A declaration for independence

If you had a clog in your bathtub and you called a plumber to your home, and after looking at the foot of standing water in the tub, he told you ‘Just pour Liquid Plumber in it,’ and you told him you had already done that, and he then said ‘Well, do it again,’ then he wrote you a bill for $150 and left – would you call him again?

Of course not.

Yet, as patients we go to doctors and tell them we have concerning symptoms and we’re told, ‘Just go on a diet,’ or ‘Just get more exercise/sleep/vitamins.’ And when we say we’ve already done those things, we’re told to do them again or do them more or do them differently. We then pay their bills and go home feeling no better, convinced that we are to blame for our ill health.

Yet we keep going back to the same doctors.

Why?

Is it because we’ve been conditioned by the media, by insurance companies and by the medical professionals themselves to bestow some type of godhood on doctors and to consider their opinions, even those not based on scientific evidence or current research to be sacrosanct? Is it because we’ve been conditioned by the media, Big Pharma and the diet industry to believe that our health problems are either a) due to laziness and overeating, b) all in our head and a bid for attention,  or c) a symptom of depression requiring lifelong dependence on antidepressants?

It’s time to stop accepting this form of malpractice, and it IS malpractice, and to demand better medical care regardless of the cost to insurance companies, regardless of the drain on physicians’ time.

I for one, have resolved to stop putting up with the platitudes I’ve heard for decades. ‘Eat less and exercise more!’ is not a prescription, it’s a red flag that a health care professional is undereducated and misinformed. I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s okay for me to refuse to tolerate this type of incompetence any longer, and I’m committed to getting better care regardless of any inconvenience I may cause my doctor or other health care practitioners I encounter.

It’s high time I made the medical profession MY BITCH. So stand back, it’s about to get real.

Happy Fourth of July weekend, everybody. I've just declared independence.