How many television stories do we need to see where people are found guilty because the evidence to prove that they are innocent doesn’t exist or cannot be found?
I understand that Doctors have the kind of experience in the medical field that I will never understand, but I also know from talking to hundreds of patients over the years, that Doctors are not listening to their patients.
From cannabis to antipsychotics, the patients know what their symptoms are, and they know how they feel when they take the medication prescribed by the doctor. No one can explain someone’s experience better than the person living their experience, and yet too many times Doctors take what we say and ignore it in favor of their own personal opinions or views.
Doctors, you need to remember that every single patient you see is going to be as different as oranges and iceberg lettuce from each other. They may have similar symptoms, but the lives they lead and the symptoms that are agitated are going to be different from what another patient is going to be.
It’s not enough to say that your experience has taught you, because every single day you are being presented with new and more complex cases, that are as different from each other as the way the wind blows.
I’m not saying this because I am annoyed with my doctor for not listening to me, I am saying this because I’ve learned as a patient that I need to advocate for myself, because no one else is interested in advocating for me.
I recently learned that I might have a condition called PCOS:
Polycystic ovary syndrome (PCOS) is a condition that affects a woman’s hormone levels. Women with PCOS produce higher-than-normal amounts of male hormones. This hormone imbalance causes their body to skip menstrual periods and makes it harder for them to get pregnant.
I had to google this information after years of going to the doctor only to be told there was nothing wrong with me. I also learned that this issue can cause pimples under the breasts that appear to look like boils. I have been getting those since I was a child, but I never knew what it was.
Now I know, I can go and talk to my doctor, but I am confident that my doctor is going to turn around and tell me that this is not what have, because doctors never like it when their patients know more than them.
I understand that as a doctor you don’t want your experience or your know how challenged, but I also know that my life is more important to me than your ego.
It is your job to make sure that I can live my life in a healthy, positive way, without pain, or illness, that causes me to react by being too tired to clean my house, or deal with the issues that come with living my life.
I need to be healthy so that I can live my best life, so my only question to you is how do you go home at night knowing that you deliberately chose not to do what I needed you to do, so that I could be the healthiest version of myself?
I urge you to remember the oath you took when you became a doctor:
Classic Version of the Hippocratic Oath
I swear by Apollo Physician and Asclepius and Hygieia and Panaceia and all the gods and goddesses, making them my witnesses, that I will fulfil according to my ability and judgment this oath and this covenant:
To hold him who has taught me this art as equal to my parents and to live my life in partnership with him, and if he is in need of money to give him a share of mine, and to regard his offspring as equal to my brothers in male lineage and to teach them this art – if they desire to learn it – without fee and covenant; to give a share of precepts and oral instruction and all the other learning to my sons and to the sons of him who has instructed me and to pupils who have signed the covenant and have taken an oath according to the medical law, but no one else.
I will apply dietetic measures for the benefit of the sick according to my ability and judgment; I will keep them from harm and injustice.
I will neither give a deadly drug to anybody who asked for it, nor will I make a suggestion to this effect. Similarly I will not give to a woman an abortive remedy. In purity and holiness I will guard my life and my art.
I will not use the knife, not even on sufferers from stone, but will withdraw in favor of such men as are engaged in this work.
Whatever houses I may visit, I will come for the benefit of the sick, remaining free of all intentional injustice, of all mischief and in particular of sexual relations with both female and male persons, be they free or slaves.
What I may see or hear in the course of the treatment or even outside of the treatment in regard to the life of men, which on no account one must spread abroad, I will keep to myself, holding such things shameful to be spoken about.
If I fulfil this oath and do not violate it, may it be granted to me to enjoy life and art, being honored with fame among all men for all time to come; if I transgress it and swear falsely, may the opposite of all this be my lot.
Sending all my love,
Devon J Hall
Loud Mouth Brown Girl 