How to Seek Support From Your GP When You're Exhausted
Claire Thomas 
It’s taken you weeks to muster up the courage to book a GP appointment, how can you best prepare for it when you live with fatigue?
This week's blog is written by Dr Janks Das, a medical doctor and personal trainer who is passionate about transforming women's health through fitness. You can find out more here.
It’s taken you weeks to muster up the courage to book a GP appointment, then you’ve had to wait another two weeks and know that you’ve only got 10 minutes to try and get some answers. So how can you best prepare for your GP appointment when you’re struggling with fatigue?
There are no universally accepted definitions, however fatigue can be described as a subjective symptom of malaise & exhaustion during or after usual activities or feeling inadequate energy to carry out normal activities1.
In the initial consultation, the GP will be trying to identify whether the cause of fatigue if physical or psychological, and a physical cause should always initially be ruled out. There are a significant amount of differential diagnoses therefore please don’t be alarmed if you find that there a lot of questions being directed at you, to try and rule out any serious causes.
A lot of my patients come in saying “I know I’m not supposed to do this but I googled….”, thinking that this is going to make them seem difficult or a hypochondriac. I have to say that personally, I find this extremely useful to discuss at the beginning of the consultation so that we can identify early what your concerns are and try to address these.
The history most likely taken by the GP will involve the following, so it is worth thinking about your answers to these questions beforehand so that you don’t need to spend too long thinking about this or get the answers wrong in a haste! Even having these written out can be extremely helpful to trigger your memory.
- How long the fatigue has lasted for (recent - <1 month, prolonged 1-6 months, chronic >6 months)
- Was the onset sudden or progressive
- What your levels of physical activity are
- The effect of sleep, rest, exercise on symptoms
- Aggravating or relieving factors
- Are there any concerning features – for example but not limited to breathlessness, weight loss, loss of appetite, night sweats, joint pain
- Are there any signs of a sleep disorder – waking up in the middle of the night, excessive sleepiness, signs of sleep apnoea
- Are there any signs of depression, stress or anxiety (https://www.mind.org.uk/ is a fantastic resource if you don’t know what signs to look out for)
- Have there been any stressful life events recently
- Are there any cognitive difficulties including difficulty finding words, slow responsiveness, short term memory problems, difficulty with concentrating
- Have you started taking any new medications, including herbal treatments and over the counter medications
It’s likely that following this initial consultation, the GP will request some blood tests if not done so already. Therefore, if you have had any testing done elsewhere it would be sensible to have these results ready to hand so that the GP can review these, and repeat if necessary.
As you can see, there is huge amount of ground to cover in one short consultation, therefore if you have any specific concerns these can be addressed and targeted more directly. By the end of the consultation the GP will likely have a vague idea of whether this is likely to be a physical or psychological cause for your symptoms and will likely request a follow up with your blood tests results. The final part is to book this appointment in there & then so that you can ideally get follow up with the same GP, but also don’t have to wait a few more weeks for an appointment later on.
Categories: : health and wellbeing, fatigue, GP advice, seeking advice, living with fatigue, empowerment