> upset that they didn't jump up and down in amazement
There's that aggression again.
No, I'm upset about paying someone who mocked me and decided not to do any work because I was too pathetic for someone of his/her status.
I am an expert in my field. Many people I work with suggest things that I know to be wrong. I have NEVER mocked or acted vengeful. If they choose to continue with their ideas that I disagree with, that's their right. Is it really that hard to be respectful?
In every event that I've related in my posts, it was the doctor who was unwilling to give the most basic level of respect.
I can totally relate. I sustained a wrist injury about 10 years ago from physical trauma which requires me to wear wrist braces constantly to this day so help manage the pain, weakness, and shaking. I’ve seen more doctors than I can count about it and I’ve yet to even receive a diagnosis. They just all assume I have carpal tunnel despite numerous tests which say otherwise just because I’m a programmer. When their carpal tunnel theory doesn’t pan out they just give up yet somehow every single one of them won’t admit they don’t know what’s wrong. I’ve researched as much medical material regarding my issue as I can and take notes to present to them since I’m not educated enough in the medical domain to go beyond potential causes so I present those notes along with diagrams of the pain locations and locked muscles as well as photographs of related skin conditions. And even then when I do research and present my findings to help guide them along the way I still have to fight them to even attempt further diagnostic techniques. It’s a frustrating issue and it’s something I’ve been wracking my brain with on how to help address it in anyway I can.
I think that many MDs see physical issues as only physical, but in my experience an injury from physical trauma may have an impact on the mind as well.
I suffered chronic headaches for years after I broke my maxilla. All exams and imaging were negative. Physical therapy helped, but the problem would always come back. This is when I decided to stop visiting MDs (neurologists, psychiatrists, traumatologists). I also tried alternative therapies (i.e. acupuncture), but the effect lasted hours or days at most.
I completely relate to you about trying to find any possible solution. In my case, not finding solutions added layers of frustration and other negative emotions to the problem that didn't help.
I started looking at the psychological aspects of pain after a HN post with this article [1]. That triggered a lot of reading in psychology, and I also started practicing yoga and meditation. This path led me to many discoveries about myself, since it taught me to pay attention to my mind and body in a different way. Being able to recognize triggers was crucial to find a solution. I can say that I never have headaches now.
Feel free to shoot me an email if you're interested in more references and or other details of my experience.
Since were on a thread of medical advice with minimal scientific double blind controlled studies costing millions of dollars, check out acupuncture and get a grounding mat to sleep on. 120$ not much to lose and it’s helped many people I know. And ofc mandatory no brained eat healthy and lift weights be able to do 50 push-ups , do yoga etc. work towards doing the splits over 3 year period of practice each week
Also, depending on the country, the job may be extreme hours, low pay (GPs in particular), and huge stress coming from legal risk. While that does not excuse general assholery, after hearing a lot of stories from the field, including from my brother who's just finishing his medical degree, I'm much more sympathetic to even rude doctors. Theirs is a thankless profession.
'The average GP earns an average salary of £90,000, but doctors can earn more by linking up surgeries, making record earnings by managing tens of thousands of patients. Figures revealed more than 200 ‘Super GPs’ in the NHS earned more than £200,000 a year in 2015/16. Four were on salaries between £400,000 and £450,000 while 11 were paid between £300,000 and £350,000 a year.'
'Britain’s highest earning GP paid at least £700,000 a year'
I understand there are those for whom criticism of the NHS is sacrilege, but the current situation doesn't look much like sustainable socialised medicine to me.
I don't think that's a fair statement because the logical analysis helps so much with memorization, viz the story telling technique, and vice versa, the aptitude for logistics will not pan out without a keen memory. A lot of the required memory goes to logical connections not merely to longish Latin names under picture book illustrations.
Story telling has nothing to do with logic. It's just making stuff up. Not really something I would look for in my doctor ... even if it helps him remember.
Ridiculous comment. I'm embarrassed for you. Remember to say that to all the great doctors that are constantly saving lives, inventing new treatments, and being ridiculed by their own community when trying to introduce change.
Maybe in the emergency room, but not for a non-emergency doctor. I'm generally not looking for the person who can diagnose and treat me the fastest, I'm looking for the person who can diagnose and treat me the best. Consequently, in the emergency room I'm looking for a memorizer, but the other 97% of the time I'm looking for a researcher.
I see your point, but also you do not give health advice to other people as a profession. It's more akin to the mechanic dealing with people coming in with cars that almost all have the same issues, but then every now and then somebody reads something online about some extravagant maybe-it's-lupus kind of diagnosis, and they just roll their eyes.
That assumes the expert has actually given an answer to my questions, in which case, you'd be 100% right. Even a "we don't know why this happens yet, here's what we know about it: ..." would be more than satisfactory. Just give me something!
But when the expert has nothing to say, yet mocks my questions and even just my reporting of what is happening to me, as he very eagerly waits for me to leave so he can get paid... Then there's not much more I can do than read on the Internet.
Some throw in a veiled insult by suggesting I should be sent to a psych ward for my "panic attacks." You might say it's not an insult, but I accepted the psychiatric evaluation once - and then a whole team of psychiatrists determined after 2 weeks that I was genuinely sick with stomach issues, and called that doctor up and asked him what the hell he was doing sending me to them when I had real physiological issues.
The truth is, most patients will accept the doctor's advice if the doctor can give an answer, any answer that's genuine. "We checked out the inflammation and we don't know why it's there, we'll keep working on it." <--- GREAT. Even the most "annoying" and inquisitive patients will accept this answer. The problem occurs when the doctor thinks him/herself too good to work with the patients by giving answers like this.
I'm absolutely not trying to belittle your experience -- it sounds horrible, and it is something I have met, and that my spouse has met. She was crying after she had met a doctor that examined her, because the doctor had made fun of her, in no uncertain words implying her symptoms were fictitious.
My point was more generally about how doctors are a lot like the car mechanics of people. So when none of the usual things show up as wrong, they just assume your electronics are shot (for humans, "you're crazy") and move on.
She had legit signs of heart disease. Got told repeatedly it was diet. Went out to work and, hard core as she was, powered through a heart attack.
Damage was terminal. She lived a few more years.
Hard core again, she got tired of being zapped back to life, asked them to turn it off. I had to intervene and force it.
She lived another blissful month.
Through the whole thing, it was, "woman, you know nothing" right and left. I basically became full time patient advocate, and wish I was in that role earlier.
>I'm absolutely not trying to belittle your experience
I understand, I didn't think that you were. I agree with the point you made that maybe doctors who are trying to work might be impeded by a patient who disagrees. But I think that is a much smaller problem since the doctor can quickly be vindicated when the treatment he or she advises works, or the disagreeing patient leaves.
> Even the most "annoying" and inquisitive patients will accept this answer
but in the United States, often times they won't accept it and instead will give the physician a low survey score, which ties directly to their financial reimbursement.
True. But the situation describe further up this sub-thread wasn't a one off. This was an ongoing pattern of failed diagnosis and then mocking of the patient (i.e., the one who is ill and seeking relief) by those who promise relief and then failed him.
They should have been apologizing. Instead they stuck with a cycle of insanity. If the even fairly common imagine how many diagnoses are missed; imagine how many new and important discoveries delayed. Because of overblown egos and lack of empathy?
Chronic Lyme disease sufferers get the same response all the time. All the symptoms are dismissed as purely psychological. The lack of respect causes a lot of suffering in itself, but since it also means that patients who believe their doctors won't find ones who will actually treat them for the actual medical issues, it causes immense physical suffering. I've done a lot of reading of the core research into Lyme, and the certainty of mainstream physicians who handle patients this way is based largely on being too lazy to read that same research.
> Many people I work with suggest things that I know to be wrong. I have NEVER mocked or acted vengeful.
Then again you probably are not approached daily by dozens of humans with their meatware problems and human attitudes.
If you understand doctors to be salaried pattern recognizers and procedures applicators in various stages of burnout and adjust your expectations accordingly then you will rarely be disappointed.
Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor but I met a few as a patient and patient's family member.
Do you get it constantly every day? Do you get people telling you that you should rewrite your app in Android because they heard about it once? Do you get someone telling you that you should move from your amazon servers to the cloud? Do you get someone asking why you don't move your TV service to phones and not a tv box?
I don't think those are analogous. People make suggestions about their own health, for their own perceived benefit. That, I get every single day, 24/7 - and so does every professional in every field.
If it was THEIR app, they would ask about different hosting providers - and I would explain why or why not because it's my job.
There's that aggression again.
No, I'm upset about paying someone who mocked me and decided not to do any work because I was too pathetic for someone of his/her status.
I am an expert in my field. Many people I work with suggest things that I know to be wrong. I have NEVER mocked or acted vengeful. If they choose to continue with their ideas that I disagree with, that's their right. Is it really that hard to be respectful?
In every event that I've related in my posts, it was the doctor who was unwilling to give the most basic level of respect.