Losing faith in HCPs.

I know what you mean.

For the past four years I have had a groin injury that limits my ability to exercise. It is not a "really big deal" but after about three miles of walking, it becomes painful and swollen. The pain persists after I get home and sometimes spikes such that I yelp in pain.

Before my diabetes diagnosis, it was really the only health issue that I was working on. At this point I have lost track of the specialists I was sent to but they included at least: a hernia specialist, an orthopedic surgeon, back to the hernia specialist, then to another orthopedic surgeon, and finally a round of physiotherapy. Oh, and a podiatrist, who found that one leg is longer than the other and prescribed orthotics.

This being America, along the way I paid out thousands of dollars for tests and so forth (even after the insurance company's payments). I had a cat-scan and two MRIs. They stuck needles into my muscles, tried all sorts of things.

The end result? Nothing. One after the other, they admitted that they had no idea what the problem is, and all the tests were negative. The only thing that helped was the physiotherapy, which does not reduce the swelling but helps deal with the pain, mainly by strengthening the neighboring muscles and therefore taking stress off the injured area.

I have now reconciled myself to just living with it for the rest of my life. The course of physiotherapy is over, but I continue to do the exercises every day at home, and they are helpful.

Doctors seem to be "totally at sea" when they are unable to tick a checkbox for a known, obvious condition. I suppose this is quite understandable but the frustration for the patients is almost unbearable sometimes.

Oh, and I also hate some of their metrics. What does, "Rate your pain on a scale of 1 to 10" mean? When they asked about my groin pain, I said, "it starts at around 2 and goes up to 5." Immediate loss of interest by doctor. You see, to me, "10" would be having the Gestapo tear out your fingernails while simultaneously applying electricity to your private parts. I bet I could have got the doctor's attention if I had said "10" but I'm just not inclined that way.

I have access to my the internal notes made by the doctor. Here is the final report from the orthopedist.

Subjective: [@Grateful] returns today for follow-up of chronic right hip and groin pain status post ORIF for fracture sustained back in 2005. I have been following him over the past few months and performed a round of dry needling/trigger point injections and sent him to physical therapy. When his pain did not improve with that approach, I reviewed an MRI of the hip a couple weeks back looking for any cause of chronic symptoms. He states that the physical therapy has since begun to work and that he rates himself now about 80% of normal. He denies numbness, tendon, shooting pain. He does continue to have residual sharp pain in the groin but it is not as consistent or severe as before. Interval MSK history is otherwise negative.

Objective: Well-appearing male in no apparent distress, he follows all commands and answers all questions appropriately. Appropriate mood and affect. Unaccompanied and speaking fluent English. Unlabored breathing with normal respirations. Anicteric and normocephalic. 5 out of 5 motor strength in hip flexion. Negative impingement testing scour of the right hip. Negative straight leg raise. No specific tenderness in the anterior hip or thigh musculature.

That "80 percent normal" is another stupid metric. When he asked me to rate my groin condition on a scale of 1 to 100, I initially told him that was an impossible question to answer. Eventually I said "80" and he lit up with a big smile, and said, "Well, that's pretty good, isn't it"

By the way, the reference to a fracture, in the first sentence, is because I broke my hip 12 years ago. All the doctors have been obsessing about this, thinking it explains my groin pain. All along I have told them it is some kind of groin injury and I don't feel it necessarily has any connection with the (well healed) hip fracture from 2005, but nobody listened to me.

To me, being 20 percent off normal is quite a big deal, because it makes exercising painful and unpleasant. With the T2 diagnosis, exercise is no longer optional, I consider it compulsory. But there you are....

Guzzler said:

I do not stress about excercise.

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When I researched it, the controlled studies seemed to show that moderate exercise (150 minutes per week) could nudge down the A1C by about half a percentage point. Helpful, but not particularly substantial. But I figure, if you can do the exercise, every bit helps (hence my frustration about the aforesaid injury).

Diet is the key.

Grateful said:

When I researched it, the controlled studies seemed to show that moderate exercise (150 minutes per week) could nudge down the A1C by about half a percentage point. Helpful, but not particularly substantial. But I figure, if you can do the exercise, every bit helps (hence my frustration about the aforesaid injury).

Diet is the key.

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Interesting.. I didn't up my exercise at all for the first year and a half on low carb just the usual dog walks (which did become much easier after weight loss and I sped up quite a bit too). I haven't really experienced the BG lowering effects of exercise although we did join a gym at the beginning of the year because I had so much energy.. unfortunately with building work on our house to occupy me our initial regular attendance has fallen by the wayside and so another waste of money has arisen... hey ho.. at least it was only a 12 month membership..

Guzzler said:

I have never yet seen a crowded Gym

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I wish I could get back the years of gym membership that I, and Mrs. Grateful, have paid while almost never using the gym.

Guzzler said:

I respect a doctor who will speak plainly and actually say 'I just do not know' rather than one who stares at you then dismisses your concerns. It has been a very long time since I heard a HCP admit to not having the answer.

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Me too...

Guzzler said:

If you take note of my signature the numbers are none too shabby. Acheived with nit one minute of excercise, it was all down to dietary changes. That is not to say that I would not like to be able to go swimming again as swimming for me is fun not necessarily something to be done as part of a '150 minute' excercise regime. Perhaps things will change in the future for me, never say never.

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I am another that lost a shed load of weight and normalised my blood sugars without additional exercise. I do walk the dog but always have done, so no change there. I do the housework, but always have done, so no change there either.

Grateful said:

I wish I could get back the years of gym membership that I, and Mrs. Grateful, have paid while almost never using the gym.

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I know that feeling too well.. I also wish I could have all the time back that I used to spend there wasting my time exercising then using that as an excuse to eat a shedload of carbs when I got home. I used to go regularly and gained more and more weight over time.

bulkbiker said:

I know that feeling too well.. I also wish I could have all the time back that I used to spend there wasting my time exercising then using that as an excuse to eat a shedload of carbs when I got home. I used to go regularly and gained more and more weight over time.

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The showers were nice. Better than the one in my elderly rented flat.

I'm another person who can't exercise (severe arthritis) so my BG has been lowered/controlled using diet alone - although I do often experiment with my diet, having at various times tried zero carb and ND but always coming back to LC.

Grateful said:

The showers were nice. Better than the one in my elderly rented flat.

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Ah true and the sauna and steam room.. should have really just gone in for a wash...

Grateful said:

When I researched it, the controlled studies seemed to show that moderate exercise (150 minutes per week) could nudge down the A1C by about half a percentage point. Helpful, but not particularly substantial. But I figure, if you can do the exercise, every bit helps (hence my frustration about the aforesaid injury).

Diet is the key.

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More to the point exercise seem to stop weight and A1C getting worce for a lot of people.

bulkbiker said:

Ah true and the sauna and steam room.. should have really just gone in for a wash...

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We are so easily pleased. (Never mind the wasted $89 per month.)

Evidenced based medicine is pretty much in disarry and very difficult to trust, especially when the editor of the BMJ says we shouldn't believe what's written in medical journals:


Well worth watching!