YouWannaKnow

You wanna know what I think about doctors?  I think that most of them are in it for the money rather than for the benefit of helping people.  Don’t get me wrong… I have a lot of respect for medical professionals because I know that I could certainly never do that type of job because of the high stress level and tremendous responsibility they have.  However, my experience with doctors- whether it be  from me and my children or from hearing about other people’s experiences-is that for the most part they are just concerned about rushing to get you out of their hair and on your way instead of taking the time to really try to figure out what the problem is.  I figure that there are a lot of people who go to the doctor with small problems thinking that it is something bigger than it actually is, but what about those who actually do have a bigger problem?  Most of the time they are dismissed as being overly concerned, even though it is something ongoing or persistent that is dramatically affecting their lives.  All I know is that if I were a doctor and I had a patient that was coming to see me more than once with the same problem and nothing I had suggested had worked before, I would definitely have more tests ordered and try to get to the bottom of the situation.  But this does not always happen in reality.  You are given this cream then that one, try this that and the other…. to no avail.  I have found that I learn more about health issues from the Internet than from my doctors.  There have been many times where I will see the doctor about something and I raise questions about things that they haven’t even considered… only to find out that whatever particular test I asked for (that would not have been offered otherwise) was the key in diagnosing the problem.  One example I can think of is an experience I had about my own health-care.  I had suffered from this particular problem for YEARS and had seen several different doctors about it.  I’d had it looked at, diagnosed as many different things, & been prescribed numerous medications which either didn’t work at all or only worked for short periods of time.  I mean, this was something that was really bothersome to me, but didn’t seem to be much of a big deal to any of the doctors.  I couldn’t believe that even when I would tell them that I had suffered for years, they did not seem interested in trying to do any type of further testing or anything more than a visual exam!  They would be convinced that they knew what they were talking about and that my concerns were insignificant.  Finally, I happened to come upon a doctor who I was seeing for something else completely and the subject came up.  He tested me, gave me a correct diagnosis, and boom… it was all over!  I mean, how hard could that have been?  Now, we are talking about many different doctors dropping the ball-from military to tribal to private physicians-and none of them took the time to run one simple test that could have helped me years ago.  It’s just ridiculous.  And the bad thing about it is that this is only one of my experiences like this.  Health care looks all good on those TV shows when you see doctors and nurses generally going out of their way to help patients, but the reality is that those people rarely exist in the real world.  It seems that health care is more of a business than a service to the people.  If you are going to make “healing people” your life’s work, then shouldn’t you be more concerned about actually healing people than trying to get to as many people as you can in the shortest amount of time so that you can make more money?  That’s just my opinion on doctors.  I have my opinions about health-care in general and all of the controversy surrounding the current debate on health-care reform, but I will save that for another blog….