I have one gastro that I go to, the problem is the emergency room and hospitalizations. I've had the disease for so long (17 years) that my body has stopped responding to most Crohn's treatments so whenever it gets really bad and I start to get dehydrated the office tells me to go to the ER. Also, when I get hospitalized I get stuck with whatever gastro is in rotation from my doctor's office and they control the actual Crohn's treatment not the symptom management. In their network the hospitalist is the one who deals with all of that stuff since they're the only ones that are at the hospital 24/7.
I'm currently on Prozac, Abilify and low dose xanax for my psychological issues (the prozac seems to also help with pain response which is nice). I'm actually pretty leveled out for the most part, my main problem is just with medical treatment.
I'm always super nice to doctors until I start getting treated like crap because at that point my care is going to be crappy anyway so why even care. A lot of it has to do with the fact that the are I live in has one of the biggest heroin problems in the US... so I get why they're so jaded but that's not my fault. I shouldn't feel bad for being in extreme pain after shitting blood for three days and wanting something to make it stop for at least a little bit... but I've actually had doctors (who of course don't have IBD) tell me that Crohn's isn't that painful and that they don't understand why anyone would need anything stronger than Tylenol for it.
My fear of going to the doctor's office itself is pretty irrational... I'm just so terrified that they'll turn against me at any point. I'm pretty eh about my current doctor, but he does his job. I loved my old doctor, but I absolutely hated the hospital he worked at (I came home with a MRSA infection almost every hospitalization) and some of his team members. My doctor had actually put in ongoing orders for the ER ithat said I was not a drugseeker and then included preferred orders for emergency room treatment. Unfortunately, some doctors have a god complex and they completely ignored that note... or they were too lazy to actually look at my charts. It all became unbearable when one of his team members developed a personal problem with me after he was reprimanded for how he treated me (I was hospitalized from the ER and the next day he immediately sent me home... then a couple days later I was told to go back in because the C-diff tests came back as positive). He was told that he was never to have anything to do with my treatment but he didn't listen and would go out of his way to make sure he had my case if I was hospitalized while my doctor was out of town. He would refuse to prescribe anything for pain even if the test results showed severe inflammation or infection... he even refused to let me take my home medicine and would drug test me everyday to make sure nobody snuck me in a pain killer or anything. One time when I was in the ER, he went out of his way to take the student doctors down to the emergency room and stood outside my room saying I was an example of a heroin addicted Crohn's patient who used their disease in order to manipulate medical professionals into giving me drugs. My fiance got his phone out and started recording what was being said (which you're legally allowed to do in my state). The doctor actually tried to take it out of his hand. Even when he wasn't in control of my case, he would change orders around in the computer (which he was technically allowed to do as part of the team) and cancel all pain medication besides Tylenol. It would always get changed back eventually... but that would take hours and I didn't know about it until I would have been due for my next dose. My doctor tried everything he could to get him to leave me alone, but he just wouldn't. I cried for days when I had to give up my doctor because of his team member's actions. I've been weird about doctors and hospitals ever since.
Are specialists not really a thing in the UK?