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Diagnosis? We'll get back to you in 14 business days

Wed, 03/13/2019 - 00:02
Hi all, I'm especially new to all of this. So new to this that I haven't even been given a diagnosis more than "you're having seizures". I'm 24 and in November of last year I thought I was having fainting spells, I had to go to the ER and because I "have no history of seizures" (I'll touch on that in a bit) they referred me to a cardiologist. Who I saw for about 2 months before I was even referred to a neurologist. That's 2 months I could have been undergoing testing or at the very least do all of my waiting. I say all of this started in November buuuut, the thing is that it MIGHT have started when I was 18. I was getting what seemed to be absent seizures at the time, after a trip to the ER my mom reminded me of a potentially hereditary food allergy that has been known to present as absent seizures in some adults (anyone else here celiac on top of epileptic?). So I took the bread out of my diet and they went away, but you see I did this before I went for testing and the symptoms had gone away. So now here we are, doctors couldn't/wouldn't send me to two specialists at once, I wasted 2 ½ months thinking it was cardiological come time find out it's neurological and now that all the appropriate tests have been ordered my insurance wants to sit on their thumbs. So I did what any logical person would do, I called them to ask them how long I can expect to wait. Their answer? "We have a 14 business day wait policy, we are still within those 14 days and cannot expedite the process"

Comments

Epilepsy diagnosis is often

Submitted by Amy Jo on Wed, 2019-03-13 - 04:27
Epilepsy diagnosis is often about eliminating everything else, it’s not actually a waste, just slow. Turns out lots of heart and other stuff can mimic seizures. It’s not time wasted. The tests commonly used with epilepsy patients can come back ‘clear’ even when one has epilepsy, getting into a neurologist who actually knows about seizures is another wait. There’s no definitive test for epilepsy that always works. As a patient learning to ask useful questions to get the most out of a visit is the best way to help things move forward.Our insurance can take two weeks to approve referrals. I don’t know what value they don’t add by the process as our child has a number of chronic conditions and sees many of the same specialists every freaking year.

Thank you so much for that

Submitted by Jellis83 on Thu, 2019-03-14 - 18:45
Thank you so much for that insight! I clearly had no idea, but I suppose that's part of the learning process isn't it. 

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