5 ms·
You actually get tests? Consider yourself lucky. For me it's just "I don't recognize those symptoms. Symptom A and symptom B are never known to go together so I
by unanswered 5y ago
You actually get tests? Consider yourself lucky. For me it's just "I don't recognize those symptoms. Symptom A and symptom B are never known to go together so I'll just ignore B, and there are no tests for conditions which cause A, so fuck off lol".
- renewiltord 5y agoAs usual this is the result of gatekeeping in the medical industry. It is typical of this industry to kill a million people through inaction to avoid killing one through action. As a bonus, by arrogating the exclusive right to drug prescription and analysis to themselves they can charge what they want. Man deserves true freedom. To self diagnose if one so desires, to kill oneself through incorrect prescriptions if one so desires. People foolishly say “If only the doctors would see my illness as an illness” not realizing they exist in a false prison. Doctors should not stop you from treating yourself. You are sovereign over your body. Never let them rule.
- unanswered 5y agoThat would be very helpful if I knew how to treat myself, or if some of the alternatives I might try were as safe as I should desire for experimentation. If anything, hare-brained attempts by loiscenced physicians at treatment with antibiotics, which left me with tinnitus, have made me very skeptical of any treatment until it's properly explained why I should agree. But I will leave that fight for when anyone can come up with a plausible option.
- renewiltord 5y agoAnd that is a choice you can make for yourself. It is good that no one demands you treat yourself, only that you have the option.
- jcelerier 5y agoThat's all fine and dandy until the moment where you self-medicate, take your car, faint at the wheel and kill a family of four.
- somnic 5y agoI mean, isn't that just status quo bias? You can come up with a story for how anything will result in negative consequences. If we didn't have medical gatekeeping you could just as easily come up with a story about how requiring people to get approval from a doctor to treat themselves could result in someone fainting at the wheel and killing a family of four, and it'd be just as meaningless as this.
- renewiltord 5y agoThat’s all fine and dandy until, lacking medication, you faint at the wheel and kill a family of five. Five being greater than four it is clearly worse not to allow for self-medication.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jcelerier 5y agoBut it's incredibly more likely than if left to themselves, people will self-medicate, and not necessarily with due research beforehand. To give an example: in my country, 56% of people have already medicated with homeopathy (a known scam for decades). Imagine if they could just buy any other medication, which unlike homeopathy, could have strong secondary effects ? Those 56% people who have "illnesses" with very benign symptoms that for most cases cures itself in a couple days without any drugs (homeopathy is used for anything, common cold, headaches, itches, you name it ...), now they're potentially taking much more dangerous meds. So it's clearly not equivalent as 56% of people definitely don't have "faint-at-the-wheel" symptoms today.
- renewiltord 5y agoThe existence of side-effects affects how many people will take the drug. I don’t think the zero side-effect situation illustrates anything any more than giving away your product for free tells you how many people will buy it.
- cperciva 5y agoMan deserves true freedom. To self diagnose if one so desires, to kill oneself through incorrect prescriptions if one so desires. The thing is, none of the rules you mention exist to stop patients from doing anything. Rather, they exist to protect desperate patients from con artists selling (sometimes literally) snake oil "cures". I'm reminded of accredited investor rules -- which also chafe at times, but are equally essential for protecting people from scams.
- rscho 5y agoThis is correct. Am MD and agree fully. GP clearly hasn't thought through all the implications of his statement.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- renewiltord 5y agoIndeed, but the accredited investor rules do have a relatively easy escape. The corresponding escape for medicine is really hard.
- cperciva 5y agoFor medical devices we have "for scientific and recreational use only".
- nootropicat 5y agoFortunately almost all drugs can be ordered online without prescription, at least those that are also in India. For larger amounts of money you could even order a custom synthesis in a Chinese lab.
- renewiltord 5y agoAmusingly, I have fast access to this pipeline (one of my childhood friends owns a generics manufacturer in India). But for tests, etc. sadly I am constrained to American gatekeeping unless I physically transport myself.
- bigcorp-slave 5y agoIn my case, it is a combination of persistence, a small number of excellent specialists who believe me, and willingness to spend tens of thousands of dollars.
- missblit 5y agoHickam's Dictum: A man can have as many diseases as he damn well pleases.
- unanswered 5y agoI've heard it before, and my very serious reply is this: "well, I please only to have one, so you will have to keep searching until you find it"!
- deltaonetwo 5y agoI propose another dictum. Call it Delta's dictum. Only a doctor has the intelligence and super human ability to claim that a man has a disease. The man himself is too ignorant and stupid to know anything about his own disease.
- rscho 5y agoYou really have an axe to grind with docs, don't you?
- AuryGlenz 5y agoHow about “your test came back too low, but I’m not even going to think about treating you because you don’t fit the profile.” You beg to at least be referred to a specialist. The specialist all but laughs you off but agrees to test again. The test comes back even lower. You then have to ask the “specialist” for a specific treatment because you apparently know more than he does. I’ve never had a good experience with an endocrinologist.
- tasogare 5y agoI had one good endocrinologist, then she moved away. Since then it's just doctors looking at numbers and be like "numbers are low so you're fine", despite being tired all the time.
- tremon 5y agoThis is my father's experience with his hematologist. He presented around 2000 with symptoms of fatigue and shortness of breath. He got bypass surgery a year or so later, but his condition never improved -- he wasn't even fit enough to complete the (very light) physical therapy recommended after surgery. Eventually, he started compiling his own bloodwork and measurements in an Excel sheet and could correlate the severity of his symptoms with the red blood cell count in his blood, but was rebuffed every time. After urging from us, he finally asked to be referred to a different specialist, and one of the first things he asked her was: "can my symptoms be explained from this blood work?", and he was very happy and relieved when she said yes. In all, it took ten years after his first symptoms to be diagnosed with MDS [1]. He's gone now, but at least his last years were better than the ten before that. To this day, we don't know if his bypass surgery was a necessary intervention. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelodysplastic_syndrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myelodysplastic_syndrome