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"Poor visit to neurology"

About: Hemel Hempstead Hospital

I visited the hospital to see a neurologist about chronic migraine after not having much success with a hospital in London and was hoping to start from scratch with a fresh set of eyes on the problem and get to try something new that might help. The neurologist kept us waiting half hour past our appointment time as he was running late, which was not really a problem and understandable, however, once I finally got in to see him all he seemed to do was rush through everything. He was not even the neurologist I was referred to but a member of his clinic which was also disappointing. He was quite rude, he asked me questions about my condition and when I went to answer each one he interrupted me before I even managed to finish my sentence and what I was saying. I could not even ask any of the questions I had as he simply would not let me speak. To make things easier I wrote and printed out some information in bullet points to take with me and show him so that he could see straight away my symptoms and medication i had already tried, yet he refused point blank to even look at it and just tossed it aside. He asked me a couple of questions that I could not answer through lack of knowledge, about the findings from some vestibular testing I had in the past, and when I could not give him the answer he wanted he started to get very short with me as if he was angry that I did not have the answers. He then told me I had tried every medicine available for treating migraine, yet he only had about 5 I had tried listed, and I know fair well there are many many more treatments available, He then was also trying to force a medicine I had a bad response to in the past upon me again and said my choices were to either have that medicine or just not be treated. Then he changed his mind and said I could try one of the antidepressants again which I agreed to, but then changed his mind a third time and despite already telling me there was nothing else I could try, has decided to prescribe me something completely different, which to be honest, with the lack of thought that went in to prescribing, I am very reluctant to even try. All in all the experience was awful and I came away from the appointment almost in tears simply because of how rude and short he was with me. Manners cost nothing, and it doesn't hurt to listen but this particular Neurologist seemed incapable of either.

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