I fired my old cardiologist and hired someone to serve as my prevention and reversal specialist. No, I didn't call him up and say hey, "You're fired!" I just started seeking care elsewhere. In fact, this man was both a professional and personal friend and he literally saved my life. For that I will always be forever grateful. He is not only a charming and witty individual; he is a very well regarded "Interventional Cardiologist". These folks work day and night saving lives in Emergency Rooms and Heart Catheterization Laboratories.
You know for the first several years I considered myself lucky. I was under the professional care of someone I knew, could actually call 24 hours per day and had full confidence in his abilities. Here is the other "Dirty Secret", I knew he would never push me to make radical changes to my lifestyle and I didn't need to be worried about a confrontation that I wasn't following an effective treatment plan. I was pretty cavalier about the idea that I would just go on my merry way and every 10 years or so I might need to get a "rotor rooter job".
Well, this turned out to be a bad idea! I won't bore you with the details, just believe that this is a theory that doesn't work and has serious consequences. In fact, life and death consequences. In my case it involved a total of 5 heart catheterizations, one very scary ride in the ambulance in a strange city, a nasty fast dive I made with severe chest pain and a significant amount of uncomfortable recurring chest pain. Even I began to catch on and I hope that my pathetic performance will give you incentive to think hard about how you are approaching your health issues.
As a health care professional I had to confront another "dirty secret" of the health industry. Our health care sub-systems have grown into many fragmented groups which often times works in conflict with one another and certainly can result in odd consequences. The issue at hand was I was very ill in an expensive system predicated on being paid for doing things to sick people versus being ill in a system predicated on keeping all of us in our best health. In short, people and organizations got paid more if they did something to me when I was sick. Their was no upside gain for them if I didn't need to be worked on!
So, this boils down to deciding who should be on my treatment team and just what are my treatment goals. After exhaustive research nationally, I decided to engage a true pioneer in the field of preventing and reversing heart disease. I can truthfully say my new doctor "wrote the book" on this subject (literally a classic clinical textbook and a very readable patient oriented book available at bookstores).
Once you get established on the right treatment track, it turns out that relating to a customer service knowledgeable cardiac nurse specialist probably can fill this role nicely working with your primary care physician. Many insurance companies have this service available in the area of disease management; I highly recommend that you research this options. The flip side of the crazy health insurance company is at work. Employers and Health Plans who have made bids on providing employee health coverage have learned keeping us healthy saves money. Well heck, it keeps us healthy and alive too!