For years I thought it was one thing....

I was diagnosed a few years ago with a skin thing called Tinea Versicolor by two top NYC dermatologists. Ok fine, I have been on and off meds cause nothing clears it up and now that it's summer...its like a rash on my back and neck and a little on my shoulders...I want to get to the bottom of it. It's not horrible just annoying.

I go to a dermatologist here in Atlanta. This doctor, takes a scrapping of it and comes back and tells me nope...it's NOT Tinea! She told definitely not and that's why it's never cleared up.

She is treating it now as something else..but I'm so frustrated. How can you trust these docs...I should have gone for a 3rd opinion? Why didn't these "top docs" in NYC ever take a sample and concretely diagnose me? I never thought they should do that.

Im just mad and losing faith in doctors.

Re: For years I thought it was one thing....

I'm friends with a woman who's husband had Schleraderma which is a chronic disease that causes the involved skin or organs to harden.

It took them FIVE years to have him diagnosed. He went to Sloan's he went to Mt. Sinai, he went to the Mayo Clinic and other top docs in the city. They would all look at him, try to treat some of the symptoms and when they'd get no where they'd pass him off to someone else in a different specialty.

It was only after four and a half years that SOMEONE finally figured out that it COULD be Schleraderma. That was when he went to Johns Hopkins (they have an entire division dedicated to the research and treatment of the disease) and he was treated there for about eight months. Unfortunately by that time, his body had taken too much and he finally succumbed to the disease.

It's a shame, we put our trust in the doctors we see but in the end we're all human and to error is human.

It's scary.

Re: For years I thought it was one thing....

I feel your pain. I'm going to today for a second opinion to see if this doctor agrees with the first that surgery is needed. Then i thought to myself if this one says something different should I be going to a third. AFter your post I think if it comes to that I will def. be gonig to a third.

Re: For years I thought it was one thing....

I hear ya. I went to a top gastro doc about the prospect of surgery and because I wasn't that symptomatic at the time of the visit he didn't recommend it.

I went back to my regular gastro doc and he did a colonoscopy and said call the surgeon, you need surgery.

I did, a I had surgery and they took out a 10lb mass from my gut.

Yeah, I didn't need surgery.

This is the top guy on all of the lists...nah..you don't need surgery.

Re: For years I thought it was one thing....

i had the same thing for 2 years.. someone told me to scrub selson blue (medicated one but over the counter) every night into it for 7 days.. i did it .. it didn't go away at first but after like a month it was gone!!