean, it could get to the point where we are delivering our own babies while the doctor simultaneously proclaims: "this machine tells me you're not even pregnant."

[BlueGreenWordyDoc]

Are you by any chance pregnant? Because those numbers would be normal in that setting. Not normal in others I can think of.

[BlueGreenWordyDoc in reply to BlueGreenWordyDoc]

I meant that reply for Ellie137 (btw, just so no one panics)

[Elle137 in reply to BlueGreenWordyDoc]

Good morning, I'm so so sorry 😞 for all you went through, appalling lack of?? I don't actually have words.......I am struggling to get my head around what is happening to so many people? So traumatic having to go through that for you 🫂I cannot be pregnant, no plumbing! On HRT, second GP response by email "happy to re test iron, cannot interpret oestradiol as she's on HRT" 🤷 fortunately I have a pelvic ultrasound scheduled (booked prior to blood test results) to look at ovaries & randox female hormone bloods to do, take care of you x