There was a time in the recent past when I used to gossip with my friends and family that I want my life partner to be a doctor because of the immense respect I hold in my heart for a doctor. This respect had its roots in 2 reasons. Firstly the hard work they put in understanding the most complex non mechanical machine on earth and its microscopic details. Secondly for the immense power they hold but use it with responsibility...well that’s what I believed and I hope that’s true for most doctors. And it has just been my bad luck to have met the worst of the lot and I hope they are not the perfect sample representing the entire population if I were to put it in statistical terms.
Around 1.5 months ago my dad developed some severe coughing and high fever while in Mumbai and fearing dangerous diseases like swine flu we ran to the doc upfront and from then on we have met around 15 doctors and my dad have been diagnosed with 12-14 different diseases, every time negating the earlier diagnosis. And let me tell you these diseases range from asthma to malaria to pneumonia to TB to even golfer elbow. Almost all totally unrelated. He has given blood for testing at least 10 times in the past 1.5 months. I many a times wonder whether he needs a blood transfusion. Many times he used to get blood test done in the morning as told by some doctor and in the afternoon if we had to meet a different doctor the new doctor would ask for the tests to be done again. Ask him why when test were already done he would say these are advanced test and when u get the result the format of the table or even the font size doesn’t change let alone the counts. Forget the money we have spent doesn’t matter as long as dad gets well. Anyway I am sure none of us has a track any longer. Forget even the tension and every minute of anxiety I and my family has gone through in the last 1.5 months. Forget even the huge doses of wrong antibiotics and medicines dad had, which I am sure would have some bad effect on his body in long run. But what about the prolonged feeling of unwellness and the resultant loss of trust that he has gone through which I think would stick to him all his life and always create a lingering doubt in his mind. As a doctor isn’t patient well being doctors’ prime motive. Atleast under humanitarian grounds and under Hippocratic Oath aren’t docs bound to do the best they can. Is it just a means to make money now days? Or is it that it is really that difficult to diagnose a disease...but the diseases each one of them told us were totally unrelated. I give these doctors the benefit of doubt. Anyway there is not much I can do otherwise also
Well there are certain lessons I have learnt from this experience which is the prime motive why I took the trouble to write this blog. Hope they help all of you though I hope you never need them.
1. Never enter a corporate hospital until and unless you are going to be completely reimbursed. And in case you are going to claim complete reimbursements, corporate hospitals are the best place to go to. Basically the remuneration of doctors in these hospitals is somewhere also linked to amount of facilities that are used by their patients so they might end up prescribing more tests then require. Similarly the doctors who have pathologies in their hospital or pathologies run by their relative might have dire motives in prescribing tests.
2. Always prefer standalone doctors if it is your pocket that’s going to get emptied.
3. A doctor who doesn’t ask for your history is either a genius of not interested in you and your wellbeing.
4. Always reason out with doctors...Take a few minutes of their time and finding out why you are doing what you are doing. 50% of the times you can eliminate at least one test by this. Also this will help you understand what he is suspecting.
5. Every part of your body is connected to every other by some way…so please don’t think that a symptom of some part can’t be related to some other.
6. The more the number of doctors you visit the more sick you are going to feel and the more confused you are going to get. Trust me on this. You might initially feel that a second opinion would be of great help but believe it hardly ever helps. So unless you don’t have choice please don’t change or shift doctors
7. Unless there is total change in “pathy” I mean you go from homeopathy to allopathy or ayurvedic, doctors don’t normally contradict each other. So if you want a second opinion go to a doctor belonging to different “pathy” or if you can’t do that don’t ask the new doctor to contradict the earlier doc, though you could ask him for further course or pretend he is the first doc you are visiting and ask for his opinion.
8. There are certain drawbacks in homeopathy. Diseases like malaria and TB can’t be treated completely in homeopathy. So you might make a futile effort of trying to cure these with homeopathy
9. Always TRUST your doctor...Half your disease gets treated automatically. If you don’t trust your doctor there are very few chances that you would get cured completely because at the end of the treatment also psychologically you won’t feel completely fit as you don’t believe he can make you completely fit
10. Lastly if you have any idea as to which category your problem belongs to, trust me it is always better to go to a specialist than to go to a general practitioner
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