Damn. I am so sorry to hear about your experiences and I am embarrassed for the lack of professionalism and attentiveness from people in my wheelhouse - it truly does make us all look bad. I will assure you however, that there are those of us out there that do take the time to read those histories and I have taken a lot of grief for it over the years.

Yours were just the type of conditions I did not want to get past me. As an example, I have on occasion requested another biopsy taken on a patient that I was sure was harboring a malignancy after the first came back negative. After taking a whole lot of crap from the pathologists and the insurance companies, I was always found to be right. Fighting insurance companies is a huge problem. What is a provider to do when an insurance company flat refuses to pay for a test or a procedure? I understand your frustration with the system. It is definitely broken and there are many reasons for it. Some in the system give up fighting the battle and just go along to get along. I don't have it in me to do that so I was always seen as a bit of a boat rocker. But it does make you weary over the years and many of my colleagues gave up the fight and retired. I am currently on the sidelines myself until this current insanity passes. So I really do feel bad for those that are forced to navigate the waters with the Covid madness.

Autoimmune diseases can be very difficult to diagnose as you have to know where to look. There are hundreds of them. RA, Lupus, Hashimoto's, Sjogren's, and the like, are easier to nail down, but some are very rare and unfortunately can take time to finally diagnose. They can present in all kinds of different ways. My mother had an autoimmune disease of her hair follicles that required a very specific biopsy that only a few labs in the country could do. Of course we had to wait for insurance approval which they denied the first go around. A provider then has to submit a narrative in order to justify the procedure that the bean counters had to approve. Pile up enough of those in a day and you could spend a great deal of off time filling the paperwork out. There were many a day I spent after hours doing just such paperwork to get my patient the treatment or test I thought they needed.

By the time we got the diagnosis confirmed by the pathologist, my mom had lost a large portion of her hair. Most just kept telling her it was her thyroid. We kept looking for answers until we found them. I knew it wasn't her thyroid but the lichen planopilaris was not on my radar. Other than her scalp and her thyroid, she is 89 and in excellent health. She can actually kick a soccer ball around with her great grand children. I keep her out of the her doc's office except to refill her scripts. She doesn't need to worry about the Rona because she takes HCQ for her scalp. Go figure.

Thanks for sharing and I do hope you have managed to find some decent providers. Good luck and be well fren.