Thank you for the response. It is sad but true, doctors seem to know and focus on their little piece of if patient. The gastro guy looking for cancer because she was a cancer patient, forgetting the rest. Thankfully the one physician looked at her holistically and looked beyond cancer itself. We are so thankful for him.
There is a lot for the physicians to keep up with and likewise a lot for patients to keep up with, but I would think that this should be standard patient education, standard patient screening on an ongoing plan of care. While off from work I could spend more time learning and researching but when you work 50-60 hours a week, have your own family to care for too, or when you are a patient exhausted with no energy, or when your needs are really complex, it is very difficult for the patient and family to do it well, and you assume that if you are seeing 3 docs a month, someone would put it all together. I posted to hope that it might prevent someone from going through what Mom did. It is sad to think that as a lay person you have to really own your care and help to ensure that you receive what is needed...and in Mom's case nothing more. The GI guy was so fascinated by her benign esophageal tumor, dying to get in there and see it for himself. He is asking her to undergo yet another (makes her 5th I believe) GED just so that he can take a peek himself - forget the risk the pain, let's just do this! You caught me on a day that I am very frustrated with the medical community - in reality there are some very kind and thorough physicians and they are very stressed with the expectations placed on them these days. I am not sure what the answer is but our healthcare system, while the best in the world perhaps, is in peril.