Women are relying more on 'Dr Google' than their GP .... I'm, like, totally stunned !!!!

[Rufous McKinney]

I'v e hardly been near a specialist.

The eye doctor specialists provided me with nothing including no other Specialist to go see.

My excellent gynecologist: he was really good. But he pushed the pamphlet with the happy ladies, while your there getting a Pap test and mentioning your not sleeping very well (menopausal).

Handed the pamphlet: all these ladies are happy now.

Ridiculous. Paxil or something.

And they think oxycontin is the epidemic to worry about?

 

[Rvanson]

My GP does not push the pills. He knows. Mine is wonderful, Mine is 70 and this won't; last.

then what?

Mine they won't let into the hospital here. I now see that means your likely a better doctor. He sees lots of elderly and gets them off many of the pills.

My mother was entirely laced with drugs and I should have sued somebody.

I am very sorry this happened to your mother, Rufous McKinney.

 

[Rvanson]

Yes, and then that specialist comes up crickets and refers you to another specialist who has zero clues, so refers you to another specialist, who is befuddled and pissed off as a result of having to admit that there's something he doesn't know, and refers you to another specialist, who nods sagely and refers you to ..... a psychiatrist.

So several thousand dollars later, you're not only back at square one, but now you're saddled with a psych eval and if you try to dodge that, at least based on what I've read in these threads, you're labeled hostile, uncooperative and a total head case.

At least half of the "mental heath profession" need mental health themselves, IMO. And the awful amount of money they make is out right obscene. Just try to find a malpractice attorney is you even think they F'ed up on your medications. You won't find one as I could not, when they gave me a major Gran-Mal seizure by mixing the wrong medication's after they sent me to a psychiatric hospital, when I only wanted to speak with a therapist. In the USA, it's ALL ABOUT THE MONEY. They made $7500 USD per day, and I was in no way suicidal nor homicidal, but it was April 2020 and with the lockdowns I wasn't doing well at all, socially.

After a day on a medication they should not have given me, I was lying on the floor, not the bed, as I couldn't sleep, as it was much too warm in there. The nurse would pop the door open for a second, never checking up on me. For $7500 per day? I couldn't eat, sleep or do much. I went into a black-out. If I ever decide to check out of this life, I'd like to harm them, before I go, but I am not that kind of man. I forgive them, but getting the word out on the internet is what I have done instead. I've talked lots of people out of ECT and TMS ( Yes, TMS is not as "safe" as they portray), which both damage the brain and don't at all always help depressive illness, and can harm a person, and which I've lived with even before I caught ME/CFS 15 years later after a meal and became as sick as hell 5 hours later.

 

[Rvanson]

Ditto. I'm baffled by why every hospital Im familiar with here in the US only has Tylenol as the low level pain medication, but I dont think it takes a genius to figure out the reasons for that ....

You might have better luck with Aleve. For me at least, it's been like a gift from heaven. I only use half a tab, and get at least 12 hours of relief, sometimes complete relief, other times considerable but not total elimination of pain. It's really been miraculous ....

It's also less deadly to the liver. You're right, Tylenol is absolute murder on the average liver ....

Aleve is exactly what I use for pain,YippeeKi YW !!O. Ibuprofen is a second, but aspirin is out. It tears my stomach up like crazy, even the 91 mg tablets.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

I am very sorry this happened to your mother, Rufous McKinney.

my mother was seriously drugged by her doctor when I was a teenager. She was severely depressed, sent to hospitals.

Around the time I was 21, that doctor retired. My mother was really upset about that. Well the new doctor got her off many of these pills and my mother was much better for quite a long time.

I chose to walk away from THAT door. I really did avoid them, almost entirely. Had midwives. Not having my baby in hospitals. Had to go to hospitals, every time.

 

[Hip]

But in saying that, GPs can stop taking on new pts as well reduce the number of pts they choose to see in a day and also cut back on the number of days they work. A few years back the medical centre my wife worked at had about 6 GPs, none worked full-time, most didn't work 5 days a week and the dr that did work 5 days only worked 830-12 noon.

I found this article:

A GP working a three-day week in clinic will on average work 40 hours, with reams of paperwork to complete when they're not seeing patients.

A quarter of GPs are working 50 hours a week or more.

To put this into context, a pilot is restricted to flying 32 hours over seven days, because doing more would be considered unsafe.

If you have ever worked in an analytical profession (I used to work in software programming), it's known that the brain usually solves problems better during relaxed time off (like when you are taking a tea break for example, or going out for a lunchtime walk), than when your are intensely focusing on the problem.

You can have what appears to be an insurmountable problem, which you cannot solve for hours or days, only for the answer to magically pop into your head during some down time, or after a good night's sleep.

It's the intuitive unconscious mind which solves these problems while you are relaxing. One theory is that the brain harnesses the power of quantum computing to perform this magic. One physicist said that they get all their great ideas while relaxing in the bath!

But this unconscious mind does not seem work well when you are intensely keyed up and under stress. At times you need to be keyed up and focused, but you also need regular down-time relaxation breaks, which allows the mind to solve the most complex problems by making use of natural unconscious intuition.

There are whole books on the subject of how our society is too keyed up and focused, and does not devote enough periods for downtime relaxed intuitive thinking, where the problems are solved while you sit and seemingly do nothing!


My concern is that with the UK GP average of 7.5 minutes to see each patient, a doctor has to be keyed up all day long, and does not have sufficient down-time relaxation to be able to solve problems properly. Pushing doctors to do more will only worsen this situation.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

I appreciate your fierce defense of Drs and the medical community in general, no matter what, @Hip, but you're taking this thread off-topic, which was the general treatment of WOMEN by the medical community, and why they're forced more and more to resort to other options for information and guidance.

Maybe you could open a thread relating to that defense.

EDIT ... for clarity.

 

[Rebeccare]

THIS THREAD HAS BEEN CLOSED FOR MODERATION

 

[Rebeccare]

THIS THREAD HAS BEEN RE-OPENED. PLEASE BE RESPECTFUL OF EACH OTHER AND MINDFUL OF THE FORUM RULES.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

I' ve been wondering what might happen if I simply print out some Dr. Google list of How to treat one of my various random illnesses that nobody will treat.

So if I bring this sheet to my GP, will he respond and provide with something they might list there, or will he just Fob me off to the specialists who so far seem refuse to help me?

Psychics? Any answer out there?

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Not a psychic, but pretty sure I know the answer .....

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Not a psychic, but pretty sure I know the answer .....

I once possessed an image, of an ancient oil lamp. submerged in the Mediterranean Sea.

The type Genies fly out of, when rubbed.

If I could open the lost drive containing the photo, and most of my other photos, I'd post it now.

Thats where the answers lie. All the Why's, can be explained, if one's asks the Jinn.

 

[Mary]

The doctor-patient relationship is now increasingly more like an information-exchange partnership, which means the patient takes on more responsibilities. If you want to be an equal with the doctor, then you have to share the workload. The patient thus has to do their own research.

I have found that with the nightmare illness of ME/CFS I HAVE to do my own research. The doctors know nothing about it. One endo told me a few years ago that ME/CFS did not exist, that there was no research showing that it existed because it did not exist (and thus he refused to look at the reserach I had brought) and that there would be no research in the future showing that it did exist, because, it didn't exist.

Needless to say, I didn't go back to him but I'm sure he was paid well for this garbage. I used to believe in doctors - it's how I was raised - until time after time they failed me, and I finally realized I was on my own with this illness. I'd much prefer to be able to go see a knowledgeable doctor, but there aren't any. Okay, I did spend about $1500 once for an appt with a specialist, including travel and lodging - and all he could suggest was more CoQ10 and NAC I think, and that was it. I wish I had saved my money.

Without Dr. Google, I'd be much worse off than I am now. I've made progress over the last 23 years, and almost all of it due to my own reading and self-experimentation.

Several years ago my then 33-year-old niece relied on her doctor who told her to ignore her symptoms of bloating and abdominal pain and pain during sex - it was all "normal" - he said this for 11 months until she was finally diagnosed with ovarian cancer which had spread to other organs. I think patients have to look out for themselves - we can't rely on doctors. We can listen to them, but I think ultimately we're responsible for our own health and if something doesn't make sense, I am so glad we can now do our own research.

I don't want a paternalistic or maternalistic relationship with my doctor. The best doctor I ever saw had no bedside manner - but he was knowledgeable AND he listened to me as well and kept himself informed. And was willing to work with me and order tests I'd suggest, and I listened to him and would try his suggestions as well. Unfortunately he died several years ago - I didn't realize how priceless he was until I was forced to see other doctors. We had mutual respect and it is so rare to find.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Without Dr. Google, I'd be much worse off than I am now. I've made progress over the last 23 years, and almost all of it due to my own reading and self-experimentation.

You did the right thing, @Mary , and you've the proof to show for it: you have ways to manage you situation and you can tolerate it. You found your path and ways to work thru it. And you share them with others, here! Bless you for that.

For me, its been decades of deciding that mostly your on your own. I was 16.

I recall this recent moment with my elbow bursitis. The bursa: is a mystery but brother can it act up.

So your using language to convey: the pain. My chinese herbalist announces in his far too typical fashion- YOU HAVE ARTHRITIS.

OK: STOP right now, NO nothing about this is the joint or arthritis. its the BURSA...its right underneath your skin. You cannot explain this anatomy, but when its messed up, its very obviously messed up.

But people only hear what they want to hear, and projections and assumptions about: "it hurts" ...lead to completely erroneous conclusions by health care types. And then they don't seem to ask more questions.

Never have I been there talking about joints.

 

[Hip]

I don't want a paternalistic or maternalistic relationship with my doctor.

I appreciate that, and over the years I have seen many patients on this forum state that the paternalistic medical model is no longer viable, because of the fact that patients who spend some time researching online can know more about their particular medical problems than their doctor (which is not surprising, given that doctors have to know about 1000s of illnesses, but the patient only has to learn about one).

But it seems ironic that now that the paternalistic model is being brushed aside, and patients have become empowered by the Internet, that we now see (in the article posted in the beginning of this thread) patients are complaining that they have to do their own research!

Having advocated for the right to Google medical information and bring it to their doctor, it seems patients are now complaining that they have do the Googling! Or at least that's what the article would have you believe. That may not actually be the case; it might just be a poor article.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

What do y'all think ????

I noted the article is from Yahoo UK.

Therefore, the grievances described I presume are from UK patients, dealing with the UK system.

can know more about their particular medical problems than their doctor (which is not surprising, given that doctors have to know about 1000s of illnesses, but the patient only has to learn about one).

which is why the current medical set up is largely a failure for multisystem complex illness. Isolating off specialists, the lack of a team approach, no answers ever to anything....

And we do not have to learn about one illness. No, we get the entire encyclopedia.

 

[hapl808]

Having advocated for the right to Google medical information and bring it to their doctor, it seems patients are now complaining that they have do the Googling! Or at least that's what the article would have you believe. That may not actually be the case; it might just be a poor article.

I don't mind Googling at all. I do mind that my doctor is uninterested or at best unengaged with anything I've found.

I'd like to ask a neurologist or rheumatologist their opinion on research or possibilities, but most of the neurologists I've seen just say something like, "I'm sorry, I don't know what would cause those symptoms so I'm not sure what you want me to do."

Our current system is beyond broken.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Here is a new article from April 20, 2022:

WOMEN and MEDICAL GASLIGHTING...with citations.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/...l/202204/how-women-suffer-medical-gaslighting

Wonder if people get paid to write such articles?

 

[Zebra]

Wonder if people get paid to write such articles?

Psychology Today is both a print and online magazine, yes?

I've worked for several magazines.

Journalists/writers are either hired by magazine editors to write an article, or journalists/writers approach the magazine editor and pitch their proposed story.

Journalists/writers are compensated for their work. That is how they make their living.

The article they submit is then copyedited and fact-checked by magazine personnel before being laid out and printed, or published online.

Does that answer your question?

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

I noted the article is from Yahoo UK.

Therefore, the grievances described I presume are from UK patients, dealing with the UK system.

So are you saying that "It Doesnt Happen Here", and that our system is somehow impervious to gaslighting, dismissive Drs? Or medical sexism?

Wonder if people get paid to write such articles?

Yes, because they have to earn a living. It doesnt invalidate the information. Every article you read has usually been paid for by the publishing vehicle. And then you pay the publisher to read it. Capitalism.

Here is a new article from April 20, 2022:

WOMEN and MEDICAL GASLIGHTING...with citations.

Great article, and thanks for posting that ....

But I couldnt find more than one 'citation', which wasnt actually a citation as much as an acknowledgement ....