First, to Alpaca, let me just say this, [BLUSH!] I know you will feel free to PM me to ask for specific advice anytime you want.

But your attitude is great, better than you might think!

To bwb, my observation is that the docs are reluctant to emphasize the actual extent of any side effect, and this for a number of reasons.

One of those reasons is that they don't want to cause the suffering that comes from dread (you don't know how bad it will be, so you don't clutter your mind and add to your stress worrying about something you can't prevent anyway)

Another of those reasons is that opening a discussion on the subject is fruitless for most patients anyway (nothing can really be done to prevent it) and that discussion would take a large hunk of time.

Given the load these docs carry already, time is their most precious resource and has to be prioritized and allocated (like all scarce resources). When the consultation with one patient lasts longer than the time allocated, the other patients (all of them) waste more time waiting to see the doc.

But yeah, it's aggravating for sure. It helps to keep things like this in perspective though.