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I have been following the debates of late regarding the president, medical
doctors and raising awareness about celiac disease and would like to add my
two cents worth.
First, let's leave the president alone. Whether or not he has celiac sprue
or a wheat allergy or whatever, it's really nobody's business but his. I
would be very unhappy if someone were to approach me and demand that I
participate in their cause just because I share something in common with
them. It's an invasion of someone's privacy, and doesn't seem to be based
on any more facts than most tabloid newspaper articles are. We all know the
dangers of "playing doctor" and diagnosing other people's ailments for
them. Before my diagnosis, I had on separate occaisons incorrectly
diagnosed myself as having Crohn's disease, cancer and Grave's disease, all
based on my untrained perusals of the Merck manual. I did learn a lot from
my reading, and eventually got the diagnosis that made me well, but I also
realized that it takes more than a little knowledge to gain the skills and
experience of a medical doctor.
About doctors: I too have had both good and bad experiences that have made
me believe physicians come in both good and bad varieties, just like the
rest of us. And while there is some truth to the "doctor as god" myth, it
wasn't doctors who put themselves on that pedestal, it was the general
population and our reliance on penicillin and other pharmaceuticals. Before
the discovery of penicillin, doctors really had no drugs with which to
treat people so many people died and no one knew why. But then penicillin
was discovered and suddenly people were surviving previously fatal
illnesses and doctors got all the credit for the miracles worked by an
unimpressive looking white powder. With the development of all of the
modern pharmaceutical products, the success rate of doctors has increased
enormously, but their job hasn't gotten any easier. While it may be easier
to cure diseases, and that itself is questionable, and while there are more
tools available, the actual work of diagnosing illness is probably no
easier now than it was 100 years ago.
As patients, I feel that we have to be good consumers. Why shouldn't we
have to inform ourselves about medical conditions? How many of us would buy
a car or major appliance without asking a few questions and learning the
lingo? As someone with a science background, I feel saddened that there is
such a lack of understanding of basic scientific principles. It is this
absence of knowledge that leads us to place doctors on pedestals; we assume
that if we don't speak their language that it must take a genius to
understand it. Perhaps we need to meet doctors half way; we all become a
little more informed and start treating them like the human beings they are
and then they won't have to keep up the pretense that they are of from a
higher plane.
I am quite happy to live in the world we are in, if I had been born even 50
years before I was I probably wouldn't have survived to the age I am now.
If celiac sprue hadn't killed me, something like polio, pneumonia or
diptheria probably would have. So, let's not try to place blame, or look to
a celebrity for solutions, but reach within ourselves for the strength to
keep doing what we do: asking questions, looking for answers and informing
the people around us about what we've learned. It's a proven formula for
success, and so much more rewarding than grumbling!
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