patient reviews and complaints

I was injured in a car accident close to seven years ago, and a year later returned to work to be more severely injured in a broken chair, never recovering from my initial injuries. The first doctor I went to see was Dr. Gary Williams, of Schen Reg. Orthopedics. He literally spent only four minutes with me, two minutes following up on a still injured hand problem, following his two minute appointments. He had diagnosed only strains and sprains, and did very little of an examination. He did not read the PT letters my physical therapist was sending him, as she had asked me to go and ask him if he had read them, and he asked ME if they were in the file. I asked them to read her report and questions as to whether he would further evaluate my injuries since they seemed more severe than sprains and strains... in both cases. The fact that I could bend down sometines only just to below my knees seemed enough for him to believe that I wasn't badly injured, yet I could barely walk. He walked out while I was trying to ask a question, and I hadn't further discussed even my symptoms. One injury from the car accident has been ignored for years since the other injury has been so serious. Seven years later, I am getting an MRI, and last year it got x-rayed for the first time. I finally found an efficient orthopedist, whose office staff and himself spent an hour and a half with me diagnosing each injury, and sending my for MRI's of two of the injuries, the third has not actually been MRI'd yet, and I am going to a surgical specialist this week, having found out for the first time in seven years that my sacroiliac injury can be surgically repaired. It was initially diagnosed by Dr. Williams as a back strain. A year later at Albany Med, I was seen by a PM&R group who diagnosed a sacroiliac dysfunction, and in the few years I was with this group, I was never told that surgery could be done, but the opposite, there was no surgery for this injury. I found the information on the internet, and have found a doctor knowlegable in this. I have suffered in severe pain, left only partially treated. My shoulder is an inch or more higher than the other, always hurting, and loudly cracked with each rotation at the new orthopedists, who said, that shouldn't be happening, you need an MRI. My hand injury prior to the car accident was diagnosed as a sprain by two minute Dr. Williams, and then perhaps the office thought I had carpel tunnel. The initial lack of evaluation by Dr. Williams has confused many doctors I believe, and no one really realized I was bedridden and could barely walk. My left leg and foot are also involved in what they call periformis muscle syndrome, which can impinge on the sciatic nerve causing symptoms similar to sciatica, and my foot kills me to walk on it for too long, it spasms, cramps, and the toes twitch. I have muscle spasms in my buttocks and cannot sit for too long in pain. I do have low back pain, often also associated with sacroiliac dysfunction and instability. Most likely this joint is loose, similar to the hip joint perhaps being loose and wiggling around in the joint, and is of a similar kind of pain, since so much of the body weight is on it. Finally, I am just got an orthopedist to really take a good look at my hand injury and most likely diagnose it correctly, and he said with a "crushiing injury" like yours (no one had ever put it this way as a three pound object fell on my hand causing severe pain, pins and needles tingling, and has never gone away. I am a pianist and can no longer play the piano)... it is most likely a ligament that needs surgical repair near my cmc joint which is painful and was xrayed finding a bone slightly out of place years ago. I have seen actually several doctors in between these, all mis-diagnosing the problem, confused since it has been so long and because of the initial lack of evaluation and correct diagnosis. Dr. Aboelsaad at Albany Med actually was going to treat some of the pain I was having and over a years time kept saying the insurance hadn't approved of the injections, ... "yet", and when I looked into it, they were submitting the request to the wrong insurance company. This week I finally got an injection for pain, as doctors at Albany Med started trying to just group all of these undiagnosed injuries together and call it fibromyalgia, and simply treat me with drugs. It has been a nightmare, and I am in severe pain still with activity, and spend a good amount of time on the couch, and can't tell you how much I have suffered. When I couldn't clean my house and take care of myself after several years of this, they simply tried to tell me I was crazy, and the latest is it is just the nerves "remembering the pain" from the injury and continuing the pain for some unexplained reason, even though the pain should have cleared up. I wonder if the doctors are protecting each other from liability for neglect, or are simply confused and doing the best they can years and years later after the initial doctor failed to listen to even my symptoms. Thank goodness I finally have doctors who are finding the actual problem and giving me options of how to heal it. Many doctors simply don't take the time needed, and schedule appointments as close as ten minutes apart. (Dr. Williams, the office told me years ago). And yes, it has been a scary ordeal, and I have been made to feel like my symtoms are not as severe as they are and don't need further treatment, yet they do. My current GP also recently said with his chronic pain disorder theory, that he was seen people's pan symptoms "poof", just disappear. The drugs they can give me to more effectively treat my pain, without fixing the problem, have possibly severe side effects, on top of pain levels that can reach the max on a 1-10 pain level with normal activity. And I have had to endure all of this, and maybe more when the first doctor simply refused to take the time. I had complained to the secretary and manager, and told them his notes barely began to address my car accident areas of injury and level of limitation and disability from the injuries.
And I have to say, although this may seem beyond belief for some people, that in the end, when the doctors have been told and figure out that I am much more badly injured than they realized, they begin to lie about it, most likely to not be sued for diagnosing. This makes it harder to get properly diagnosed by a new physician. I could go on. I was in a rehabilitaqtion pool last week for exercise, and a woman volunteered, that she goes to this practice, and most of the doctors are good, except Dr. Williams she says without me having mentioning his name. I had complained to the Health Department. They cannot control the amount of time a doctor will spend with you, even if he pops in for 20 seconds and leaves, when you need him for longer.