What Should You Ask Your Neurologist About Neuropathy?

Today's short post from livingwithperipheralneuropathy.com (see link below) gives some useful advice as to how to get a better understanding of your neuropathic problems and that is by asking questions. Most doctors and specialists just don't have the time any more to do anything more than skim over the facts when it comes to the complexities of neuropathy. That's far from ideal and does the patient no favours at all. Therefore it's up to us to provide a list of questions and insist on some answers. By doing this you can get answers to what you really want to know. Doctors can't read minds so it's up to you to get answers to your own specific questions.
 

Questions to Ask your Neurologist about your Peripheral Neuropathy
By Dean S. Lewis|November 22nd, 2015

Questions to ask your neurologist

The first step to overcome a disease is to fully understand it. Of course, that does not involve being an expert in the field, not even it is essential to follow one and all research done on the subject; but understanding pretty well what it is about may lead to better solutions. Peripheral neuropathy is damage to the peripheral nerves that carry information to central nervous system (brain and spinal cord) and bring back the reply from it. It is a two-way road, to put it clearly. These nerves can transport sensory, sensitive, motor and autonomic information, so that the variability of symptoms is very wide. Moreover, peripheral neuropathy obeys to diverse causes, so prognosis and treatments may differ.

Having an excellent communication with your neurologist is essential. Though we can read a lot about peripheral neuropathy, each case is unique and unrepeatable, so understanding our particular disease is based on that communication with our neurologist. Once the diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy is done, we must establish the relationship with the neurologist, especially in the sense of clearing all our doubts.

A patient with a diagnosis of peripheral neuropathy wants to know many things. A first step is to write down all that questions as they arise. On many occasions it seems our questions are not that important and, that is a mistake. The key is not to pretend to be smart in front of our physician, but to let him solve our doubts. Do not be afraid to ask something just because it seems too simple.

Maybe sorting all those questions before your appointment and writing them down helps us a lot. For instance, we can ask about the disease that has caused peripheral neuropathy, evolution, conventional and alternative treatments, convenience of joining support groups, etc. As they say, there are no diseases but sick people. Each patient is different and would face the situation from its own angle.

Not a minor detail is to choose well the neurologist that will treat our peripheral neuropathy, not only by choosing the more knowledgeable one, but someone who can provide us a good level of information. A good doctor not only will clear up all of our doubt we have in written, but he surely will expand on those answers.

If you want to do a list of questions you can start by reading about Symptoms of Peripheral Neuropathy Here

Share with us the list of questions you have asked or you would ask your doctor and how did he handle them.

http://www.livingwithperipheralneuropathy.com/questions-to-ask-your-neurologist-about-your-peripheral-neuropathy/