Ugh.

How long ago were you on Accutane? It was 5 – 6 years ago for me… I think that the depression and increase in suicidal thinking has caused dermatologists to be more cautious when prescribing it. I heard of someone who’s dermatologist required everyone to see a psychiatrist while on it–my dermatologist was not that on top of things. I wonder if her prescribing methods have changed.

eshoe–

I’m sorry you had such an awful experience on Remeron. I had a bad experience with Geodon–constant tiredness (seriously was taking THREE naps a day) and consistent weight gain. When I told my psychiatrist all of this his response was, “Well, at least you’re not anxious and you need to gain the weight.” Grr. Of course I am not anxious when sleeping and the medication didn’t help with healthy eating at all.

I completely agree that “slipping through the cracks” can be a huge trigger. Even now, when I know that there are so many doctors unfamiliar with EDs out there, it’s hard to not take “you’re fine” as truth when realistically I know that I am not.

“But that’s a very unusal side effect,” I was told. Now I read askapatient.com before starting any new med. A pill meant to give me an appetite just made me feel even more out of control. It’s sad, because we are slipping through cracks and I think it can be a huge trigger (look what I can get away with!).

As for dumb things said to me, I remember calling to check on my labs in college. There was some nurse on the other line. She said all my labs were okay, except for my potassium. Her answer for this was to eat more broccoli and bananas, never acknowledging that purging made those lab values low.

Interesting–a friend of mine (with anorexia) was just prescribed a thyroid med for depression… and she’s residential. I wonder what the psychiatrist is thinking?

I agree that everyone is so concerned about obesity that doctors don’t take calories restriction and low weight seriously. Maybe if you saw 100 cases of cardiovascular disease, then low blood pressure would seem really healthy (even if it were too low).

I also think that physicians are much more familiar with the ramifications of obesity than with starvation. Not only are heart disease, high cholesterol, cardiac arrest, diabetes (etc.) more common than say… hypokalemia and early-onset osteoporosis, but they are more easily identified.

Not that any of this justifies your doctor not understanding or being uneducated about eating disorders…

I got the thyroid meds, too- and I’m really thankful I had the good sense not to take them.

Some doctors are impatient, but many are just plain ignorant. I think the focus has gotten so much on obesity, that doctors tend not to freak out about minimal eating and low weight. Or they don’t really understand the seriousness of EDs.

I’m sorry that you’ve had experiences like this, I agree with you, I think it’s all too common for ED sufferers to have to deal with well-intentioned doctors with little or no insight/experience with EDs. It doesn’t help that some people can be very deep in an ED and still have largely normal bloodwork results, I think some doctors try to breeze through appointments and pay more attention to pages and chart than the person sitting in the exam room. I didn’t mention this in my post, but earlier this year my physician also tried to put me on meds for underactive thyroid without even acknowledging that my ultra-low weight at the time was a likely factor, and that the way the drugs work usually doesn’t prove effective at all in anorexics. Just a bit of weight gain took care of the problem, but he never discussed that aspect of it with me.