For Doctors and Patients a little wisdom from a friend of mine.
from Gail
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Not to be critical per se,
but find a doctor who is willing to THINK and
not just practice medicine on auto-pilot (or cruise-control)!
Auto-pilot is great for getting you through routine tasks
that truly do not require thinking -- but it is a recipe for
disaster when thought is needed. Unfortunately the
professional who auto-pilots when he shouldn't
(be he doctor, lawyer, or whatever) rarely suffers the
disaster's effects personally.
And unfortunately there are some doctors out there who just
want to putter along on auto-pilot. And there are people who
put their health, unquestioningly, into these people's hands.
And that is not good for either participant.
The other side of this is the patient's responsibility not to
auto-pilot. Not to just sit back and let the doctor "do his
doctoring stuff, 'cause he's the expert". To actively monitor
one's health and report things that don't fit. To check the
doctor's diagnosis against one's own intimate knowledge of
self (you do allow yourself to be aware of your body, yes?
not avoiding it as somehow sinful? or unrefined? ) and to
question when they don't seem to fit.
All these fancy tests that technology has devised are in many
ways wonderful, and they allow us to determine things we
couldn't find out any other way. But they complement, not
replace, our somasthetic perceptions - whether as ill-defined as
"feeling good"/"feeling bad" or as specific as "I have a sharp
pain right HERE". A doctor who relies only on one of these
two sources of information is not doing his job properly.
A patient who denies the doctor access to the one source
that only the patient can supply, is truly not doing HIS job.
SO get to know your body, after all you are only going to
live in it for the rest of your life (no chances to "trade up"
like with your house, or "trade in" as with your car). And
when it starts going Phfft instead of Purrr under the hood,
(or bonnet) well, get to the doctor right away, before the
black smoke comes pouring out from in under the hood
(bonnet). If you ignore the warning signals and your car
dies on the road, well, time to buy a new car. But, if you
ignore the warning signals of your body . . .
--
Kevin G. Rhoads, Ph.D.
