Informing Pharmacists about LS

Good discussion to post, Sue. I've had two detailed conversations with my pharmacist about LS. I could tell I was opening her eyes.

Your right - I have just moved and went to new local compound pharmacy to get Clob made up and she told me i could just buy it over the counter no script needed!  A different product with a similar name. She had also never heard of LS.

Good idea!

I think many woman have been self medicating using products for thrush, its a terrible shame, they have no idea!

Great Idea. I've just e-mailed the Royal College of Pharmacists and copied the text of your post, I hope you don't mind but you put it far better than I could have.

How about if each of us on here tries to tell two pharmacists and then maybe the word will spread?

I walked past my local pharmacy today and chickened out, but then again it was a very macho looking man today, and I think most people would rather talk to a woman. They use a lot of locums, I've rarely seen the same person in there twoce, but maybe that's good because they'll spread the word further afield.

What a great idea.  My pharmacist has a yearly chat to all his regular customers to check their prescriptions are current and right for their problems, as he says that some people take the same medicines for years and are not upgraded to better new medicines or even assessed in case the medicine is no longer necessary.  This is totally voluntary which I think is a great idea.  I had a chat with him about Ls a couple of years ago.  He had heard of it but was unaware of the extent of the problem for sufferers.  Lets all do this.  What a great place to put a poster about LS too.  Is anyone out there in the Medical Profession that could maybe see if it is possible to have a poster distributed about this to all health centres, pharmacies, hospitals etc.

To raise the subject I asked whether many women asked for something for thrush and was she aware that there was this condition called LS?- in full and I spelt it for her - which mimicked thrush in several ways and that they should be aware that LS  can be missed for years.....etc

I then suggested the Dr G's lecture ...all medics and pharmacists HAVE to update their knowledge and skills at least yearly and this would be a super topic for them to look at

Hope that helps a bit

Good luck I am off to the smoke for the day and may get the chance to talk to someone in the Big City

Well I got a response from the Royal College of Pharmacists

Thank you for your email and for the information you have provided. We will keep this in mind for any projects related to this subject that the Society may work on in the future.

A bit disappointing, I don't know what I was expecting but I suppose it won't feel as immediate to them as it does to us. I'll follow your example and talk to pharmacists on the ground now. The first GP I went to was great in that she diagnosed it, but then thought she knew everything and refused to send me to a specialist. I had an argument with her and she overreacted and sent me for a whole battery of unneccesary tests 'because that's what you really want isn't it?', but I did finally get where I needed to be, and found out that she was doing all the wrong things. I've found a lovely GP in the practice now. I saw a different doctor once for something else and there was a young female student in the room so I told her all about LS. She'd never heard about it and was shocked.

Little opportunities pop up all the time to tell someone, and we should sieze them. I certainly will make sure that I do now. It does take a long while to get over the shock though. I reckon it's taken me over two years since diagnosis to stop crying and feeling sorry for myself to becoming an angry fighter for the cause in general.

Ooooh I'm so angry for you! I had to change doctors too, to get diagnosed. Apparently I'm a hypochondriac, according to the previous one. And then I ended up with Ms Smartypants. Still at least I got diagnosed! And found a nice one in the same practice...