<p>To inject a little levity, but also address the issue, many years ago, my husband took our two oldest kids (I was too pregnant with to go) on a family trip with his mom, two sisters and their young kids. On the plane, my niece who was a toddler/preschooler I believe, started screaming at the top of her lungs for the ENTIRE FLIGHT. It was one of those flights where every last passenger probably contemplated mayhem. My husband had some Benadryl on hand just in case, for our kids. He begged, literally begged, his sister to give her daughter a dose so she’d a) not suffer and b) not make everyone else on the entire plane suffer. She refused saying, “I am not going to drug my kid.” Sometimes, it’s a kindness to everyone to medicate a child. That said, none of my kids needed psychiatric medications, but one did need medications for severe migraines. I actually regret the decision to medicate him because it caused weight gain. He went from being a very thin child to having a weight problem in a short amount of time and each increase in dosage triggered a weight gain. He was only on the drug a few years, but I regret it. At the time though, the headaches were completely impacting the quality of his life. I don’t know what I’d do again since the only other alternative would have been prescription painkillers, which seems even worse. One of my adult kids takes a very serious drug, with potentially serious side effects, for a serious illness. Without it, I don’t think she could work and she’d be in constant pain. With it, she is a highly functional member of society. Her younger cousin started taking a similar drug at age ten for the same illness. The drug has kept her in school, in sports and relatively healthy. I am just thankful that we have these choices to make, choices that our parents would not have had when they were raising us.</p>
<p>Pandem wrote:</p>
<p>quote[^Have you ever considered that maybe his personal choice and happiness concerning medication is more important than his acceptance into some prestigious school?</p>
<p>Never change, CC parents, never change.</p>
<p>Never mind that
- He might not be as intelligent if he was on the medication
- The idea that high GPA = intelligence is about as backward-minded as they come]quote</p>
<p>This is a very ill-informed post. </p>
<p>First of all, 8 year old children normally lack the ability to make rational informed decisions about their medical treatment and have little concept of the consequences of not following medical recommendations made by doctors. I was not thinking about whether or not he would get into a prestigious college or, I was concerned that his uncontrolled ADHD was putting him on the path to social and academic failure.</p>
<p>Ritalin in no way diminishes intelligence, what it does is allow an intelligent person to apply their abilities in the most constructive way.</p>
<p>You must not have read my post very carefully because I sure did not say that a high GPA = intelligence. My son is very intelligent but because of all the zeros and Fs he received on homework assignments that were not done, not done on time or not turned in due to his ADHD he received poor grades in his classes and hence a GPA far below his potential. You see examples all the time of posters on CC who had very high GPAs but low SAT scores. SAT scores are much better than high school GPA as a measure of intelligence. To get a high GPA in high school does not take a lot of intelligence, it can be achieved by simply turning in and getting credit for all your homework assignments. Students with ADHD can not do that without medication that allows them to focus on completing these tasks. </p>
<p>I wanted my son to have as many options in life as possible. Unfortunately because his ADHD was not adequately treated his options are now greatly constrained.</p>
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<p>Cool! Maybe you’ll buy insurance rather than free-load off an emergency room then if you have a heart attack / get into a car accident / etc., because guess what, we’re going to pay for it either way.</p>
<p>My SIL has medicated her oldest son since, literally, the day he came home from the hospital at birth. They gave him Tylenol every day for colic and Benadryl every night and in the car to sleep. I had never heard of such a thing. Now, I am certainly no expert on anything, but I’ve often wondered if they altered his brain chemistry in some fashion because they’re pretty mainstream people, but he began using drugs at 13 and was a full-fledged addict and in court-ordered rehab at 16 after having committed some serious crimes. Neither of their other kids was so medicated and neither developed a substance abuse problem. Probably not related, but I’ll always wonder.</p>
<p>I had a coworker who medicated her little kids every night with Benedryl or some such to get them to sleep. She would also get them antibiotics for every sniffle, give them a few, and save the rest for ‘just in case’</p>
<p>I had my S evaluated for ADD as a middle schooler, as well as for depression. He was considered borderline for ADD and we choose not to have him medicated. The depressive tendencies were helped with talk therapy.</p>
<p>I absolutely believe in medicating children for clear cut psychological problems (see my rant in the flying phobia thread). However, I do think there is a tendency to medical-ize personality deviations that could be considered in the range of normal. I think to a certain extent we’ve narrowed what society considers normal. Fidgety kid or ADD? Shy or depressed? High strung or generalized anxiety?</p>
<p>edit: I will add that I think that if we’d had S treated for ADD, he would have done better in high school. But it was not a clear cut decision at the time. If he has issues as an adult, I would have no problem with him deciding to get meds for it.</p>
<p>
Yes Drs are sensitized to risk management. Because patients like to sue, expect a perfect outcome 100% of the time and blame the Dr if there is any complication (regardless of cause) and insurance companies like to put the squeeze on docs to work fast and cheap. Not an easy way to have to work.</p>
<p>Many Drs say “I dont know”- and then refer to a specialist. If the patient will go. And med schools now teach a kindler, gentler “I am sorry” approach, which causes malpractice attorneys to foul their shorts because it is tantamount to admitting liability. </p>
<p>Drs like to document the patient chart. This is as it should be. So it isnt always reasonable or possible to “talk outside of an appointment”. Drs dont have every patients charts memorized, and it is simply bad medicine to treat off the top of ones head. And if every patient wanted just 10 minutes of the Drs time outside office hours, the Dr would have no free time. </p>
<p>Good grief.</p>
<p>“Cool! Maybe you’ll buy insurance rather than free-load off an emergency room then if you have a heart attack / get into a car accident / etc., because guess what, we’re going to pay for it either way.”</p>
<p>The solution is to stop forcing hospitals to treat the uninsured, not to place a tax on life. </p>
<p>And if you’re referring specifically to me, I’ve never had a heart attack or been in a car accident.</p>
<p>Querty,
Your information on the upcoming tax for uninsured is woefully inaccurate. Read the info from the NYT below. There are some cases that a tax on middle class taxpayers not purchasing health insurance could possibly rise to a maximum of $695, but most will not be affected by this nor pay the maximum penalty. Add to that the fact that we are already paying over $1000/yr in healthcare premiums to cover the cost of the uninsured. I think it is reasonable to let the currently uninsured, should they choose to remain uninsured when healthcare is available to them, take some ownership of their own costs. This isn’t a “tax on life” it is a possible tax (tiered based on income- not affecting low income families) for the cost of healthcare. And many hospitals receive federal funding (training facilities, emergency receiving facilities, etc) and along with the federal funds comes the requirement to treat emergencies. What should stop is the overuse of ER’s as “drs offices” for treatment of routine matters by the uninsured. That I agree with. Total waste of time and taxpayer dollars, and clogs the ERs whose intent is to treat EMERGENCIES.</p>
<p>And as for your having not been in an auto accident or had an MI. Bully for you. But you are young. Lots can happen. And I suspect that you’ve had healthcare or perhaps even been treated in an ER or had a hospital stay. Pizzagirl was just giving an example of the kinds of things that bring people to require healthcare. </p>
<p>[Study:</a> Insured pay ‘hidden tax’ for uninsured health care - USATODAY.com](<a href=“http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/insurance/2009-05-28-hiddentax_N.htm]Study:”>http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/insurance/2009-05-28-hiddentax_N.htm)
</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/your-money/health-insurance/22consumer.html[/url]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/22/your-money/health-insurance/22consumer.html</a></p>
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<p>jym626, I didn’t write anything about “talking outside of an appointment” specifically. I wrote a more general “doing anything outside of an appointment,” by which I mainly meant researching a problem, or looking into the best specialist for a patient. Patients and families have to research their own health problems and solutions, and their own specialists, and then run into doctors’ resentments for doing so.</p>
<p>(Actually, you are right that doctors don’t memorize charts; when they do have call-in hours they sometimes don’t have the time to check the patient’s chart before making recommendations, a lapse which almost killed our daughter)</p>
<p>There are some great doctors out there, as I said. We are probably much more bruised by the system than the providers themselves, but as patients, it can be hard to tell the difference. I did not assign blame. Some problems are from the medical system’s hopeless structure in this country, some from insurance policies, some from flaws in medical education, some from individual doctors’ hubris…</p>
<p>If you don’t understand what I am describing, then perhaps you have not had to deal with complex medical problems yet, or perhaps you are part of the system. But don’t belittle what describes the very real frustrations in my own life and that of my family, for the last 20 years.</p>
<p>Efforts to improve things take time, and will trickle down, but the entire system needs to change. Tinkering here and there will not do it.</p>
<p>This is way off topic, although MD attitudes can result in excessive medication at times.</p>
<p>Let’s remain civil on this forum. I will not post again in this thread, myself.</p>
<p>compmom-</p>
<p>I am not belittling your frustrations. A am sorry your daughter has had medical problems, that hour husband didn’t take his meds as prescribed and had a series of CVAs, and that you have had problems with the healthcare system, but to make such sweeping overgeneralizations about all doctors is simply excessive and offensive. To say that drs do nothing outside the appointment because they dont get paid is even more egregious than my comment about conversations outside of the office. How do you know what doctors do or dont do when you are not with them? Just because you may have had a bad experience doesnt mean this is true for all doctors. I hope you didn’t have HMO insurance. That is a broken system for patients who use their healthcare system a lot. And agreed-- lets remain civil. Please consider how your assumptions and accusations about drs as selfish, hubris-filled money-grubbing idiots who dont talk to each other and “have trouble with -anything complex” sounds. Doesnt sound too civil to me.</p>
<p>On behalf of H, and on behalf of all of the middle of the night calls (not just women in labor, but for trivial complaints like diarrhea), and on behalf of the 70 hr workweeks, and on behalf of every single family function interrupted, I AM offended by the “doctors don’t do anything outside of the office” mentality.</p>
<p>And you should, and have every right to be offended, pizzagirl. These comments are offensive. Seems it is ok (“civil”) for some to attack the doctors and make sweeping overgeneralizations, but its not ok to respond to these comments. There is a big difference between expressing frustration with a personal experience a vs denigrating the entire profession. Very “civil” indeed. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>I recognize that there are big problems in our health care industry. And I’ve, on rare occasions, been on the receiving end of less-than-stellar medical care. But I’m preoccupied this AM with worry about my husband. He’s a physician, and his schedule is increasingly demanding because of the increasing number of i’s he has to dot and t’s he has to cross to satisfy insurers, government regulations, and hospital administrators. This week alone, he went to work at 7 AM and wasn’t home until after 9 PM every single day. He’s back this morning to catch up on dictating the results of the consultations and procedures he did this week. He and his partners are frequently on the phone with patients - including at 2 AM on weekends. And, like PG’s husband, it’s often for health issues unrelated to his specialty, because he is so available when some of the local primary care docs are not. My husband and his partners are constantly extending themselves “outside of appointments” - in weekly conferences about patients they’ve seen that week, in continuing education via formal training and self-study, at Grand Rounds, and in never-ending discussions with each other (often during dinner hour) about what direction is best for a current patient.</p>
<p>Medicine is not at all today what he imagined it would be when he was in college doing med school applications. He is exhausted and often sad about his daily routine. Still loves helping children and their families, though.</p>
<p>So, while the posters here who’ve had negative medical experiences are certainly entitled to report from their own viewpoints, there are many of us who see another piece of the overall picture.</p>
<p>^ I agree - all of the physicians I know work their tails off. Office appointments are usually but a small fraction of the work they do.</p>
<p>I agree that there’s a lot wrong with our medical system but physicians ‘not doing anything out the appointment’ isn’t one of them. Walk into any hospital library and you will see tons of physicians in there doing research, medical seminars are held weekly at my hospital, our physicians have access to dozens of world-class databases. Whether you know it or not, physicians meet weekly, if not daily, in groups to review hospitalized patients cases to make sure nothing is missed, they go back and review cases after patients are discharged. In some specialties and groups - every patient chart is reviewed by a second physician.</p>
<p>Patients should be doing their own research. If more patients took responsibility for understanding their illnesses and conveying pertinent information to their physicians, we would all be a lot healthier. Patients tend to be very passive about their own health care and expect their physicians to just ‘fix’ them. For example, I have tons of friends that injure a shoulder or develop back, elbow or knee pain and then proceed to ignore it (for months or even years) and then suddenly it needs to be treated right away (often with surgery) when if they had just applied ice, taken Advil and rested for a while, they would have averted the need for surgery. Something so simple but people are either too macho or too stupid to take care of their own injuries.</p>
<p>Colds are another great example. When you develop a cold, you need rest. But, no, many people think they need to’ tough it out’, going to work and about their daily routines (and exposing everyone else in the process) when a day or two of rest generally shortens the length and severity of the cold. Next thing you know, the person now has a sinus infection, bronchitis or worse, pneumonia. </p>
<p>I see health care as a partnership between patients and their medical care providers. * Each* party has an obligation to live up to their own responsibilities. It’s not just the physician’s responsibility.</p>
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<p>Certainly letting them die in the street would be less expensive.</p>
<p>bookmarked. (Pushes charts off the bed).</p>
<p>Patients tend to be very passive about their own health care and expect their physicians to just ‘fix’ them.</p>
<p>Which admittedly, some Drs seem to prefer. Some Drs do not like it when you ask questions, don’t like persistence, don’t like suggestions that imply the patient has been researching on the Internet!!!
It would also kill some of them to refer you to a specialist.
( even though you have legitimate reason to think that you need the referral)
:p</p>
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<p>I am glad I didn’t grow up in your day, then. I had enough teachers writing off my anxiety-induced freezeups as “insubordination.” I had far too many of them telling me things like “well, [other kid] over there doesn’t have a problem, so why should you?” I shudder to think of what my childhood would have been like if I hadn’t lived in such a coddling, PC, overmedicating, diagnose-happy age.</p>
<p>I am not a med-happy person. I avoid taking them whenever possible–you are talking to the girl who went back to school the day after her wisdom tooth removal sans painkillers. But it would be folly for me to say “you shouldn’t take meds for xyz,” or “you should take meds for xyz.” That’s not the answer. The answer, more often than not, is whatever gets you through the damn day.</p>
<p>I never realized how much it helps to be your own advocate and researcher until about 10 years ago when I & my kids started having some serious chronic health issues. The docs honestly didn’t have the time or energy to research all the options and help us figure out what was going on when it was outside their regular scope.</p>
<p>As MomLive posted, many were reluctant to refer us to specialists and didn’t even know what kind of specialists we should see.</p>
<p>Since then, I’ve become a much more active and informed partner in my health and that of my kids. I’ve taught them to be more active partners as well. Our health has greatly improved, largely because of the strong partnerships we have built. We were fortunate at being able to switch to docs who would be collaborative partners to optimize our health with the fewest effective medications. Our docs are thrilled we are doing so well–it makes them look great and we are very compliant with what we work out together.</p>
<p>A successful doctor/patient relationship is key in my opinion. If you’re passive, you would do well with a doctor who likes to have patients who just follow advice and don’t question, if you are the type who reads up and researches, you need a doctor who thrives on that. I think a lot of unhappiness with doctors is because health plans limit our choices and we end up with the “wrong” doctor for us. DD, who has a chronic illness, paid more for insurance so she could have a PPO. This is because specialists she needs were increasingly not participating in the HMO side of her plan and she had very limited choices. She had a doctor where it was impossible to get an appointment without a few months notice, where twice her prescription lapsed while they dropped the ball (causing her to become symptomatic) and where the doctor said some things in such an insensitive manner that she would leave in tears. Was he a bad doctor? No, but he was the wrong doctor for her, just like a teacher can be an excellent teacher, but not right for a particular child. </p>
<p>There have been threads where people have complained about teachers and teachers, who are underpaid and work hard, have bristled. But when it’s your child who was really hurt by a teacher, you have the right to say something. I’ve seen people say things about my profession and bad experiences they have had and I believe it’s true. I know that in any field, there are those who are fabulous and those who are not. I know that in any field someone can have an off day. I come from a family of physicians and have a son who seems to be headed to medical school. I understand the point of view of those who love doctors or who are one. But when it’s your child or loved one who is almost very badly hurt or worse by that off day, it’s hard not to be reactive. The stakes are so high and it can be really scary. </p>
<p>Last year, my husband was having chest pains. He had almost every risk factor for a heart attack, including a father who had died of a heart attack at the same age. The doctor on call that night told him NOT to go to the ER because he “only” had one symptom. I took the phone and grilled him and said, “I need you to understand that his father died of a heart attack after a doctor told him not to go to the ER. I need you to understand that he has all these risk factors. Are you sure?” He stood by his recommendation. The next morning, after a bad night, I paged a cardiologist who said to go right to the ER. Of course, it turned out he’d had a heart attack within the previous 12 hours. I’ve heard good things about the doctor on call. I’ve had friends who went to him and liked him. I can imagine he’s a good doctor. It was a bad call and it was a bad call that could have had dire consequences. I tell this story to point out that there are two sides to every medical story. There is the side that the doctor does work long hours, is dedicated, is a wonderful human being, is working in a broken system, etc. There is the side that my husband could have died from one off moment. I think we need to be able to acknowledge both truths; that doctors work hard and are dedicated and that sometimes the match is really wrong, or the doctor lacks people skills, or is having a bad day and that people do get really hurt and, in particular, when it’s their children or loved ones who get hurt or don’t get the right care, that they will be very upset.</p>