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Journal trmj's Journal: Here's a question for everybody: 17

Journal by trmj

Can any of you tell me why we put so much faith in our doctors?

These are the same doctors who tell us that to diagnose a gluten intolerance, you should eat gluten and see if it hurts.

These are the same doctors who tell us that we're overweight and need to exercise, and that's why our legs hurt to the point of not being able to walk. For 3 years.

These are the same doctors who tell us that heart episodes are a mental thing and say we need to take tranquilizers.

These are the same doctors who told a friend in PA that even though she has appendicitis, she should let it go for the weekend and see if it goes away. Then, over the weekend, when she continually calls because the pain is worse, she's told to wait until Monday.

Praise Jeebus that wikipedia and merck.com have good information on diagnosing how bad the appendicitis is, I was able to convince her that she needed to go to the emergency room as soon as possible, and she's on the way there now.

Seriously though, why do we put any trust in these people any more? Do they learn ANYTHING in those 6 years of additional schooling? Three of the above examples are fairly common things!

I really don't know how I'm going to put much stock in what a primary care doctor has to say any more. I know if I need to go to the hospital, and I am beginning to think that that's the only time I'll bother.

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Here's a question for everybody: More

Here's a question for everybody:

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  • We trust them because there is no-one else doing the job .. Apart from complete nut jobs who think that cracking your spine will cure your hernia Or that placing some crystal under your pillow will stem your epileptic fits
    • This and sielwolf's comment pretty much nail it. There's more to it, and I may write on it from the perspective of one who is related to a doctor and has worked in ancillary positions in the industry for quite some time.

      The nutshell is: "First, do no harm" is a statement up to interpretation. Second, there are bad programmers, bad politicians, and bad lawyers; there are also bad doctors.
  • Get a stack of cash and wave that in front of their faces. That ought to wake them up and give you a proper look-through and diagnosis...

    (yes, I know, not all doctors are like that blah blah ad nauseum)
  • They test for most other allergens the same way: take your upper arm and inject doses of each into it to see what the reaction is. It's cheap, it's fast, and it doesn't have innate major processing error. The only other option is to take a big slurp of blood plasma and do a breakdown of resident lGe typed for each major allergen using radiology. But that is a guess (% of the plasma sample of your blood) of a guess (% of lGE distributed in that sample for each given allergen) of a guess (the subjective o
    • The gluten intolerance can be decisively figured out by doing a biopsy of the small intestine. Also, the scraping method you described is also used when a biopsy isn't available, but it's much less accurate because the intolerance occurs during digestion. It's not a true allergen.

      Also, this is after her condition considerably improved within a day of no longer eating glutinous things.

      It was after the imporvement of condition that the doctor said to go back and eat more gluten, to see if it hurts. That's how
      • Of course you have the benefit of having the small problem set of a PC versus the more scalar complex human biological system. Sure, she could not be eating gluten but what if it was something else? Something that she didn't describe or something she hadn't done before. Even in diagnosing a PC or a nontrivial bug in software you find a repeatable case, removing all options until you have a specific cause and effect. And we all accept a certain amount of error with computers: worst case you pull the har
  • But I was scared out of my wits a few years ago when my eye really hurt, so I tried to take out the contact that was irritating it, only to find out (after 30 minutes of poking at my eye) that I wasn't actually wearing a contact. Then the pain intensified over the next several hours. Everytime a light would be turned on, I would have burning, stabbing pains in my eye. Eventually I couldn't open my eye. At this point I went to urgent care (on Some Guy's urging). I told the doctor that everytime a light
    • Document what happened, and then sue for your co-payment back.

      And report the SOB to the state certifying authority.

      • After saying that there was nothing wrong with me, he did reluctantly go through with the diagnostic stuff, finding out that my cornea was scratched. He then gave me a free sample of antibiotic eye drops, thus preventing me from having to pay the copay at the pharmacy. So, I would have been out more money in suing him (and I was a poor college student at the time). I do wish I would have thought to complain, though. The guy was a complete asshole, obviously bitter over the fact that his med school class
        • Yeah, from my bike accident at the same time I learn just how easy it is to dislocate a shoulder and tear a tricep at the end of the fall.

          Did you ever get that new bike?
    • Ah yes, but perhaps you shouldn't have gone to Dr. Dracul and associates. (General Practice and blood bank - Open an account (und a vein) today!)
    • "He told me this was normal."
      ? did you have a bloody great knife sticking out of it .. as otherwise I have no idea how he could assume it was normal
  • These are the same doctors who tell us that to diagnose a gluten intolerance, you should eat gluten and see if it hurts.

    No, they don't do that at all. That would be too sensible. That would be what we'd do without doctors -- if you put your hand in the fire and in hurts then don't do that again. What the doctors say is that if you don't have some scientific test results explaining why it hurts when you put your hand in the fire then you should leave your hand there.
  • I gave up on doctors decades ago. My wife, having good experiences with doctors everywhere else in the world, came to the US expecting to get quality care but has spent the past 4 years being bitterly disappointed.

    She's very much quite sick now and the doctor she went too had no idea, and even though the doctor thought it was a viral infection, wrote a prescription for anti-biotics anyways.
    *boggle*

    I'm hoping this will convince her once and for all to give up on western medicine.

    Antibiotics for a viral infe
    • first of all, giving up on western medicine is not the answer.

      The problem is that these docs aren't following western medicine. Trmj, i talked online with pezstar about the gluten issue and will look for my GI's name- biopsy is no longer the gold standard, as it often takes months for damage to occur, and if a few weeks of gluten will only result in antibodies, and then only in the lower intestine.

      I think she can reasonably be diagnosed from what she's gone through- and that i know docs who may be able to d
  • We should not have faith in our doctors; but we can build trust in our doctors. We can usually trust a doctor to know more about human anatomy than we do. We generally trust a doctor to have studied symptoms and the many causes for them as well as the possible treatments for them in far more depth than we will. However, doctors are human - as fallible as the rest of us. Who of us can say we have never made a mistake or forgotten something others thought was obvious? Even a world-class pianist can hit a

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