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> One thing I've learned from smart family and friends about medical care is that you can sometimes improve outcomes quite a lot if you apply brains and effort.
by FabHK 8y ago
> One thing I've learned from smart family and friends about medical care is that you can sometimes improve outcomes quite a lot if you apply brains and effort.
I'd be very careful with this sentiment though, because it is easy to turn it into the toxic notion that if a loved one dies from some disease (which is pretty inevitable), you didn't put enough brains or effort in it.
- DoreenMichele 8y agoUnfortunately, every medical "support group" I have ever belonged to bent over so far backwards to not "blame the victim" that you absolutely couldn't talk about what worked because, inevitably, the sickest people with the worst war stories were the same ones who smoked, actively dismissed the idea that replacing carpeting with wood and tile floors might make a difference, etc. No, it absolutely wasn't socially acceptable to suggest that there was some correlation between the folks being proactive and having positive outcomes and the people shit-talking such approaches and their horrendous prognoses. It creates an atmosphere where we can't realistically even try to investigate or develop a mental model for what actually works. So we just pretend that success or failure is some random number generator outcome. That always has me wanting to pointedly ask "So, why go to a doctor at all if it is basically totally random?" But I know how well that will go over, so I usually bite my tongue.
- lysium 8y agoOff topic: why would replacing carpeting with wood and tile floors make a difference?
- DoreenMichele 8y agoIt's cleaner. I'm referencing discussions about lung issues in specific, if that helps you make sense of things.