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Childish it may be but I'd feel the same way. On the other hand, nothing says "I told you so" like cold hard cash, so I'd first talk to a good medical malpractice lawyer or two. Even leaving aside punitive damages (which I think are justified for their combination of idiocy and callousness) and pain and suffering damages (which you certainly seem to deserve), you have incurred and will continue to incur actual monetary losses due to being misdiagnosed and mistreated for so long. Costs you've already incurred include lost pay due to missing work; money you paid for medical tests and treatments that were at best unnecessary and at worst downright harmful; non-mainstream treatments not covered by medical insurance that you tried in desperation; costs of psychological counseling to get over your supposed depression; heck, even costs for marriage counseling.

Costs you may incur in the future could include more extensive treatment than might have been necessary if the disease had been caught and treated in a timely fashion; working with a physical therapist or medically-supervised exercise to get over the effects of being debilitated for so long; and long-term consequences of the scarring you may now have (which could include impacts on your ability to work).

I don't know if you have a case - the law is truly weird - but I think it would be worth looking into. On the other hand, if you're absolutely sure you don't want to go the malpractice route or a couple of lawyers tell you don't have a case, then I'd definitely let my old, bad doctors know what's going on. I'd probably forgo the personal visit to say "I told you so" - satisfying though that would be. I would, however, very, very definitely get a copy of my current tests results and diagnosis and mail them to every bad doctor you've ever seen with a note saying something like, "When I saw you for help with my illness, you told me I was just fat and depressed. It turns out you were about as wrong as it's possible to be." Then the doctors can at least sweat a little over whether you might be going after them in court. And who knows - maybe they'll even have the decency to apologize and resolve to treat any future patients better.

All that aside, though, I do hope you find a treatment that helps and you can get your life back on track.

Take care.

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[Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate. - Sandra Boynton]

Edited by Sand (01/12/08 04:54 PM)

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