OK, so Avril's talking about Lyme Disease here, but the way she was treated by her doctors will ring a bell with a lot of us, I'm sure…
Horribly familiar…: OK, so Avril's talking about... - Thyroid UK
Horribly familiar…
I bet most of us could probably write word for word what she said
For over 2 years, I was asked over and over by doctors if I was depressed. Thankfully I resisted them (tho there was a point in time when I actually wondered if I WAS crazy!) and stood my ground and was FINALLY diagnosed with hypothyroidism (and later, Lupus and Sjogren's Syndrome) and am now on the medications I need. Why does the medical community have to make this SO DAMN HARD??
What always gets me is this, she's in the US, isn't she? So she pays for her own health-care, she's not stuck with what the NHS hands out, and yet Americans STILL seem to get the same a*se from their docs as we do. Why? You'd think when they are paying for it themselves, especially if they are well-off, as we assume she must be, they don't just 'fire' their docs and get a better one, who listens.
I think it proves categorically, if proof were needed, that the way doctors think and behave is bred into them through the actual system of Western medical teaching. It's the only way this could happen so consistently in two entirely different styles of health care.
I agree with you Chancery. But I also think that acceptance of what doctors say is bred into us, the patients, too. When I was a child I was taught that my elders and betters knew far more than me, I should just accept their pronouncements without question, and doctors were one of the group I had to believe. The brainwashing worked until I was in my early 50s despite a lot of appalling "healthcare" throughout my life.
You are absolutely right, HB. My Dad was a political activist who could argue any point about how the capitalist system milked the poor and took advantage of them at every turn. He was a great egalitarian who, technically, believed that all men were equal. But when it came to 'those in authority', like doctors or teachers, he was completely unquestioning in their authority. I remember having countless arguments with him about my teachers doing and saying stupid things, and the endless pointless rules in my school, and he always argued in favour of them. It was at complete odds with his supposed ideology. You can take a man out of poverty but you can't take that poverty mindset out the man!
Unfortunately I am tinged with it. Not that I believe in doctors innate authority - I don't and never have - but I do find that difficult to handle in real life. Of course, as a patient you are at a tremendous disadvantage - doctors hold all the power and when you are sick you are often too weak and fuddled to argue with them or fight your corner. I remember the first time I was in hospital, in my early fifties, and I had never been in one and knew nothing about how they worked. I was terrified and completely out my depth. I was in a lot of pain but I was 'nil by mouth' so the nurses wouldn't give me drugs, not even simple co-codamol or Paracetamol. I eventually took to hiding the drugs I did get and stashing them away, if I didn't need them at that moment, so that I could control my own drug supply! They really do have you at their mercy and it encourages you to be very careful with their egos and not to upset them.
Sometimes I fantasise about just telling my doc what I think about some of the idiotic things he says and arguing with him they way I would in a 'proper' argument. Oh the joy..........
She's possibly in Canada (I know she and her husband are both from there originally), but yep – even people who can afford private healthcare don't seem to be faring much better than NHS patients.
That only underlines it, Taff, doesn't it, if even the poor Canadians are suffering the same way? What DO they teach doctors that does this to them? Or is it the type of people who are attracted to doctoring???
Exactly! And I think you're on to something regarding training/doctor personalities. Plus, the good ones who try to think outside the box get hounded by the GMC, etc, so the fainter hearts will feel their hands are tied.
Yes, couldn't agree more, Taff - you've summed it up nicely. It's like the worst office environment: all the jobsworths, desperately following the rules and not stepping outside the box, and the handful of poor souls trying to do their job properly, daring to ask questions, and instead of finding themselves praised for their intelligence and determination, finding themselves threatened with dismissal. And all the time that awful peer-group pressure insinuating, ' Why don't you shut up and stop making waves? You're making things difficult for the rest of us.'
I'm as guilty as the next man in condemning docs, but can you imagine what it's like to be Malcolm Kendrick or Robert Atkins or John Yudkin and to really care about what you're doing amidst all these people being, well, frankly, idiots?