vanillafluffy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
vanillafluffy) wrote2009-05-22 01:30 pm
vanillafluffy) wrote2009-05-22 01:30 pm
Medical paranoia
I'm on my way out the door, but wanted to share this---in an email to a friend, I wrote:
"It seems to me that once you go to a doctor, they will *find* something wrong to keep you coming back. Pretty soon, you have a condition---or two or three---and you're having tests and more tests and all kinds of drug interactions and you go from being a little achy from your original complaint to hurting from some procedure or other. Maybe it's fatalistic of me, but dying quietly at home sounds a helluva lot better to me than winding up on tubes in a hospital somewhere while being ravaged by drug-resistant strep that I picked up while I was in there getting poked for something that wasn't bothering me until some doctor decided it was a big fat hairy freakin' deal. (/rant)"
To which she responded, "Tell me how you REALLY feel!"
I know, there are a lot of conditions that don't manifest outward symptoms until a late stage. And the older you get, the liklier they become. But geez Louise, I've seen the constant-tests-and-a-boatload-of-meds scenario, and I don't want to go down THAT road, either.
OR the road to Melbourne, but I gotta....
"It seems to me that once you go to a doctor, they will *find* something wrong to keep you coming back. Pretty soon, you have a condition---or two or three---and you're having tests and more tests and all kinds of drug interactions and you go from being a little achy from your original complaint to hurting from some procedure or other. Maybe it's fatalistic of me, but dying quietly at home sounds a helluva lot better to me than winding up on tubes in a hospital somewhere while being ravaged by drug-resistant strep that I picked up while I was in there getting poked for something that wasn't bothering me until some doctor decided it was a big fat hairy freakin' deal. (/rant)"
To which she responded, "Tell me how you REALLY feel!"
I know, there are a lot of conditions that don't manifest outward symptoms until a late stage. And the older you get, the liklier they become. But geez Louise, I've seen the constant-tests-and-a-boatload-of-meds scenario, and I don't want to go down THAT road, either.
OR the road to Melbourne, but I gotta....
no subject
Or the ones who run in to see the doctor every time they sniffle, or bang their elbow, or pass gas. Okay, maybe that's a wee bit extreme, but I tend toward the other extreme. If I'm not in pain that's at LEAST +7 on a scale from one to ten, if I'm not spurting from an artery or unnatural orifice, I figure I'll probably survive. Sometimes there's a fine line between hypochondriac and plain old WIMP.
But yeah, I'm gonna have a little preventive tune-up done....