pay attention to your health

[Wiredawg]

The technology is great. My Father was saved by a cath lab, but the rest of the follow up treatments were severely lacking. The doctors around here for the most part are cold as ice, if you don't ask and ask and ask about every option they just do whatever is easiest and profitable for them. Our local Walmart pharmacist red flagged one drug combination that got past multiple doctors and nurses.

The three cardiologist we dealt with were good overall, the general surgeon was great and did the primary doctor's job a few times pointing out his lack of concern and competence. We ended up changing primarys three times because they just don't give a crap. These guys would spend 10 minutes a week with my Dad. The hospital administrators had to get involved twice. The last hospital assigned one of their staff doctors it was so bad. His wife ended up being the new primary for Mom.

Right before he died we finally had a decent primary doctor that pulled him off the dangerous medication combo, but even that one was slow to react. He weaned him off the mess over two weeks, then finally took him off all medication. In the end the medication's side effects killed my dad.

Sorry for your loss and for the terrible treatment. God Bless your Dad and your Family.

With heartfelt sympathy, Ron

 

[endoscott]

Quote "In the end the medication's side effects killed my dad."

Well that's probably super common. All medications have side effects. When you take more than 1 med, possibly we know how 2 meds interact, then you go to 3 meds probably not. More than that definitely not. Interactions can be: addition, antagonism, potentiation, or synergism. Studies utilize conventional statistical analysis to study these things-and what is "statistically significant" is not necessarily "clinically significant", and those old guys like Fisher would be shaking their heads when they see how these numbers are manipulated in medical studies. Couple that with Big Pharma pressuring the AMA to lower the numbers for such things as "normal BP" and "normal Cholesterol" and you got a perfect storm, not to mention that hot blonde drug rep pushing the newest pills to the prescribing docs.

As far as hospital administrators disciplining the GP's, these are the same hospital administrators who tell the docs "you got 10 minutes per patient". I know a local physician x 35 years, super smart guy, cares about his patients. 10 or 15 years ago he sold his practice to one of these big outfits-seemed like a good deal at the time-"we do all the paperwork, all you have to do is doctoring". Couple years later they come to him and told him he either has to see more patients per hour or take a pay cut....

Yeah, you sure as hell better pay attention to your own health care. The technical aspects of health care have never been better-I had my appendix out with laparoscopy and only missed one day of work. But the DIAGNOSIS and TREATMENT PLANNING are lacking for sure, especially internal medicine. Huh, kinda like with techs and CTD trucks. Your doc wants you to take cholesterol pills? Hell, lose some weight, exercise a little, and modify your diet and you can lower it without the pills and all the side effects. Guess what organ needs cholesterol, a lot, to function normally? But for which the metabolism of cholesterol is poorly understood. Yeah, your brain. One opinion in BMJ expresses point of view that these statin drugs on the whole may do more harm than good, and offer a tiny benefit for people at lower risk. Next time your doctor wants you to take some pills for something that he thought about for 5 minutes, ask him or her what is the NNT (number needed to treat) for that drug? The number of people who have to take the drug for one person to benefit. I think it's around 200 for statin drugs, so if that is a true number, 199 people get all the side effects and 1 person does not have a fatal heart attack due to taking the statin drug. As opposed to something like an asthma inhaler where almost everyone with an asthma attack will benefit from that drug.

 

[The patriot]

I've been real busy with family health issues these last few years I been mia here.
1st was my dad.
Diagnosed with st4 lung cancer september 2018, died Dec 13 2018.
We were REALLY close. He didnt suffer too much. Only had 2 treatments of Keytruda. Lungs kept filling up & the 3rd stroke was all he could take. He had 80+ extremely healthy years. The man NEVER SMOKED!
Latest is my wife, discovered a lump in her breast, put it off (due to covid) but it was STILL stage 1 when we finally did something in September.
Bad news was her proteins numbers (indicative of re occurrence) is OFF THE CHART.
Chemo & radiation until December.
Dr said "20 years ago we couldn't even treat this"
Prayers for everyone here.

 

[DavidC]

I've been real busy with family health issues these last few years I been mia here.
1st was my dad.
Diagnosed with st4 lung cancer september 2018, died Dec 13 2018.
We were REALLY close. He didnt suffer too much. Only had 2 treatments of Keytruda. Lungs kept filling up & the 3rd stroke was all he could take. He had 80+ extremely healthy years. The man NEVER SMOKED!
Latest is my wife, discovered a lump in her breast, put it off (due to covid) but it was STILL stage 1 when we finally did something in September.
Bad news was her proteins numbers (indicative of re occurrence) is OFF THE CHART.
Chemo & radiation until December.
Dr said "20 years ago we couldn't even treat this"
Prayers for everyone here.

And back at you.