My partner and I saw upwards of ten medical professionals before getting him a diagnosis, but the only one that leaves a sour taste in my mouth is Dr. Cassini. We were under his care for several months, and probably saw him for 5 appointments. When we came to Dr. Cassini, we had a neurospych analysis that showed that something was really wrong, and he made clear that he was going to use that as his basis - not what we were seeing or experiencing. He also did not perform basic neurological tests. Instead, he said that he wanted to get imaging done. At the time, while that seemed reasonable, Dr. Cassini thought everything on the imaging looked "normal" after 2 MRIs and 2 EEGs. We just found out from UCSF that his imaging was not normal, and that in fact it showed some significant shrinkage in the region consistent with Alzheimer's. Our doctor at UCSF made clear that he would never use the imaging alone to make a diagnosis, but it is what he would expect to see with Alzheimer's, given all the other evidence we had provided. Since all Dr. Cassini thought he needed was imaging, he never had the other evidence present, and therefore... could not provide a diagnosis. Except he didn't really ever tell us that. He just kept stringing us along, lethargically (though personably) suggesting a next step.
I am really glad that other patients think that Dr. Cassini is a more attentive doctor than I did, but I do want to document what I think were severe weaknesses on the part of this doctor. He did not listen to us, and he did not take the time to put together a picture of what was happening, and even though he wasn't sure what was happening, he never suggested anyone (like the Stanford memory clinic or UCSF) might have a better idea than he did. If they had, we would have had answers months sooner than we did. read more