Things To Talk To Your Doctor About On Your Next Visit
Podcast #74 Released on January 28, 2018
Here is a list of about 10 different things I think you need to talk to your doctor about when you see them again.
I get the newspaper my dad reads it most the time but we get the newspaper like to just read the health and lifestyle articles because it was think there's good stuff in there.
I want to talk about ten things you should ask your doctor on your next visit. While I don't think all ten of them are relevant to you with kidney disease I do think a lot of them are so I wanted to check over them and give you my opinion.
Number one is which health websites do you trust. A lot of times you are trying to find information and you want to know what websites they think has the right descriptions and talking about medicines and where you can discover more information about your conditions. Obviously I think renaldiethq.com is a great resource for people with kidney disease but ask your doctor if there a really good website to go to learn more about other conditions. That way when you get the information you're getting it from a trusted source.
Number two that they have in there is what is this medication I'm taking and why am I taking it. You've probably been taking some meds for a while and you may or may not remember when they were prescribed what they were for. If your condition is improving may ask, “Can I take less of this? Can we change this medicine? What are some of the side effects? What types of things are caused by this? How does interact with my other medicines? How does it interact with my kidney disease?” All those things are important for you to know the answers to.
If you smoke, you can ask your doctor how you can get help stopping to smoke. A lot of states but here in Oklahoma, we have a State Tobacco Helpline and you can call and get free nicotine patches. Stopping smoking is a huge thing you can do for your health. The other thing you can do for your health is get to a healthy weight or stay at a healthy weight and exercise so ask them your doctor what is considered a healthy weight for me and how do i get there, how do I exercise healthily.
Ask your doctor also if you screenings are today. If you're over 50, you may need to get screened for colon cancer or at 40 they started doing regular mammograms for women. Ask your doctor if all you screenings are up to date and if you need to do any of them, if you need new vaccinations, do you need a flu shot, is it time for a pneumonia shot that everything.
What should you do to stay in shape like, “Is it healthy for you to walk every day? What sort of things should you be looking for if you're having problems? How do they recommend you to exercise to stay in shape.
This is a very good one that they suggest is asking what can you do before your next appointment to help improve your health. That is a good thing. Doctors don't always think about preventive things, they are so concerned and have a lot of people that they're trying to work on so you asking what you can do to improve your health for the next appointment. They may say exercising, losing weight, taking a multi vitamin daily – who knows but they should have some ideas on what you can do to improve your health. So ask him and just let him know that you're interested in doing those things.
If your doctor ordered the tests, ask your doctor why you need to take the test and what sort of outcome you can expect from that so for example of my dad he gets a Carotid scan so he knows what that is and why he's getting in and what should happen next time.
We just recently when they said you know what kind of in the same for like three years and so we wanna do an additional scan just to make sure nothing has changed. That's good to understand why you're getting tests.
If your doctor recommends a certain treatment for something like if they say “We need to do surgery on your credit to open up.” Ask if there's other options, ask if there are other lifestyle changes that you need to make, ask what is the expected outcome of that procedure.All those things, a lot of times you can get into discussions where you can either make a decision that you need surgery and get it done quickly and you'll be at peace or if you're a little concerned and you don't feel quite comfortable, the answers to those questions should make you more comfortable with the answer that you're doing.
I just wanted to go over that with you. I thought it was a really good review of things to talk to your doctor about whatever condition you have. But certainly with kidney disease asking about meds, asking about exercise, asking what you can do to improve your health and asking them what they would recommend and why you taking certain meds and how it interacts with your kidney disease.
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