Hi Tom,
In answer to your question, the problem with doctors, at least the ones I've run across, and candida tends to be that they know candida exists in the body and that localized overgrowths can cause fungal infections. They also know that in certain very very ill people with seriously lowered immunity such as AIDS patients and cancer patients, candida can overrun the immune system and become systemic.
The problem is, there is a group of us in between these stages who don't have a local yeast infection, and who also are not terminally ill. That type has an intermediate type of yeast infection which may be systemic but, due to our immune systems functioning fairly well, doesn't overrun our immune system enough to make us candidates for hospital treatment.
In my experience, my General Practitioner took the idea fairly seriously because he said that surgical photos he had seen from surgeons showed that candida CAN exist on internal organs and so he was willing to take it seriously but then said he thought there was a blood test for it but he knew nothing about it himself. He wasn't really sure how to proceed and he was going to suggest treatment with conventional antifungal drugs, although he was not sure how to treat it really as he had not come across it before himself.
Another specialist I was being treated by at one point flatly refused to believe that candida could be at the root of my problems at all. I presented him with books and information on it and he was very unhelpful and said it only existed in people who were terminally ill and that was that. At that point I switched doctors.
What type of doctor are you going to see on Monday? Is it your general practitioner (US = "Primary physician"?) or a specialist? Conventional or alternative?
For me, the real questions to think about when choosing a candida doctor might be:
1) "Have they had experience treating candidiasis before?"
2) What sort of treatment are they proposing? Short course of antifungals? Antifungal drugs only or herbal antifungals as well?
3) Are they aware of the importance of following the candida diet during treatment? (My GP didn't seem to know about the diet and was proposing conventional antifungals as though they were a type of antibiotic that would fix the whole thing quickly).
4) What suggestions does he have as regards the possibility of longer term therapy/ drug or herb resistance? In other words, candida can become drug (or herbal antifungal) resistant over time, and so a rotation therapy is often suggested with several drugs or herbal antifungals to prevent this situation. If your doctor does not suggest this, you might want to bring it up for discussion with him.
5) As regards specific blood tests, there are few that are conclusive for proving candida, hence the skepticism on the part of the medical community. You could have a candida antibody test, which will only prove whether you have had an infection in the past and whether your body ever made antibodies against it. You can have a skin prick test to see if you are allergic to yeast. Some specialists might do a fairly new microorganism blood count test which I read about and which counts the number of microorganisms and fungi etc in your blood to see if it is within a very rough "normal range" but this is a very new test and I would be a little surprised if your doctor proposed it.
None of these conclusively proves much, though. Short of getting pics like KT12's done, the tests are usually taken in conjunction with other information, personal health history, and sometimes if all that is inconclusive, the patient is put on the candida diet for a month and improvements and/or die-off effects are noted. If there is improvement and die-off effects with candida diet and treatment, then candidiasis is assumed "after the fact". (I didn't make that up, it was in my book!
)
I hope this helps a little. Wait for KT12 and the others here too, though, as he is further along than I am in all this.
Think I may have candida.
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