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How young doctors view us?

EtherSpin

Senior Member
Messages
257
Location
Melbourne , Australia
Hey,

Incredibly disheartened to see them (the doctors) all making fun of us, thinking we're crazy, or faking it to get SSDI. Hoping others will chime in (I already did) to set them straight.

Anyway, here's the thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/975rvy/who_has_started_watching_afflicted_new/

Reddit has a certain tone on average (when you've been in many of the subforums) - there are the same kind of folks who inhabit youtube comments filling in time being rude and cynical then there are trolls of all sorts cause you can create almost any type of hate driven subreddit if takes time for others to prove you are inciting or engaging in illegal behaviour and there are a lot of geeky folks there ( I can be that way, its an observation not an insult ) but within the ranks of the geeky there is again, a tonne of cynicism and thats kind of what people get upvotes/approval from - the snarkiest takedowns of other users, the most sarcastic take on the kind of people described in an article that is linked there.

I think its extremely unlikely to find any great number of medical professions there with any respect for ME/CFS cause the serious doctors would want little to do with it despite its popularity and even the CFS subreddit is not safe because people come there to have a go, shill a get better quick scam or actually just look back through your post history when you are talking about something TOTALLY unrelated to CFS and they want to paint you as stupid/mentally ill.

I constantly get abuse for run on sentences and poor choices of word when my brain thesaurus won't work well and despite being centre/left on political spectrum I get people jumping down my throat for exactly that, if something I said is inelegant cause of an erroneous use of synonyms Ill get panned as a bigot or something so its that or 'retard' a lot

90% of the people saying anything medical are being snide it seems - i advise people to carefully select which sub forums they subscribe to over there and block people with little hesitation
 

AlwaysTired

Senior Member
Messages
174
What do you consider to be "young"? Some of them mention their teenage children in their posts. :confused:

I saw one who did, and that convo was about changing WiFi and Netflix passwords, so I just skimmed it.

But as I said before, I meant both young in age and young in their careers as doctors. The first post of the convo where people made reference to their children was started by a pathologist who is in post graduate year 5 (and therefore fellowship, as path residencies are 4 years long).

Of those who listed their credentials, most were PGY 1 or 2, or med students, a couple PGY 3, one PGY 4, and one PGY5. There was one attending, and one MD/PhD who I presume is also more established in their career since they're university faculty. Then there were researchers (one on our side), and a couple non-doctor medical professionals (EMT, MLS)

From the way others were talking, they sounded really inexperienced


The overwhelming majority of med school graduates are young in age though too.
 
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keenly

Senior Member
Messages
814
Location
UK
Lawyers have a reputation of being scum, but I see no reason why doctors (with exceptions, obviously) should not be looked at with the same scrutiny. Until doctors are stopped being looked at as heroes and geniuses, the incentive for them to actually do their jobs will continue being low.
I concur my friend. Adulation should not be automatic.
 

Dmitri

Senior Member
Messages
219
Location
NYC
Yes, and a big part of this is what they're told in school, which is told to them so they persevere through the brutal hazing that is residency. The medical education system needs to be overhauled, first and foremost, from the rampant abuse of residents by their superiors, to the 80 hour work weeks that young doctors face.

I don't know necessarily think seeing them as heroes is an issue- I mean, we see firemen as heroes and that hasn't made them careless or callous people. And some docs (the good ones) are. It's the God complex that some have which makes them arrogant and feeling they're beyond criticism of anyone that isn't their superiors.

Firemen do their jobs, they don't have the option of driving up to a burning building and saying it's just haunted and to consult a medium. After such a long and embarrassing track record of holding the default position of disease, including cancer and MS, being psychosomatic, they CONTINUE with this approach. It's simply too convenient to abandon. Why take a scientific, investigative approach when there's the easy way out of blaming the person's mentality or supposed beliefs? So many medical offices are conveyor belts with patients being seen for five minutes at a time to be told "it's just stress", and they get paid for it.

The quickest "litmus test" to check the quality of a doctor is how they respond when a "mystery" patient is presented - if they say it's psychosomatic, they don't belong in practice. If they admit to not knowing or are willing to investigate further or make referrals, it's a sign of a good doctor and the right mentality.
 

AlwaysTired

Senior Member
Messages
174
I have to disagree with you here. I don't know why fascism is brought into this but wouldn't it be more fascist to ban things you don't agree with?

I think the best way is to comment on it's flaws and leave it a bad rating. Besides if you petition to get it band then that could make it look worse to the layman. "Oh they where just butthurt that a documentary was telling a truth so they banned it instead of arguing against it".

They weren't telling the truth though- that's the problem. And people with ME, Lyme, etc are now getting yelled at, made fun of on the internet by those who e seen it, and of course doctors are doing the same. All of this will lead to more deaths and debilitations for us in the invisible illness community.

The makers lied to the participants about the nature of the documentary (you can refer to Jamison Hill and Jake Sidwell's twitter accounts for more info on this), assuring them it would be a scientific, factual series, where their stories would be elevated. Instead, they asked leading questions that they edited answers to the point of misrepresentation, they favored footage where family members expressed doubt about the illnesses being real, a psychiatrist (who had never even treated any of the patients) that was pushing the bunk idea of psychosomatic illness, focusing on the history of mental illness with those who it applied to further support that idea, BUT not showing any actual scientific data gathered on the afflictions discussed... etc

They interviewed doctors and scientists who specialized in the illnesses- Jose Montoya and Ron Davis among them- and cut those interviews out. Energy healers and naturopaths got to stay though, since the public still largely sees them as woo.

With all this they turned it into reality TV, so they could make as much money as possible. They exploited the desperate, ill and vulnerable to turn a buck. For that not only should their series be taken down, but they should have to pay damages (including every dollar made on this mockumentary) to the people they misled into participating (none of them had any say in the final product btw) and the chronic illness community at large.
 

AlwaysTired

Senior Member
Messages
174
Firemen do their jobs, they don't have the option of driving up to a burning building and saying it's just haunted and to consult a medium. After such a long and embarrassing track record of holding the default position of disease, including cancer and MS, being psychosomatic, they CONTINUE with this approach. It's simply too convenient to abandon. Why take a scientific, investigative approach when there's the easy way out of blaming the person's mentality or supposed beliefs? So many medical offices are conveyor belts with patients being seen for five minutes at a time to be told "it's just stress", and they get paid for it.

The quickest "litmus test" to check the quality of a doctor is how they respond when a "mystery" patient is presented - if they say it's psychosomatic, they don't belong in practice. If they admit to not knowing or are willing to investigate further or make referrals, it's a sign of a good doctor and the right mentality.

Of course. I wasn't saying we should brand all doctors as heroes, just that some actually are. I went to school with and worked with doctors pre-CFS, and have found the real issue to be that they are taught to believe they are infallible, and Gods, not that they're heroes.

Though perhaps if they were told that is the expectation, they would work to live up to that reputation (psychology has found that humans, when given undeserved praise or compliments, will then work to live up to it).
 

AlwaysTired

Senior Member
Messages
174
Reddit has a certain tone on average (when you've been in many of the subforums) - there are the same kind of folks who inhabit youtube comments filling in time being rude and cynical then there are trolls of all sorts cause you can create almost any type of hate driven subreddit if takes time for others to prove you are inciting or engaging in illegal behaviour and there are a lot of geeky folks there ( I can be that way, its an observation not an insult ) but within the ranks of the geeky there is again, a tonne of cynicism and thats kind of what people get upvotes/approval from - the snarkiest takedowns of other users, the most sarcastic take on the kind of people described in an article that is linked there.

I think its extremely unlikely to find any great number of medical professions there with any respect for ME/CFS cause the serious doctors would want little to do with it despite its popularity and even the CFS subreddit is not safe because people come there to have a go, shill a get better quick scam or actually just look back through your post history when you are talking about something TOTALLY unrelated to CFS and they want to paint you as stupid/mentally ill.

I constantly get abuse for run on sentences and poor choices of word when my brain thesaurus won't work well and despite being centre/left on political spectrum I get people jumping down my throat for exactly that, if something I said is inelegant cause of an erroneous use of synonyms Ill get panned as a bigot or something so its that or 'retard' a lot

90% of the people saying anything medical are being snide it seems - i advise people to carefully select which sub forums they subscribe to over there and block people with little hesitation

The internet is a hotbed for trolls, no doubt. The fact that the subreddit was plum with docs and med students makes it worthwhile, at least for me, to say something. I didn't see anyone trying to push products, and as for looking back through my history, well I'm not gonna let the possibility of that silence me.
 

Mary

Moderator Resource
Messages
17,335
Location
Southern California
FWIW, one of my sons called me last night. He had seen two episodes of Afflicted and thought it was very good - and he's intelligent and discerning, though of course has not experienced ridicule and contempt for being sick with an invisible illness. I told him about the reddit site and he groaned as reddit is known for trolls etc.

Anyways, he didn't think the series was demeaning to patients and thought it was well done even though in general he's a mainstream medical guy - he's healthy and never had to go outside the system like I have. But he does "believe" ME/CFS is real and has never put me down because of it. (it seems so bizarre to have to qualify attitudes by saying someone does or does not "believe" in the reality of ME/CFS - it's crazy) He talked about one of the patients who was bedridden - I think it really got to him.
I had decided before I didn't want to watch it, based on reddit and all the patients who thought it was demeaning and harmful to patients. But after talking to him I told him I would watch and see for myself.

I wasn't aware of all this last night, however:
The makers lied to the participants about the nature of the documentary (you can refer to Jamison Hill and Jake Sidwell's twitter accounts for more info on this), assuring them it would be a scientific, factual series, where their stories would be elevated. Instead, they asked leading questions that they edited answers to the point of misrepresentation, they favored footage where family members expressed doubt about the illnesses being real, a psychiatrist (who had never even treated any of the patients) that was pushing the bunk idea of psychosomatic illness, focusing on the history of mental illness with those who it applied to further support that idea, BUT not showing any actual scientific data gathered on the afflictions discussed... etc

They interviewed doctors and scientists who specialized in the illnesses- Jose Montoya and Ron Davis among them- and cut those interviews out. Energy healers and naturopaths got to stay though, since the public still largely sees them as woo.
But I'm still going to watch at least a couple of episodes.

A cheap reliable biomarker can't come soon enough! :sluggish:
 

AlwaysTired

Senior Member
Messages
174
@Mary
Ditto what @ScottTriGuy said above. The participants have been getting harassed since it came out (berated, yelled at, ridiculed), as have others with these illnesses. Go to twitter and put in #afflicted if you want to see some examples healthy folks questioning our ailments, judging ppl in film for supposedly turning down SSRIs and psychiatric care (they didn't but of course that's not told to us in the film), making assessments on us, etc...

And of course then there's doctors themselves just further being encouraged to mock and marginalize us, and it's in much more than the thread I linked in the initial post here.

So while there definitely will be people who, even after watching the series in it's entirety, don't see it as problematic, the sad reality is that it's already caused and presumably will continue to cause harm for those of us with invisible illness

Also, someone who is healthy isn't fighting these battles we do- to be taken seriously, to receive the care we need, etc... so they really don't have that history or vantage point to understand all the time how this affects us.

It's unfortunately up to us, and those who are our advocates, to educate others on why this series is not only inaccurate, but ableist- both towards the mentally ill, and non-mentally I'll but still debilitated alike

P.S. the patient who is bedridden is Jamison Hill. He has ME, and Lyme. I actually recommend checking out his Twitter account if you can.
 
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Mary

Moderator Resource
Messages
17,335
Location
Southern California
Also, someone who is healthy isn't fighting these battles we do- to be taken seriously, to receive the care we need, etc... so they really don't have that history or vantage point to understand all the time how this affects us.
I totally agree with you here. My son hasn't experienced what I have - he doesn't have the same perspective. Plus he'd only watched two episodes. I just wanted to put it out there, FWIW, that in his view, in the first 2 episodes at least, it didn't seem like patients were being told or treated as though it was all in their heads. And he said there was no way the patients were faking it, their pain was very real.

So I know he's not coming at it from the same viewpoint I or others would have. And apparently it gets worse as the series go on. I'm not defending the series. I just wanted to give another viewpoint.
 

ScottTriGuy

Stop the harm. Start the research and treatment.
Messages
1,402
Location
Toronto, Canada
And of course then there's doctors themselves just further being encouraged to mock and marginalize us

Given that medical error is the 3rd leading cause of death in the US, and dismissing physical symptoms as psychological a significant reason for those deaths, I predict there will be an increase medical error causing harm and death.

And I'm putting that harm and those deaths squarely on the shoulders of DocShop and Netflix.

Perhaps slapping them with a class action lawsuit would stop this exploitation of the sick.
 

AlwaysTired

Senior Member
Messages
174
I totally agree with you here. My son hasn't experienced what I have - he doesn't have the same perspective. Plus he'd only watched two episodes. I just wanted to put it out there, FWIW, that in his view, in the first 2 episodes at least, it didn't seem like patients were being told or treated as though it was all in their heads. And he said there was no way the patients were faking it, their pain was very real.

So I know he's not coming at it from the same viewpoint I or others would have. And apparently it gets worse as the series go on. I'm not defending the series. I just wanted to give another viewpoint.

I didn't take that as a defense of the series at all. Please read the piece I linked above your comment, it provides links to detailed explanations by the people in the series on what really happened.
 

Gingergrrl

Senior Member
Messages
16,171
FWIW, one of my sons called me last night. He had seen two episodes of Afflicted and thought it was very good - and he's intelligent and discerning

That's really interesting to hear @Mary b/c last week my step-daughter and I were watching something else on Netflix and she often marks something if she thinks I would be interested. She had marked "Afflicted" as something she thought I might like (even though she had not watched it yet herself) b/c we went through the experience of living with toxic mold together.

She saw how sick I got from the mold, and how I ultimately became allergic to all food (at that time, not now), and she experienced my entire illness with me. So, she thought it was a solid documentary that we would like to watch (which was totally understandable). I explained to her that even though I have not watched it, from what I'd read, they grossly lied to and took advantage of the participants and mis-portrayed their illnesses as psychiatric, etc. Once she heard that, she deleted it from her playlist and no longer wanted me to watch it and no longer wanted to watch it herself. She is also very bright and discerning (like your son) but from the promos, she had been fooled that it was a legit documentary vs. a train-wreck that took advantage of very sick people.

I had decided before I didn't want to watch it, based on reddit and all the patients who thought it was demeaning and harmful to patients. But after talking to him I told him I would watch and see for myself.

I am not planning to watch it but am curious what you think if you do. I have not heard one single good or redeeming thing about it and am certain it would completely piss me off to watch them taking advantage of, mocking, and demeaning very ill people (who thought they were participating in a legitimate documentary). :mad::mad::mad: