5 ms·

My family was addicted to benzos by a quack doctor who hands them out like candy. He has many seniors on it long term for "anxiety" and though seniors are at p

My family was addicted to benzos by a quack doctor who hands them out like candy. He has many seniors on it long term for "anxiety" and though seniors are at particular risk and are not supposed to use more than 6 months.

r3trohack3r 4y ago
I got to see this side of American medicine while in high school. My great aunt unofficially overdosed on a cocktail of drugs prescribed by a group of loosely coordinating doctors. When she passed, her cocktail included 12 prescriptions. One of her doctors had prescribed her medication to lower her blood pressure while another had her on medication to raise it.
- pkaye 4y ago
  Did she go to different pharmacies? I'd think within a pharmacy system the system would flag drugs that contradict each other.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    Especially for someone taking what was clearly a complex treatment, perhaps it was assumed that, say, the drug that increases BP was given for some other reason, and then the drug to decrease BP was given specifically to counteract the effect of the first drug. Of course, it seems that in this case that assumption (if indeed that happened) was tragically wrong, and instead the cocktail was a product of doctors disinterested in communication. But such complex treatments can be intentionally prescribed.
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  Ouch. People are really bad at handling their own medical care. I’m legitimately on 8 different medications and 3 supplements (not including vitamins), per doctor’s instructions. There is no way I’m going to any appointment (including my dentist) without a printed list of everything, including the dosages, instructions, and reason for being on it. Edit: I apologize for the poor phrasing. It comes off being flippant. The reality is the American system is often broken, and it’s up to the patient to manage their own care. And for many reasons, people don’t or can’t. What I was trying to say is, I have to do this and be diligent about it because no one else will. :(
  - whatshisface 4y ago
    People really are bad at DIY medical care... if only we could found a profession dedicated to doing it for them... I propose we call them, "Doctors," from the Latin word for "teacher," by reference to their role in instructing patients on the things they need to know about their health.
    - kayodelycaon 4y ago
      Joking aside, if I’m seeing more than one of these hypothetical professions, someone needs to coordinate my care. For myself, I trust me to keep everyone informed. Anyone else wouldn’t have the same incentive to do a good job. After all, I’m the one that suffers the consequences if there’s a mistake. :)
      - whatshisface 4y ago
        Well, going by our nomenclature for other things, the hypothetical leader of the other practitioners, by analogy to a leader in the army, could be called a "general practitioner."
      - ILMostro7 4y ago
        Age and cognitive issues may hinder you from effectively doing "a good job" of that.
        kayodelycaon 4y ago
        I know. I’m bipolar and have other medical problems. Getting older scares me. Beyond old age, the vast majority of people are bad at taking care of themselves. So many people that it is not a moral issue. It is a systemic issue. The problem is, you don’t need to take care of yourself, until you do. Society doesn’t prepare us for that. (I got to learn the hard way.)
      - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
        For myself, I trust me to keep everyone informed. All it takes is one accident or affliction to change this ability. Unresponsive due to a car accident, for example, or simply not having your list of information when you got rushed to the hospital. Confusion due to a high fever. A stroke due to an undiagnosed and hidden condition. Heck, simply age or winding up with a complicated health situation can do it. In short: You really only can trust yourself if you have enough luck.
- nootropicat 4y ago
  Yes, I have seen something similar happen too - a temporary illnes that most likely didn't need any drugs, prescription for drugs that caused side effects, but then another drug for those side effects and the situation repeated 5 times in total, passing 3 different doctors. The real solution that worked was to stop taking everything. Unfortunately listening to average doctor is a recipe for illness. Doctors belong to a medieval-style guild that managed to make it illegal to heal other people if you aren't its member, and extremely hard to buy needed drugs for yourself because of prescription (fortunately it's possible now because of internet pharmacies) - the latter of which is borderline slavery. Against all 'expert' opinion, I'm pretty on average everyone would be better off trying to cure themselves using information from the internet - or at the very least everyone on hn. My mother had hypothyroidism and got prescribed levothyroxine. She didn't like the idea of taking it forever, and after researching the internet found out selenium deficiency can cause it too. Directed blood test found a severe deficiency. After a month of taking selenium supplements thyroid hormones normalized. Internet self-diagnosis > average doctor.
  - tsimionescu 4y ago
    > Against all 'expert' opinion, I'm pretty on average everyone would be better off trying to cure themselves using information from the internet - or at the very least everyone on hn. Yes, why would it take more than an internet search or two to diagnose and fix one of the most complex systems known to man? Having people spend half a decade or more studying this is an obvious absurdity, tantamount to slavery! Beyond the sarcasm, just like you wouldn't expect StackOverflow to help you fix your company's complex bugs, you can't realistically expect to be able to treat yourself if you don't spend a good year or two researching your specific health issues. Sure, it's a good idea to read about it and not blindly trust your doctor - sometimes they do make mistakes, assume diagnoses without testing, or even actively seek to prevent you receiving the best care for various biases. Sometimes you have a simple issue and the solution is to simply take a targeted medicine or supplement. But a lot of the time, the problems are complex, and they interact in complex ways with other issues. For a lot of diseases there are no treatments without serious side-effects, and drugs to address those side-effects can have other side-effects and so on. A lot of symptoms are common to many illnesses, so you need a wide array of information to arrive at a correct differential diagnosis (quickly). Sometimes the differences between symptoms are subtle, and you need experience telling them apart. Not to mention, while classes of life saving medications are highly addictive, so patient's access to them must be carefully managed to avoid making their lives even worse. Benzodiazepines, as in TFA, are a good example.
- shaky-carrousel 4y ago
  Here in the Basque Country we have a public health system, named Osakidetza. Such system implemented, like five years ago, a centralized electronic prescription system. Now doctors in the public system have to use that to make prescriptions which solved all problems caused by bad doctors handwriting, and also solved problems like you mentioned, because the system detects and warns against conflicting medications.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    That's awesome! TIL that the Basque country has a separate medical system, i would have thought that would be one of the things alongside foreign affairs and military that wouldn't be devolved to autonomous regions. In France there's a similar system being rolled out currently, Dossier médical partagé, which is opt-in, and contains all of your diagnosis, tests, prescriptions, so that doctors can quickly see your medical history and present.
    - dasv 4y ago
      It is worth noting that the Basque Country and Navarre have a special regime inside Spain, which roots back to the medieval _fueros_, going as far as having their own independent tax agencies. The rest of the autonomous communities have a lot of competencies devolved from the state (education, health, etc.) but are much more controlled by the central government.
  - maxerickson 4y ago
    If you use 1 pharmacy they should be paying some attention to interactions and such.
donthellbanme 4y ago

r3trohack3r 4y ago

I got to see this side of American medicine while in high school. My great aunt unofficially overdosed on a cocktail of drugs prescribed by a group of loosely coordinating doctors. When she passed, her cocktail included 12 prescriptions. One of her doctors had prescribed her medication to lower her blood pressure while another had her on medication to raise it.

pkaye 4y ago
Did she go to different pharmacies? I'd think within a pharmacy system the system would flag drugs that contradict each other.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  Especially for someone taking what was clearly a complex treatment, perhaps it was assumed that, say, the drug that increases BP was given for some other reason, and then the drug to decrease BP was given specifically to counteract the effect of the first drug. Of course, it seems that in this case that assumption (if indeed that happened) was tragically wrong, and instead the cocktail was a product of doctors disinterested in communication. But such complex treatments can be intentionally prescribed.
kayodelycaon 4y ago
Ouch. People are really bad at handling their own medical care. I’m legitimately on 8 different medications and 3 supplements (not including vitamins), per doctor’s instructions. There is no way I’m going to any appointment (including my dentist) without a printed list of everything, including the dosages, instructions, and reason for being on it. Edit: I apologize for the poor phrasing. It comes off being flippant. The reality is the American system is often broken, and it’s up to the patient to manage their own care. And for many reasons, people don’t or can’t. What I was trying to say is, I have to do this and be diligent about it because no one else will. :(
- whatshisface 4y ago
  People really are bad at DIY medical care... if only we could found a profession dedicated to doing it for them... I propose we call them, "Doctors," from the Latin word for "teacher," by reference to their role in instructing patients on the things they need to know about their health.
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    Joking aside, if I’m seeing more than one of these hypothetical professions, someone needs to coordinate my care. For myself, I trust me to keep everyone informed. Anyone else wouldn’t have the same incentive to do a good job. After all, I’m the one that suffers the consequences if there’s a mistake. :)
    - whatshisface 4y ago
      Well, going by our nomenclature for other things, the hypothetical leader of the other practitioners, by analogy to a leader in the army, could be called a "general practitioner."
    - ILMostro7 4y ago
      Age and cognitive issues may hinder you from effectively doing "a good job" of that.
      - kayodelycaon 4y ago
        I know. I’m bipolar and have other medical problems. Getting older scares me. Beyond old age, the vast majority of people are bad at taking care of themselves. So many people that it is not a moral issue. It is a systemic issue. The problem is, you don’t need to take care of yourself, until you do. Society doesn’t prepare us for that. (I got to learn the hard way.)
    - Broken_Hippo 4y ago
      For myself, I trust me to keep everyone informed. All it takes is one accident or affliction to change this ability. Unresponsive due to a car accident, for example, or simply not having your list of information when you got rushed to the hospital. Confusion due to a high fever. A stroke due to an undiagnosed and hidden condition. Heck, simply age or winding up with a complicated health situation can do it. In short: You really only can trust yourself if you have enough luck.
nootropicat 4y ago
Yes, I have seen something similar happen too - a temporary illnes that most likely didn't need any drugs, prescription for drugs that caused side effects, but then another drug for those side effects and the situation repeated 5 times in total, passing 3 different doctors. The real solution that worked was to stop taking everything. Unfortunately listening to average doctor is a recipe for illness. Doctors belong to a medieval-style guild that managed to make it illegal to heal other people if you aren't its member, and extremely hard to buy needed drugs for yourself because of prescription (fortunately it's possible now because of internet pharmacies) - the latter of which is borderline slavery. Against all 'expert' opinion, I'm pretty on average everyone would be better off trying to cure themselves using information from the internet - or at the very least everyone on hn. My mother had hypothyroidism and got prescribed levothyroxine. She didn't like the idea of taking it forever, and after researching the internet found out selenium deficiency can cause it too. Directed blood test found a severe deficiency. After a month of taking selenium supplements thyroid hormones normalized. Internet self-diagnosis > average doctor.
- tsimionescu 4y ago
  > Against all 'expert' opinion, I'm pretty on average everyone would be better off trying to cure themselves using information from the internet - or at the very least everyone on hn. Yes, why would it take more than an internet search or two to diagnose and fix one of the most complex systems known to man? Having people spend half a decade or more studying this is an obvious absurdity, tantamount to slavery! Beyond the sarcasm, just like you wouldn't expect StackOverflow to help you fix your company's complex bugs, you can't realistically expect to be able to treat yourself if you don't spend a good year or two researching your specific health issues. Sure, it's a good idea to read about it and not blindly trust your doctor - sometimes they do make mistakes, assume diagnoses without testing, or even actively seek to prevent you receiving the best care for various biases. Sometimes you have a simple issue and the solution is to simply take a targeted medicine or supplement. But a lot of the time, the problems are complex, and they interact in complex ways with other issues. For a lot of diseases there are no treatments without serious side-effects, and drugs to address those side-effects can have other side-effects and so on. A lot of symptoms are common to many illnesses, so you need a wide array of information to arrive at a correct differential diagnosis (quickly). Sometimes the differences between symptoms are subtle, and you need experience telling them apart. Not to mention, while classes of life saving medications are highly addictive, so patient's access to them must be carefully managed to avoid making their lives even worse. Benzodiazepines, as in TFA, are a good example.
shaky-carrousel 4y ago
Here in the Basque Country we have a public health system, named Osakidetza. Such system implemented, like five years ago, a centralized electronic prescription system. Now doctors in the public system have to use that to make prescriptions which solved all problems caused by bad doctors handwriting, and also solved problems like you mentioned, because the system detects and warns against conflicting medications.
- sofixa 4y ago
  That's awesome! TIL that the Basque country has a separate medical system, i would have thought that would be one of the things alongside foreign affairs and military that wouldn't be devolved to autonomous regions. In France there's a similar system being rolled out currently, Dossier médical partagé, which is opt-in, and contains all of your diagnosis, tests, prescriptions, so that doctors can quickly see your medical history and present.
  - dasv 4y ago
    It is worth noting that the Basque Country and Navarre have a special regime inside Spain, which roots back to the medieval _fueros_, going as far as having their own independent tax agencies. The rest of the autonomous communities have a lot of competencies devolved from the state (education, health, etc.) but are much more controlled by the central government.
- maxerickson 4y ago
  If you use 1 pharmacy they should be paying some attention to interactions and such.

donthellbanme 4y ago