Dave Byrd
07-11-2007, 05:03 AM
Some thoughts about asking for medical diagnoses here. I hope my colleague FakeBoobsRule will chime in when he sees this, too. My wife drew my attention to a closed post asking for diagnoses and to some others, which were takendown or closed, that claimed doctors think they know everything.
On the diagnosis thing, any physician, nurse-practitioner, physician assistant, or nurse knows better than to make diagnoses from a distance like by phone or Internet. It??s hard enough when we see patients in person and can order the right tests. Even then we don??t always get it right. This forum, as Surrey??s Princess has pointed out repeatedly, is supposed to be about health as it relatesto cannabis. I don??t have a problem at all with people sharing information, particularly when they??re people who have some real education or training. But I totally agree with Surrey, Bird, and Sundance that when people are asking for diagnoses on this forum, it puts these boards at unnecessary risk.
On the doctors think they know everything issue, take it from me or any other honest physician. We don??t. With luck, we know our specialties damn well. Even then, there are cases that throw us. If you??re dealing with a doctor who??s pretending to know everything, run away??fast (assuming you??re not too ill to run). If you??re dealing with a doctor who isn??t listening to you or treating you like an equal, get another. That??s sometimes hard in these days of insurance limitations and networks, I know. I find that PAs and nurse-practitioners are often truly gifted diagnosticians themselves, so don??t discount their input. On the other hand, I can honestly say that I??ve met physician colleagues who couldn??t diagnose a deadly snake bite even if the rattler were still connected to their patient??s ass. Some of the trouble people may be having with thinking their doctors pretend to know everything is really with their own expectations of those docs, not the doctors themselves.
Even doctors and their families aren??t exempt from medical frustrations. My wife, whom most of you know, has been having what turns out to be disk degeneration/spinal compression trouble since late last fall. It??s a problem she??s going to have surgically fixed next week. While trying to get a diagnosis, she had one board-certified neurosurgeon who??s been practicing since the early 70s tell her she was in the early stages of ALS/Lou Gehrig??s Disease. She had another tell her it was residual trouble from a cerebellar malformation. She had a third who patted her hand, said ??There there, sweetheart,? and prescribed muscle relaxants. It wasn??t until, through relentless research on her own, she learned someone should have ordered imaging studies of her C-spine and lower vertebrae instead of the sub-occipital area and above. She forged on to talk to two more specialists, both neurosurgery professors, and finally persuaded one of them to order the right imaging studies. At last the problem was clearly apparent and she got the correct diagnosis. Took five months. A less persistent person would have ended up paralyzed. But that??s not my Birdie.
Getting a diagnosis should be a matter of working with a qualified health professional face to face. It also ought to be a team effort. What you bring to the table matters a lot. It??s a lot easier to slam doctors (and there??s one member here feels the need to take back-handed digs at people who believe in helping others, which is offensive as hell) than to realize they??re regular humans, too, who work against tremendously challenging circumstances. Medicine is a noble profession and an important one. If you went through four years of straight-A university education, four years of grueling medical school, and three to seven years of sleep-interrupted residency, I like to think you??d have a bit more respect. I also feel fairly certain that most of the loudest "slammers" couldn't even step past the first rung that educational ladder, even with a crane-assist.
On the diagnosis thing, any physician, nurse-practitioner, physician assistant, or nurse knows better than to make diagnoses from a distance like by phone or Internet. It??s hard enough when we see patients in person and can order the right tests. Even then we don??t always get it right. This forum, as Surrey??s Princess has pointed out repeatedly, is supposed to be about health as it relatesto cannabis. I don??t have a problem at all with people sharing information, particularly when they??re people who have some real education or training. But I totally agree with Surrey, Bird, and Sundance that when people are asking for diagnoses on this forum, it puts these boards at unnecessary risk.
On the doctors think they know everything issue, take it from me or any other honest physician. We don??t. With luck, we know our specialties damn well. Even then, there are cases that throw us. If you??re dealing with a doctor who??s pretending to know everything, run away??fast (assuming you??re not too ill to run). If you??re dealing with a doctor who isn??t listening to you or treating you like an equal, get another. That??s sometimes hard in these days of insurance limitations and networks, I know. I find that PAs and nurse-practitioners are often truly gifted diagnosticians themselves, so don??t discount their input. On the other hand, I can honestly say that I??ve met physician colleagues who couldn??t diagnose a deadly snake bite even if the rattler were still connected to their patient??s ass. Some of the trouble people may be having with thinking their doctors pretend to know everything is really with their own expectations of those docs, not the doctors themselves.
Even doctors and their families aren??t exempt from medical frustrations. My wife, whom most of you know, has been having what turns out to be disk degeneration/spinal compression trouble since late last fall. It??s a problem she??s going to have surgically fixed next week. While trying to get a diagnosis, she had one board-certified neurosurgeon who??s been practicing since the early 70s tell her she was in the early stages of ALS/Lou Gehrig??s Disease. She had another tell her it was residual trouble from a cerebellar malformation. She had a third who patted her hand, said ??There there, sweetheart,? and prescribed muscle relaxants. It wasn??t until, through relentless research on her own, she learned someone should have ordered imaging studies of her C-spine and lower vertebrae instead of the sub-occipital area and above. She forged on to talk to two more specialists, both neurosurgery professors, and finally persuaded one of them to order the right imaging studies. At last the problem was clearly apparent and she got the correct diagnosis. Took five months. A less persistent person would have ended up paralyzed. But that??s not my Birdie.
Getting a diagnosis should be a matter of working with a qualified health professional face to face. It also ought to be a team effort. What you bring to the table matters a lot. It??s a lot easier to slam doctors (and there??s one member here feels the need to take back-handed digs at people who believe in helping others, which is offensive as hell) than to realize they??re regular humans, too, who work against tremendously challenging circumstances. Medicine is a noble profession and an important one. If you went through four years of straight-A university education, four years of grueling medical school, and three to seven years of sleep-interrupted residency, I like to think you??d have a bit more respect. I also feel fairly certain that most of the loudest "slammers" couldn't even step past the first rung that educational ladder, even with a crane-assist.