Take wrong test results and add water ...

OK. OK. Water wasn't involved. But wrong test results certainly were.

When my pdoc (psychiatrist) didn't specifically order a "trough level" blood test (a test done 12 hours after my evening dose of medication but before my morning dose). he could have gotten *any* blood level. The "12 hour" thing allows the body to get to its lowest level of Lithium in the system. On th other hand is what he actually got. A test run 1 to 2 hours after my morning dose. A so-called "peak level" test. The highest possible test result I woulkd ever have during the day.

Now, what I've said before is that there is no value at all to "random level" or "peak level" test results. The ONLY test results used by doctors to determine if a therapeutic level of Lithium has been reached is the "trough level" test. This isn't my *opinion*. It is accepted scientific fact. A doctor who tells you in this context that "any lithium level is significant" is a lying sack of shit. And I mean that in the nicest possible way.

What's far worse than knowingly attempting to interpret peak level test results in providing patient care is what my pdoc did. He *didn't know* he was looking at peak level readings, because he hadn't specifically ordered trough level readings. He actually thought the ".9" result the test result showed was a trough level reading -- which would have meant the dose I was taking was the correct one. As I later learned from having the correct troough level test taken on a higher dose, a trough level test WOULD have shown a result of ".3" -- a result indicating I was getting no benefit whatsoever from the dose he had prescribed.

By not ordering the right test, yet interpreting the results as though he HAD, my doctor left me dangerously undermedicated at a time when I was suicidally depressed. What he did was the equivalent of nothing. Worse than nothing, in fact, because he told me the dose I was taking was fine when every day I was walking closer and closer to death.

To sum up. While there may be more instances of medical malpractice, the two that stand out are (1) waiting too many days after beginning Lithium therapy to order the first blood test and (2) ordering it in such a way that the results were not trough level results (and, in fact, turned out to be peak level results). His misinterpretation of the results might be excused. If he truly believed he had ordered the test correctly, than his interpretation of the results would have been appropriate. Of course, he *didn't* order the test correctly, so his interpretation of the results put my life at risk.

Am I being ungrateful? Read the next post.