Adrenal
03-15-2010, 07:06 AM
What has been your experience with MDs?
Do they ever do blood testing or 24 hour urine collection tests to rule out endocrine system disorders before giving you a diagnosis of anxiety, depression, or a prescription?
My husband suffered years with a misdiagnosis of anxiety/depression and now found out that he has an adrenal tumor "pheochromocytoma" that causes excessive release of adrenaline (epiphrine and norephrine) which causes heart palpitations, insomnia, spikes in blood pressure, fatigue, etc.
We are very lucky to finally get a correct diagnosis, but it irritates me that this could have been found much earlier with a blood test for catecholamines and 24 hour urine test. Yet, MDs typically won't do this because these are supposedly rare tumors, but how do we know they are rare when we don't test for them? People with these tumors have heart attacks and strokes before they end up with a diagnosis more than 10% of the time.
Do they ever do blood testing or 24 hour urine collection tests to rule out endocrine system disorders before giving you a diagnosis of anxiety, depression, or a prescription?
My husband suffered years with a misdiagnosis of anxiety/depression and now found out that he has an adrenal tumor "pheochromocytoma" that causes excessive release of adrenaline (epiphrine and norephrine) which causes heart palpitations, insomnia, spikes in blood pressure, fatigue, etc.
We are very lucky to finally get a correct diagnosis, but it irritates me that this could have been found much earlier with a blood test for catecholamines and 24 hour urine test. Yet, MDs typically won't do this because these are supposedly rare tumors, but how do we know they are rare when we don't test for them? People with these tumors have heart attacks and strokes before they end up with a diagnosis more than 10% of the time.