as small as a world and as large as alone

10:32am August 12, 2013

Never trust a doctor who gives you two equally plausible explanations, has no evidence to sway them one way or the other, leaves the room, comes back in two minutes, and then claims to be dead 100% certain that the second one is true. And when you all why, the only evidence they can give is evidence that could be for either one.

And I’m not talking things that rely upon special arcane doctor knowledge here. I’m talking about things that are pretty easily understood by a layperson.

All the 100% certainty stuff only make me profoundly distrustful.

Especially coming from a resident.

It’s not that I even care which one it is. All I care about is accuracy.  And total confidence from a doctor when the evidence is ambiguous?  Only makes me think they haven’t been a doctor very long.  Most good doctors are never that extremely and totally certain, unless something is really bloody obvious. And this one didn’t even do an exam.

But I’ll be seeing a specialist on Friday anyway.  Not a resident.  So if the resident is wrong, hopefully not too much harm done.

I just really hope she wasn’t trying to invoke the fucking placebo effect. I get suspicious when doctors are 100% confident of an ambiguous diagnosis, 100% confident the meds will work, and 100% confident I won’t experience certain side effects. I mean seriously what?

Not that I’d knock the placebo effect if it worked right now, but I’ve been around the block too many times for certainty to work on me.

Doctors were certain my spastic urethra was me thinking too hard about peeing, certain I didn’t have gastroparesis, certain Mestinon would have no effect on me, certain I didn’t have any serious lung problem and was just being “manipulative” by saying asthma treatments didn’t work (until part of the lung collapsed), certain of all kinds of things until the tests came back different than they expected.

And they expect me to trust their certainty of ambiguous symptoms I reported myself without even doing an exam or any tests. …yeah.

4 notes