[AdmiralAsshat]

Speaking as someone with IBS, it took a long time to get a definitive "IBS" diagnosis from my doctor. IBS is a process of elimination diagnosis. They'll confirm it's not any number of other things, and only after definitively ruling out Crohn's disease and other more serious conditions will they settle on IBS (which I took from my doctor to mean "We don't know.")

Now for treatment purposes, they were giving me medications for it long before, when they just suspected it. So that fundamentally didn't change. But the whole process of ruling everything else out first took a number of specialist visits over a number of months, including a colonoscopy. I'm wondering if that had any factor into this person's lack of a doctor's note: that her GP could only say "I suspect she has IBS, but she'd need to go to a gastroenterologist to confirm" and the patient never got around to doing the specialist visits due to the time off they require.

IIRC the meds they give you for both IBS and Crohn's are pretty much the same. The crappy thing about them (pardon the pun) is that you're really not supposed to take them preventatively: ideally you should take only as needed when symptoms occur. By the time you realize you're having one of those days, you've already had like three or four bowel movements in the span of a few hours, and you'll probably have several more before the meds start to work.

[awsthro00945]

I don't know exactly what Amazon asked for in this case, but any time for me in the past at either school, work, or otherwise, when "doctor's note" is mentioned, they aren't asking for a definitive diagnosis. In fact, I've never even seen a doctor's note that specifically said "[name] has influenza/rhinovirus/UTI". It's always been sufficient for the note to just say something like "I am a doctor and [name] was seen by me for digestive tract issues, please accommodate them." I can't imagine that wouldn't have sufficed here, too.

[behringer]

It absolutely wouldn't. Amazon's next step would be to tell her whatever note she brought isn't good enough and to get on fmla.

[TheCoelacanth]

Getting an appointment with a gastroenterologist can also take a long time. I don't think I've ever been able to schedule an appointment with one less than three months out.

[inter_netuser]

You can be accommodated for a suspected condition, or without a definitive diagnosis.

[boublepop]

That still would not prevent you from getting a doctors note within a 2 month timeframe.

You don’t need a full diagnoses for that.