When did doctors lose their compassion for their patients? After many years of suffering debilitating back pain, I live everyday at a 9 out of 10 on the pain scale, another physician referred me to Dr. Alpesh Patel. I've done years of physical therapy, and tried everything I could possibly think of only to get much worse. I had visited another spine surgeon at Rush a year prior, who told me my pain was coming from herniated discs, and I would need to do pain injections with an epidural directly into the spine, though she said she didn't think they'd actually work. I went to Dr. Patel hoping for more insight, and brought him a copy of my MRI from Rush. You are seen by a nurse and a doctor in training before you actually see Dr. Patel, and the student doctor is the only one who does an exam. Everyone spends maybe two minutes total with you. By the time Dr. Patel comes in, he's talked to his staff and viewed your MRI outside of the exam room, so he's already made a diagnosis before he's even seen you. He comes in to tell me he thinks the herniated discs are probably just from age (I'm 35), so they likely aren't the root of my pain, and that I probably have a muscle strain somewhere. He never explains where exactly. He's already rushing out the door as he says it. I stop him to ask more questions, as I don't think it explains why I've been in this severe of pain for so long, but he says it's certainly possible. He tells me a nurse will be in to refer me to a pain specialist, and he leaves, basically with me in tears because nothing was answered. I get it, maybe I am not a patient who immediately needs spine surgery, but I am a human being in severe pain. The fact that he never even pretends to care, and rushed me out the door, is unforgivable. I deserved better. Since then, I have gone to an AMAZING surgeon at Illinois Masonic who actually spent a half hour with me listening, caring, and talking about the things he thinks it could be. He has ordered additional tests to be done, and is on top of it. I truly wish I would have gone to him first instead of wasting my time and money with Dr. Patel. read more