Dr. Cary Lynn Wheeler, DO

She is courteous and listens well. However, she does not volunteer information. I asked specifically about a couple of things (thyroid and kidneys) she was going to test on the blood test and mentioned I was concerned about type 1 diabetes as I have already tested positive elsewhere for pancreas islet cell antibodies, but she did not tell me how she was going to test for type 1 diabetes vs. type 2. She is very busy, so when I later thought to ask, the staff at the clinic said I may not get that answered unless I made another appointment. At the second appointment, she informed me that that clinic does not test for type 1 diabetes, even in children! I was so dumbfounded by this answer that I did not ask the obvious follow-up question: Well, where/how DOES one get tested for type 1 diabetes? Granted, LADA (latent autoimmune diabetes in adults) is rarer than type 2, but it is under-diagnosed in adults because doctors don't expect it. (I don't fit the profile for type 2, by the way.)… She also failed to check into the cause of my more pronounced ankle swelling that has been going on for the last month or so and the pulsatile tinnitus that suddenly got much louder at about the same time. In fact, she did not even look at my ankles, but just assumed it was from varicose veins - because I mentioned I thought SOME of it was due to that. She didn't look at my leg veins either. On the other hand, I still have blood pressure in the normal range, so I probably don't have a blocked artery, but I'd still like to know what's going on. (Maybe the blood test will show something awful - or not. We'll see.) And for the noise in my head, she referred me to an audiologist. To my way of thinking, an ear, nose and throat specialist would be more likely to give me a useful diagnosis. I don't seem to be deaf (yet) and I certainly don't need a hearing aid. I would rather be pro-active than re-active, but apparently not so this doctor. She is not the first in this clinic to give me this impression, so I wonder what the clinic's policies might be about avoiding "unnecessary" testing. Or am I receiving age-related prejudice? (I come from long-lived parents and grandparents. Dad is still alive. I'm nowhere near the end yet. I have a high-deductible insurance plan, so I might as well go back to a more functionally-minded doctor...) Anyway, if you happen to have one of the ailments that this doctor and clinic are used to treating - or you already have a diagnosis - you'll probably do fine with her. (I had several other health problems that would have been nice to update the clinic on, since I had been at Kaiser for the previous two years, but their health intake form didn't have a space for "other" and related comments. And I wasn't expecting the clinic to help with those particular issues, but I thought they might want to know about them. In hindsight, I don't think the clinic or the doctor really does want to know about my overall state of health. They probably wouldn't offer anything useful anyway, because most of it may be connected to Lyme, for which antibodies I previously tested positive, and conventional doctors don't know what to do with possible chronic Lyme and tick-related co-infections, if they believe such things even exists. But I chose this clinic because it is the only one in my little town, and if I do something like stub my toe very badly, I don't want to have to drive down to Santa Rosa.)

It was a brief visit, but I liked her. I was not presenting her with a diagnostic challenge at the time, so I cannot say how well she figures out what the patient needs. She did listen well.