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Mini Rant on People Who Think They KNOW Everything

Don't you hate it when someone tells you they KNOW all there is to know about something you have healthwise, and you try to explain to them the latest research and stuff, and they still don't want to hear it.

I was contacted on another site by someone who claims to have worked in critical care for alot of years. And she was like, I want to talk about your Hashimoto's. And when I explained to her that I no longer take the levothyroxine, since it made me sick and my doctor said I can treat it symptomatically, she really let me have it. She was going on and on about how you have to be on it forever, you can't just start and stop it and blah, blah, blah. And I said, first of all, the latest research shows it is a wheat allergy that manifests as an attack on the thyroid gland. Second of all, there is a form of it that does not respond to levothyroxine treatment, plus it's a horrible drug that doesn't do half of what it's supposed to do and makes alot of people sick. And in the cases of CFIDS/ME, often times our thyroid will start and stop, the hormone levels dip and raise. There are many doctors who treat CFIDS/ME who actually argue against treating the thyroid problem because it tends to even itself out over time with this disease. And sometimes you just need a temporary boost for it. In my case, sometimes all I need is one pill every ten to thirty days and I'm okay with that. Anymore and I get really sick on it. CFIDS/ME patients do not respond to meds the way other people do. We're often hypersensitive and have to be treated completely differently than people who do not have our illness.

So, anyway, she was really looking to fight with me, and told me I was completely crazy and she KNOWS all there is to know about Hashimoto's. And finally, after enough of her calling me nuts, I blocked her.

I feel it is not my job to educate someone, if they don't want to know it and won't do the research. And honestly, I really didn't even want to discuss it. It wasn't a healthsite she went after me on. It's a social site where I had responded to a disability question and had mentioned I have Hashi's. And then she PM'd. Maybe she's just one of those know it alls that likes to throw her "authority" around. I don't know.

Over the years, I've met way too many people who think they know stuff about our illness, and they know nothing. Especially, healthcare workers. Like the idiots at the clinic I went to for my sinus infection who didn't care that I told them I have POTS and still wrote on my chart high blood pressure, when I have a low blood pressure condition. I'm just so sick of dealing with bad healthcare workers that are uneducated and have no interest in learning anything new.

Comments

Thanks for sharing this story that happened to you. I learned a lot from what you mentioned here about thyroid issues. Thanks again I've always wondered if I had Hashimotos but my doc wont test me for it.. I do have wheat allergy though... very interesting indeed.
Gary
 
Thanks for posting this. I'm going thru a similiar scenario with a vegan who's trying to convince me to give up meat. And from people who still believe that doctors are gods and therefore, ordinary people can't possibly understand health info.

What gets me is these people's attitude that I must be wrong aka an idiot because I STILL have me/cfs.
They have no clue what we're dealing with here.

Sorry if I sound like I'm going off on my own rant here. It's just that I suspect that's where your egotistic "helper" gets her attitude. It seems, in their minds at least, that putting us down builds them up.

Hang in there .. Xchoc
 
I've encountered plenty of people who completely discount all the twenty plus years I've spent doing research. They just keep saying that I'm not a doctor and can't possibly know anything. I am willing to bet that if you put one of us into a test room with an average doctor, and tested us on medical knowledge, the doctor would fail the test. And that goes for most medical personnel today. We are the ones who have had to spend years and years researching everything there is to know about the human immune system, and various organ systems in the body. We probably qualify for medical certificates by now. And we are the ones who keep up with the latest research. We know what we are talking about. And I'm so sick of dealing with anyone in the medical field who doesn't know any of the latest research and doesn't feel they ever need to learn anything new. They just think that whatever outdated junk they were taught in school is the end. And it's not.
 
I couldn't agree more although I don't have your confidence in my own capabilities.

I don't understand how our medical professionals aren't required to keep up with the latest research. On the one hand they expect to be treated as "Gods" but then are quick to find excuses for why they're not. My favorite is the "I don't know" excuse. Which doesn't sound any more impressive when they use "We don't know" ...

I won't even go into how most of our medical professionals are completely clueless on me/cfs. Of course most of our problems have to do with the definition of me/cfs. Only those doctors who understand that the diagnosis of ME/CFS fits a number of illnesses can help us by ruling out the obvious possibilities. Aaaah, but who has the time for patients like us ?
 
This has occured because doctors had no answers for many patients for many years. So in essense patients had to make their own answers up or find some doctor with questionable theories and adopt those as their answer.

They then spend all their time trying to twist or make any new finding fit into their preconceived opinion about the etiology of their condition and will denounce far superior research in support of highly questionable theories that they support as faith rather than by justification.

Further I find that people dont seem to be able to adequately measure the merits of a theory or research by its evidence basis, its peer review, or any obvious flaws in its basis in physiology. Ill have a conversation with a person about a new and well researched finding that supports a theory and they will chuck in candida or something similar as if the research supporting that is as well supported as the former.

People dont want to know about the newer research that might not support their old faith etiologies. Which is quite sad because the quality of the work, the credentials of those conducting it and the reputations of the journals where this research is being published is at an ever improving level and is allowing real and credible medical discussion and acceptance of these illnesses.

As one major researcher said to me one day, if a doctor finds the definitive cause of CFS in most cases, in most cases the patient wont believe him because they are already too busy spending their money on a placebo.
 
Science is about questioning your own theories, rather than always trying to sell them to everyone all the time. What I read often on these forums and from doctors about CFS is more sale than science.
 

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Carrigon
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