As you may have gathered, I’m not one to praise western medicine. It’s fantastic if you have a broken bone, ruptured organ or other immediate trauma, but it often misses the mark on chronic illness.
I blame our litigious society for binding the hands, or more so the minds, of our medical professionals. If there weren’t so many people seeking easy money then we’d all be better off, in many ways. But given the reality that people sue for just about any reason, I almost can’t blame doctors. But I still do. Didn’t they take an oath? Doesn’t that oath require doctors to treat to “the best of their ability’? Then why do they fall so short so often?
Some of that blame also needs to be placed on our overzealous, almost fanatical belief in pills being able to fix all of our problems. Even the medical community has bought into this notion and it’s extremely short-sighted and arrogant.
What I’m getting at today is the worst part of it all, the regimented protocols demanded by theindustrialized practice of medicine. To get any kind of treatment you have to endure an assembly line of assumptions that lead to innumerous samples, lab test, images, etc., without getting to the point of why you’re there in the first place. It’s about checking boxes. Both doctors and insurance companies demand this. I shake my fist at these protocols!
All of this rigmarole feeds the deeply held belief that illnesses can be resolved through a system of checking off boxes rather than investing time with patients and actually LISTENING to them. Have you ever had a doctor’s appointment where you knew that they didn’t hear what you had to say? If not, boy are you lucky! I’ve had too many experiences where despite what I had to offer about myself in terms of data and details regarding my current situation, I could see the doctors wrapped up in their own train of thought and barely listening. I call this “listening with one ear”. Sure they heard my voice, but they didn’t hear ME.
So now we’re at the mercy of paying for the pleasure of a doctor being able to check a box, which is maddening when you’ve already told them yourself. I’m not omniscient, nor am I god, but when I asked for a tongue scrape to check for Candida Glabrata, an often undiagnosed medically-resistant strain of Candida, I was told that I first had to test for HIV and diabetes. Are you serious? I KNOW that I’m neither HIV+ nor diabetic. Trust me, I do. But doctors think that there’s NO WAY you could possibly know anything about your own health.
Apparently, you need to leave all thoughts and decisions about your body to a doctor. They even try to shame you for thinking you might have insights about yourself.
This cat pic depicts the approximate look on my face when I was told that I needed to get tested for Diabetes and HIV. I didn’t come in to get tested for things I knew I didn’t have. I came in to get a tongue scrape and have it cultured so we could see if I have the highly resistant species of fungus in me. A possibility that is supported by my immediate situation and recent medical record. I was irritated by the demand but I complied. Why? Because I really wanted to get the tongue scrape. Ugh!
Guess what? Within 24 hours it was confirmed. No HIV and no diabetes. So can we now get on with the real problem?
I’m just frosted that I had to pay $225 out-of-pocket to have a lab tell a doctor what I told them in the first place.
Photo by Carlos Quintero on Unsplash
Featured Image: Photo by Gabriel Matula on Unsplash
