he probably has a small penis.

But not everything he did was wrong. In fact, while he may well be an asshole, he did a lot right.

First of all, a PA is NOT a doctor. He is a very minimally trained (compared to an MD) health care worker who has been trained in flow-chart medicine, not actual diagnostic reasoning. PAs can be very good at what they do, but they are not trained to deal with complex problems or problems that don't fit the flow chart they have memorized. I certainly wouldn't want a PA dealing with my asthma, sinusitis, etc. As a singer, I need someone who is prepared to think outside the box.

Meeting any health care worker that makes you feel small is possible, so I'm not saying that he rubbed you the wrong way because he was a PA, but because he rubbed you the wrong way. It could just have easily been a doctor.

All the questions you were asked were good questions to ask. I would have asked all of them, and maybe some more that you might have considered irrelevent. I'm sorry you felt like he was being rude about it.

When people say the are "allergic" to a specific drug, they are often using the word incorrectly, which is why he asked what happens when you take it. There is a difference between an allergy (which means you are itching, have hives, or your throat is swelling shut) and an adverse reaction to a medication, which is what you experienced. You are not technically "allergic" to pseudoephedrin, you just don't tolerate it. This distinction is important for some important drugs that a doc might want to prescribe to a patient, to save their life for instance, even if the drug made them feel like crap.

And we have to ask about herbal medicines, and we (all of us) have to be very careful. An aquaintance of mine saw a patient who had waited for years for a new kidney, and gotten one. He was busy enjoying his new life and new kidney and was taking some sort of herbal supplement. Unfortunately, the supplements he was taking totally neutralized his anti-rejection drugs, so this patient's new kidney was destroyed within months of the transplant. The world of supplements is really complicated, because (as this PA pointed out) there is some really powerful stuff out there that has an enormous impact on the body but it's mixed with some really expensive snake oil. The trouble is, as western practitioners, we simply don't know enough about how they interact. I suspect that your PA's reaction might have had a bit of fear in it.

And it's good to tell him that you're already seeing an ENT, but there's no way that he (or any other doc, who is not in the field) will have any idea who the world renown people are. He has no idea who your ENT is, and has no idea whether you're actually seeing them, or whether you're lying through your teeth. And patients do lie, so whenever you go see your doc, they are ALWAYS asking themselves if they believe you.

I don't know about the sinus infection. It sounds like he was following the wrong flow chart. I'm sorry he pissed you off with his question syle, but any health care worker taking a history should have asked all these questions and more.

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*I am not a doctor, and any opinions I express on this forum are my opinions only, and should not be confused with real medical advice given by a licensed professional. If you are concerned about your medical condition, always see a doctor!