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At 01:13 PM 8/17/1999 EDT, Margery Green wrote:

>Perhaps you should be more careful regarding what you post on a worldwide
>listserv!  "Reckless words pierce like a sword . . . ."  (Proverbs 12:18).
>Though your particular experience may be that you encountered a dietitian
>and doctors who didn't know about celiac disease, that certainly is not the
>rule--I counsel patients on it and the gluten-free diet regularly.  And we
>have plenty of physicians here who seek to provide the best of care for
>celiac patients.  I was thus offended by your posting and feel a "public"
>apology is not too much to ask for.
>
>Mark Glen
>Registered Dietitian
>
>Mr. Glen:
>It was not my intention to offend you or any other professional who does know
>how to deal with Celiac disease.  My point, however, is that you are the
>exception to the rule.  I am sure that many members of this list can
>contribute to making this point.  Yes, there are some wonderful physicians,
>dieticians, and various medical professionals who understand this disease and
>know how to treat it.  I will not apologize for my words, as they are my
>experience and members of this list share such things.

I gotta side with Margery on this one, Mark. Perhaps it's possible that 95
percent of the docs and dietitians do know what they're doing about celiac,
but the other five percent are the ones I meet constantly. And I've met a
few. None of the docs I deal with has the faintest idea what's involved,
not even the sharp one that gave me a tentative guess diagnosis right off
the bat and saved me a lot of trouble. Even he has no idea other than that
what's involved in the diet etc.

The university I teach at trains dietitians right down the hall from my
office, and I meet them all the time. Have coffee with them. Have a friend
who is one. The profs don't know diddley about celiac, and none of the
students do. When I asked my friend about it, she said she'd do some
research on it and let me know. She found one beginner's book in the
library (which I'd found the second day of my tentative diagnosis) and had
about a paragraph of advice. In short, bubkis.

I've been to docs all over this town and Seattle about other problems, and
when I mention celiac their eyes glaze over and they change the subject.

Never a word about any possible connections between the current prob and
the celiac. Nothing. And what's more, no interest.

My experience over 65 years has been that maybe 5 to 10 percent of any
profession are competent. Even yours. That includes doctors, dietitians,
university profs (I know I meet that incompetents and their products every
day), lawyers, mechanics, plumbers, contractors, accupuncturists,
chiropractors, waiters, etc. I've had some memorable quacks in my life. Can
I tell you briefly about the doc who treated my asthma by crushing my
phrenic nerve, which paralyzed the left half of my diaphram and collapsed
my lung (on purpose because it was not an unheard of treatment for asthma
-- go figger). Or the doc who wanted to recircumsize me for asthma. Or the
one who wanted to treat it by having me eat more candy. Since I've been
grown I try to pick mine very carefully and still make some mistakes. Only
twnety years ago our local pediatritian said our eighteen month old
daughter had trench mouth (which he diagnosed by slide, not visually), and
the periodontist we went to for a second opinion, said: What's his name?
I'm going to write that a------ a letter. Some of your profession are
dangerous. Anyway that's my experience and my opinion, for what it's worth.
If you and your colleagues are more knowledgeable than that I congratulate
you, and may I say that you work in a very unusual and admirable facility.
Of course it's no surprise that you'd know something about celiac if you
are one :)  -vance