Angry

I'm angry at alot of doctors right now.

I know Wikipedia isn't perfect, but I was looking into genetically inherited factors in skin rashing. I found things on psoriasis. Basically, if you mix psoriasis, which I inherited from my mother, with northern swedish genes (an mostly isolated genetic grouping) there is a reasonable chance of alot of things going wrong and making for some bad, sometimes even fatal psoriasis. I don't blame my parents, there was no reason for them to have known this. I've had stiff joints since shortly after I myself developed psoriasis. Never once did I think these were connected. But it appears that I am exhibiting symptoms of a number of manifestations of psoriasis.

What REALLY makes me angry about this, is that my doctors never asked me or told me about ANY of this. They never checked to see if my immune system was ever weaked by this autoimmunity disorder. They never gave me a good answer about the bumps I sometimes get on my hands (I now know they are pustular psoriasis), and that I could in the future develop a crippling form or simply painful form of psoriatic arthritis that accompanies psoriasis (I may very well have Spondylitis, one variety of this which causes back and neck pain, can lead to knee problems and hip problems (my hip is acts funny, but it isn't like the other two areas), like mine that I have had chronically for no reason and which may also be affecting my sister). Why didn't they figure that my psoriasis could be causing the bumps? Even my nails show signs of the effects of psoriasis. My hands are a psoriasis chart and I never new. My doctors never told me that my children would be more likely to carry Type II Diabetes, or that severe enough psoriasis could be deadly to myself or my offspring. They never told me that I might experience as I grew up hypertension (I AM a very tense person most of the time, although T'ai Chi Ch'uan and Yoga have helped). They never told me about the increase of congestive heart failure rates that go with my disease. They never told me that since my psoriasis physically manifested continuously at a young age that this is generally a sign that it will be much more severe than the average person who has it. They never told me that stress itself may aggravate my psoriasis outbreaks, which I always thought was just bad luck of a break-out whenever I'd have to do something I was stressing about--and it always seemed to leave me at my worst at the wrong times because of this.

I'd bet they never told anyone else in our family either. I'd bet they never told us that if we'd become overweight that we could have worsened symptoms. I'd bet they never told them to avoid Beta blockers to help with possible hypertension or migranes, because it could lead to premature Type II diabetes in those with psoriasis. I'd guess they never said to anybody, "you know, having psoriasis of the scalp makes you much more suceptible to strept throat infections." Nor did they say anything about the effects of large amounts of alcohol on us, not that Nicole or I drink at all.

Why did they never bother to tell us anything? Why? Did they not know? Shouldn't a dermatologist know these things? Why leave out stuff so basic? Why did they fail to diagnose a number of my symptoms that now seem to be quite obvious parts of my skin disease?

Angry isn't an accurate word. I take that one back. I am furious. Every doctor I have met about a number of these conditions, even being checked in a given sitting, together, never set off a single bell. None of them asked about the connection. All had records of my psoriasis at the time. And a few dozen minutes on Wikipedia, cross-referencing articles showed me more than they ever thought to even ask about.