How to talk to doctors when you're chronically ill
Always be deferential
Pretend you don't know any three-syllable words
Use small words
Don't use technical language about the disorder you're living with (this can make you sound like you've been spending too much time on WebMD, which means you a filthy liar and a fake)
Don't use casual language; doctors don't understand any words that aren't shown in a textbook
Don't be too descriptive when talking about your pain (this makes you sound too emotional, which makes you sound like you're exaggerating, which means you're a filthy liar and a fake)
Don't mention your other diagnosis/es - one appointment, one problem
If you've heard of a treatment that has worked for your condition that you haven't tried yet, no you haven't.
Remember to remind the doctor of your medical history in full, so that they don't prescribe you something you're allergic to, and if they do it's your fault
Don't talk about medication, you drug seeking addict
Make sure to mention what medication you've already tried to save the doctor's time trying to prescribe it again
It is up to you as a layman to know what drugs interact with what drugs you might already be taking; never check with the doctor, it is annoying to them
NEVER finish a sentence.
Could this symptom be related? No. No, it can't. Don't bring it up.
Don't leave out anything that could be vital to your diagnosis or treatment!
Pretend you don't know anything about your disability: doing otherwise provokes a threat response in doctors, which can present as correcting you incorrectly, or just shutting down and dismissing you entirely
If you are seeing a specialist for an un-related issue, make sure to let the doctor know; they'd like to join in and LARP as a specialist too!
Do not mention what it could be, because that is what it is not.
Always be deferential. (I mean, licking the floor is going overboard, but a little kneeling never hurt anyone)
And remember:
If it works, it's because the doctor did something right.
If it doesn't work, it's because you did something wrong.
Johnson & Johnson is currently, like right this minute, trying to extend their patent on the TB drug bedaquiline, keeping it out of generic for another four years. TB killed about 30,000 people last week and is the world's deadliest infectious disease.
If this drug does not go generic now it could affect 6 million people in the next four years (the time it would take the "new" patent to run out). Out of those millions of people who get TB, but can't get bedaquiline, most of them will die. From a PREVENTABLE DISEASE.
Why is this happening? Money. But also, because TB is not an issue in countries like the US. We can afford its $1.50 a pill price. But if you live in a poor country, that's too much money to spend on something you need to take for up to four months.
J&J needs to let this drug go public and do its job in places that can't currently afford it. They need to help people, instead of trying to wring the last few drops of money out of one of their many products, at the cost of human lives.
@sizzlingsandwichperfection-blog does a waaaay better job of explaining this than me. Check out the video and the video description for links and ways to help!
Unless you have been the sole nurse on a unit (whilst your one colleague is on break) finding a patient with no heart beat, call the crash team and initiate a CPR/resus attempt alone: you do not get to say the NHS has enough nurses.
At the moment, this is a scenario most NHS nurses worry about whilst going to work every day.
For each extra patient a nurse has outside the safe ratio of care, mortality for those patients raises 7%.
Steve Barclay, the Health Secretary’s, solution is that nurses should work harder. We’re already doing the work of 4 nurses, 2 assistants, the cleaner and cook. We are already exhausted.
Patients do not deserve to be treated by exhausted nurses.
Nurses deserve to be able to treat their patients whilst not compromising on self care.
On Jan. 9, over 7,000 New York City nurses from Mount Sinai and Montefiore hospitals in Manhattan and the Bronx, respectively, went on strike. Nurses, organized by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA), are demanding safe patient-to-staff ratios, fair wages, and to maintain existing healthcare benefits.
“We don’t wanna leave our patients. This is the last thing that we ever want to do. But unfortunately we’re pushed to this point,” said Jessica, a nurse at Mount Sinai. “Management left their patients, not us. We’re here fighting for our patients.”
For every one disorder that doctors cure with medication (it does happen occasionally, I'm told), there are ten others they provoke in healthy patients by inoculating them with a pathogenic agent a thousand times more virulent than all the germs you can name: the idea that one is ill.
from In Search of Lost Time, Book 3: The Guermantes Way by Marcel Proust