Dr. Thomas H Ball, MD

Dr Ball was my PCP at the VA health center in Cape Coral. Dr Ball replaced my previous PCP at the VA Health Center. My experience and opinion of him is that he is a thorough and competent physician. I went to him complaining of a strange assortment of symptoms. Chronic fatigue, left flank pain, headaches, wide spread muscle and joint pain, burning and tingling in my hands and feet. This was a problem I had been complaining about and seeking help for, for many years with out any sort of diagnosis. Dr Ball didn’t see anything in my blood work but begrudgingly sent me for further in depth testing however, he was unable to diagnose my problem. He thought perhaps I was getting older and should change my line of work to something less physical. At 53 years of age I told him “I was too young to feel this old!” He has since left the VA for Lee Health. It turns out that my symptoms we’re caused by preclinical MCTD.(Mixed Connective Tissue Disease) A serious Autoimmune disease of overlapping disorders of Lupus,Sjogrens syndrome, Rheumatoid arthritis, Scerloderma, Polymyositis and Raynauds syndrome. These Connective Tissue Diseases are notoriously difficult to diagnose..so I do not fault him there. My only problem with him was that he doubted that I had anything wrong with me and repeatedly asked me if I was getting the “mental health” care that I needed. In the future he should take seriously a patients complaints of symptoms and consider there could be seronegative (not showing up in blood tests) diseases at play. If not for that I would have given him a 5 star rating. Eric Milone U.S.M.C