The more I learn from this site and from Ray Peat, the more I realize how hard it is to go to a hospital and put myself in a hospital doctor's care. Does anyone else feel this way?
Just today, I asked a rehab doctor attending to my sick mother to do an Achilles tendon reflex test on her. He pulled out an el cheapo neuro hammer supplied by a drug company, and went about doing it the wrong way. I said thank you to him, just not knowing what to say. Was he ignorant, or does he think I'm just as ignorant as the rest? I ran into the physical therapist working under him, and she asked if I was able to get to the doctor. I said yes, but that he was making a fool of me. She laughed as if she knew what I was talking about. Kind of like an industry secret for them. The Achilles tendon reflex test is a useful test for hypothyroidism, and apparently it's underutilized because there are more expensive but less reliable tests around such as the suite of endocrine tests the hospital used on my mom declaring her normal thyroid - free T3, free T4, and TSH - which to those who know among us is not conclusive of a test at all by themselves.
Last weekend, I was engaged in an argument with the pulmonologist who is the attending physician to my mom. She tried to go around my questions regarding my questions on blood CO2 pCO2 values, as I tried to establish a condition of respiratory alkalosis with my mom's test results. She kept evading my questions, saying things like that are inconsistent, trying to throw me off. But I was having none of it, and showed her my understanding of the relationship of arterial and venous pCO2, proving my case that respiratory alkalosis exists. And she finally relented. WTF right? Why the runaround? They're just not used to patients asking questions with some knowledge. It seems they're so used to just doing as they so please with patients, thinking all patients are just going to play dumb, which usually is the case.
I realize more and more the contempt by which they hold their patients. They give us drugs without much regard for side effects. I can understand if they don't bother to tell us, as that would be too time-consuming and it would always backfire on them with patients imagining side-effects left and right. But when patients do their own research and really do observe side effects which could mean stopping the continued use of the drug, they just dig in their heels. Doctors having experience cannoton;t continue to pretend it's the first time they encountered such effects, but talking with them they feign ignorance. They prescribe these drugs all the time, and it's laughable that they're not aware. It just seems to me it is an unwritten rule among hospital doctors to just let side effects run its course. If and when the patient is gravely harmed, they can just as easily chuck it up to genes, or age, or simply say "Gee, I don't really know."
These doctors are otherwise respectable people outside the hospital. But once they step inside the hospital, they have to play the role of an ogre and an actor.
Just today, I asked a rehab doctor attending to my sick mother to do an Achilles tendon reflex test on her. He pulled out an el cheapo neuro hammer supplied by a drug company, and went about doing it the wrong way. I said thank you to him, just not knowing what to say. Was he ignorant, or does he think I'm just as ignorant as the rest? I ran into the physical therapist working under him, and she asked if I was able to get to the doctor. I said yes, but that he was making a fool of me. She laughed as if she knew what I was talking about. Kind of like an industry secret for them. The Achilles tendon reflex test is a useful test for hypothyroidism, and apparently it's underutilized because there are more expensive but less reliable tests around such as the suite of endocrine tests the hospital used on my mom declaring her normal thyroid - free T3, free T4, and TSH - which to those who know among us is not conclusive of a test at all by themselves.
Last weekend, I was engaged in an argument with the pulmonologist who is the attending physician to my mom. She tried to go around my questions regarding my questions on blood CO2 pCO2 values, as I tried to establish a condition of respiratory alkalosis with my mom's test results. She kept evading my questions, saying things like that are inconsistent, trying to throw me off. But I was having none of it, and showed her my understanding of the relationship of arterial and venous pCO2, proving my case that respiratory alkalosis exists. And she finally relented. WTF right? Why the runaround? They're just not used to patients asking questions with some knowledge. It seems they're so used to just doing as they so please with patients, thinking all patients are just going to play dumb, which usually is the case.
I realize more and more the contempt by which they hold their patients. They give us drugs without much regard for side effects. I can understand if they don't bother to tell us, as that would be too time-consuming and it would always backfire on them with patients imagining side-effects left and right. But when patients do their own research and really do observe side effects which could mean stopping the continued use of the drug, they just dig in their heels. Doctors having experience cannoton;t continue to pretend it's the first time they encountered such effects, but talking with them they feign ignorance. They prescribe these drugs all the time, and it's laughable that they're not aware. It just seems to me it is an unwritten rule among hospital doctors to just let side effects run its course. If and when the patient is gravely harmed, they can just as easily chuck it up to genes, or age, or simply say "Gee, I don't really know."
These doctors are otherwise respectable people outside the hospital. But once they step inside the hospital, they have to play the role of an ogre and an actor.