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Congratulations on taking the bull by the horns and learning enough about your condition to develop your own strategy to reduce its impact. I don't know anythi
by jcims 6y ago
Congratulations on taking the bull by the horns and learning enough about your condition to develop your own strategy to reduce its impact. I don't know anything about how medicine is practiced elsewhere, but it seems 'western' medicine is rapidly approaching a horizon where a single doctor is woefully inadequate to handle treatment of anything even remotely approximating chronic illness in a single patient.
I saw this far to closely and personally for a little over two years. I went to a very dark place for some time but ultimately decided that the healthiest attitude for me to take was that doctors are simply overwhelmed with information and overpowered with the risk of career ending litigation. I pray that I never have to go down that road again, but if I do there's going to be an extremely frank conversation up front and the doctors will have a choice if they want to ride shotgun or not.
- DoreenMichele 6y agoIn tribal cultures, "medicine men" or "witch doctors" are one part medical people and one part spiritual leaders. There is no clear distinction between body and soul. Historically, doctors in a small community were some of the best educated people there and they knew people pretty well simply because it was small. They also took their little black bag and went to see you where you lived, which gave them enormous amounts of information about your life without saying one word and this informed their assessment of what exactly was wrong and needed to be fixed. Then modern tech came along and now we go to see them because their office or the hospital is where the big fancy tools are for running diagnostics, as if what ails you is entirely about your body and your body is separate from your life. And they are little more than fancy technicians. They've lost that role of "village wise man" and we fail to see how valuable that was, how critical it was to the practice of good medicine. I don't know how to fix it, but doctors don't do what they used to do and then we wonder why some things go so very wrong in a world with more "miracles of modern medicine" than ever before. The diagnostics are amazing. Getting the right diagnosis was a big, huge deal. But then the treatment and attitudes were a huge disappointment and when I began getting healthier, my physician expressed zero interest in how and why that was. He just scheduled me fewer appointments because other patients needed him more than I did. So when I moved, I didn't bother to find a new doctor. It seemed pointless. And then the internet decided I was some extremist anti-doctor nutcase when in reality it was doctors who basically wanted nothing to do with me.
- jcims 6y agoThat's some great insight. Honestly I think there are some parallels with what we're seeing in law enforcement as well. In a drive to reduce costs and risks both roles have pulled back from that deep social contact into something just focused on execution (no pun intended ;) and it turns out the relationship that has been lost was incredibly important.