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Did You/do You Work In Healthcare?


HopeSprings

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I was reading an interesting paper about old outbreaks of "Epidemic Neuromyasthenia" (now CFS) and in one case the author talks about how a lot of hospital nurses were affected, but oddly no patients. Just wondered how many of you work (or worked) in healthcare before or when you got sick with dysautonomia. Here's the article in anyone's interested.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2425322/pdf/postmedj00263-0008.pdf

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I didn't actually work in health care, but was studying at university to go into medicine. I think there was a post here before along these lines, and someone thought maybe the high diagnostic rate was due to the fact that people studying sciences know how to find and interpret information, plus may be more likely to stand up for themselves and find a diagnosis.

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actually, we did a poll on here, or it was another post just the same about a year ago.... it surprisingly had a huge number of folks in the healthcare field, vast majority it seemed. I worked in pharmacy before my last downfall that's had me down the past 2 and 1/2 years......

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I have the nursing degree, but only worked about a year before symptoms made it impossible. I know nursing is stressful, as far as being responsible for patient life and death situations. When I first went to clinicals, I seemed to handle the stress just fine. By the time I had graduated and was actually working, the stress slowly became too much for me to handle. I honestly don't know if the job stress worked on ME, or something was already going on physiologically in me that made me less able to handle the job. It's possible they were one and the same!

At any rate, the free-spirit, ready-to-do-anything-person I used to be, then became less free and restricted by the inability to handle any stress. It's like I explain to my husband--anything that might make someone else be concerned, puts me in a panic-sticken-adrenaline mode. It goes from zero to 100, with no cruise button! Well, actually, my adrenaline is NEVER at zero, more like 50.

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I wonder if it is because people who work in healthcare, and nurses especially perhaps know that doctors are fallable. So many here seem to have been incorrectly diagnosed at first. Perhaps healthcare workers have more confidence to know that the initial diagnosis does not quite fit and have the confidence to stand up and ask to keep looking or a second opinion!

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I can't seem to find the post in the search. It stated something along the lines of 'what was your career before you got sick'.... something like that. But im not sure how long the search will go back to.

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One of the moderators should remember that post. If they do, they may be able to find it and post it.

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I wonder if it is because people who work in healthcare, and nurses especially perhaps know that doctors are fallable. So many here seem to have been incorrectly diagnosed at first. Perhaps healthcare workers have more confidence to know that the initial diagnosis does not quite fit and have the confidence to stand up and ask to keep looking or a second opinion!

whisper~ that's EXACTLY what one of the women pointed out!!! indeed!

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http://forums.dinet.org/index.php?/topic/17301-our-jobs/page__p__158219__hl__career__fromsearch__1#entry158219

Was this the thread you were thinking of Tennille?

I was an RN for 7 years, then I suffered a hip injury as a result of a car accident, had 2 surgeries and over 100 PT visits (still going), came down with POTS and small fiber neuropathy within a couple of years after the car accident. I do think that my nursing experience equipped me to investigate my symptoms and know how to converse with my doctors. It helped me know how to explain my symptoms, and after dealing with doctors at my job for years I learned that, yes, they are fallible but some would be willing to try anything to help me.

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christy D~ i am thinking yours is the one, but it seemed that there was a doctor or pharmacist or both who had replied as well.... i remember replying myself (one of the few things i remember... lol). Seemed l like the thread was several pages longer though. But it could be my bad memory.

thankful~ interesting how the same question is asked after lengths of time and we still get a majority in the healthcare field..... interesting :)

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Thanks for finding these! The article just got me about thinking about infections and I remembered talk of a lot of nurses here... and since we don't know what causes dysautonomia... well you can connect the dots. However, it could be like Frugalmama and Whisper said, that's it's more diagnosed among healthcare workers and not that more healthcare workers have dysautonomia. Oh, it's always so complicated. :wacko:

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that is crazy! yes i have been working in hospice and inpatient psyche for the last 6 years and i have been progressively getting worse. i have been unable to work since march of last year......I just kept puttingit off as I was woring too many hours or from just on my feet too much till this last year.. i love taking care of people nut on the down side it makes me a horribe patient :mellow:

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Me too. At the time I came down with POTS symptoms I had been working in a hospital setting seeing patients, and still do part-time (with my major job now a desk job at a medical device company). It does seem to me there is an inordinately high percentage of people in healthcare/medical related fields on these forums, but my theory is that this is because they are more likely to seek out answers and be interested in learning all they can about the disorder.

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Not me .. I didn't have any health training. If I'd known what I know now about our bodies, I'd have fought harder to get a proper diagnosis instead I got labelled with cfs. Imho, Failing the rhomberg, having lesions on my brain and failing the poor man's tilt table test, etc should've been evaluated further.

My nightmare started after I caught a nasty virus or bacteria in 1990. I had uri's and uti's that

just came right back. That was along with my neuro symptoms. Fwiw, it looks like whatever

nailed me started or increased my gluten intolerance. It appears that my ataxia and most of my neuro symptoms were from gluten.

After my recent experience with h pylori making my dysautonomia worse, I wonder about the viral or bacterial angle. Have you all been tested or treated for these ? I wonder if stool testing is more accurate ..

Kudos to those of you in the health field who are helping us get a handle on this .. Tc .. D

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