Doctor = God?

I don’t understand people that regard medical doctors as “next to God”. Yes, they save lives. But they also end them. Chemotherapy is one hell of a science experiment: “We need to feed enough poison into the patient to kill the cancer, without killing the patient.” That’s really what it is. I am not saying that it isn’t a necessary treatment, or that it’s not effective in many cases. I am simply saying that it’s scary as hell. I think my disillusionment of doctors began when I was taking an EMT class. We were studying the Heimlich maneuver (a very good thing to know, BTW). We all mastered the basic what-to-do-when-someone’s-choking bit. We moved on to what you do when your choking victim is obese or in the third trimester of pregnancy, or in the “we can’t get underneath the diaphragm” group. The therapy? A compression on the sternum, just like CPR (only maybe standing up, if your victim is still conscious). OK. Got it. Now, being the forward thinking, cause and effect kind of girl I am, I raised my hand and said, “but won’t that put them into V-fib?” Essentially – won’t that make the heart STOP beating? Ready for this? The answer: “Probably. But they were going to die anyway so you have to dislodge the foreign body from the airway and then do CPR.” Well, alrighty then. The lesson here is don’t choke if your diaphragm is obstructed by a big belly, baby-full or not. Because if you thought you were close to dying while choking (which you are), you’re doubly close if there’s something between a friendly Heimlich giver and your diaphragm. The real lesson to me though, was that medicine is NOT a hard science. It’s an educated series of good guesses at what just might cure your particular ailment. And try not to have a puzzling problem, because you’ll be tested, poked, prodded, x-rayed, and MRI’ed to the point that you just want to run off into the hills and be left alone to at least, die in peace. I have a friend who has just such an ailment. She’s essentially lost function on one side of her body. She’s having a “double MRI” done this month. Now I don’t know what a “double MRI” is but I know a single is unpleasant enough. Don’t get me wrong. I do greatly appreciate medical (and other) doctors and all that they do for mankind. I just accept that the practice of medicine is more a black art than a science. It brings to mind a wonderful book I read years ago. I think it’s called “The Physician.” It’s about a young man with such great curiosity about medicine and the human body, that he violates all religious codes and started cutting open dead bodies to study them; probably the first crude autopsies ever done. It’s a wonderful read if you’ve got the time. A great movie about medical trial and error is Something the Lord Made. It’s the true story of a black man who wants nothing more than to go to medical school. He loses his savings when the local bank goes belly up and leaves his struggling black community shit out of luck. He gets a job working in a lab with a brilliant and arrogant doctor. His contribution to the doctor’s work is invaluable and he accomplishes this without ever having earned a medical degree through schooling. A few years ago, I was sitting in pre-op, waiting to be wheeled in to an emergency surgery that would save me from bleeding to death internally. (It’s a long story – but that sums it up rather nicely). While in pre-op, talking to my surgeon, I asked a question that I don’t think enough people ask. I said, “Who’s scrubbing in?” She responded with the name of a doc that I should have sued for malpractice years before (another long story). And I said “Absolutely not. That guy is coming no where fucking near me!” And he didn’t. She paged in the next ob doc on call (instead of bringing in a general surgeon), and took extra special good care of me. I recently needed some blood work done and the doctor was a bit taken aback when I said I would like “an A1C ordered, please”. Everyone preaches, “Take control of your own medical care. Educate yourself!” And I believe that to my very core. However, when you actually DO it, you be amazed at the how many doctors are surprised, some even put off. Reading blogs of infertile women really brings this to light when you see how many of them research their conditions and upon delivering their findings to their doctor, are astonished to actually have the doctor listen to, accept, and even do some research on their own for possible or new therapies. In closing, I’ll step up on a little soapbox here and say: Educate yourself. Demand that your doctor explain exactly what is wrong and each and every treatment option clearly. With all the information, YOU can take control of the decision-making process and treatment planning. Challenge them. Get a second or third opinion. And if you’re going in for surgery, make them draw a big red “X” on the part they are supposed to operate on.