Posted by Bob on October 25, 1999, at 12:45:18
In reply to Is it just me?, posted by Carol on October 25, 1999, at 10:23:14
I think most of us can empathize with being sick and tired of being sick and tired.
Most of the time, we're focused on one person -- #1. I don't know how many patients my pdoc sees, but he only sees me for 40 minutes a month. All the same, he does know a lot about me. When I wanted to switch to someone else, my gp asked me to consider the quality of the relationship before dropping my pdoc due to a lack of drug therapy progress. I think he was right to say that -- I TRUST my pdoc; the fact that he's a man and that I have never trusted male therapists before speaks volumes to me about why I should stick with him.
The other thing is, we're the ones who are sick. We have far more motivation to track this stuff down. No matter how concerned our pdocs may be for the health of all of their patients, they can never be as concerned as we are about our own health. On top of that, we Babblelanders have this place. This forum is an incredible source of real world knowlege, as opposed to drug monographs and articles about clinical trials. Sure, different drugs to different things to different people, but if you listen to the stories of at least 60% of us here, we aren't the typical "take a pill and show that Zoloft Smile!" crowd. Having problems with our meds has led us to seek out information and, as a result, you're not just one lonely person searching through a sea of technical geekspeak, you're part of a highly motivated community taking different paths to a common goal. With the way meds are developed today, and with the way the "official word" seems to under report trouble, we are at (atleast a section of) the cutting edge here.
I know that some docs beside Dr. Bob pop in and out, or just read when they can, and that is fabulous. But there is also some considerable skepticism in some sectors of the medical community regarding (a) patient self-help groups and (b) the scientific quality of information on the web. (sorry, can't cite the specific research, but I spent a year learning grounded theory from a sociologist who focuses on this area of study.) A lot of them, I'm sure, simply do not have the time to do the research we make time to do. What seems quite remarkable is that a number of Babblelanders have written about sharing info from this site with their pdocs and getting very favorable responses to this. It looks like there are quite a few docs out there who appreciate the focused work we choose to do and are willing to learn from us (individually and collectively). I think my pdoc is the same kind of person -- when I mentioned the naltrexone buzz here, he asked for the information for himself instead of some patent "Oh, don't believe anything you read on the net." (PS Dr. Bob: Note I said ANYthing not EVERYthing, like your caveat ;^)
Well, 'nuff said for now. I do think we as a community may have more knowledge than any one particular pdoc, but given the size, intelligence, and motivation of Babbleland as a whole, that's no big suprise to me.
Bob
poster:Bob
thread:13843
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/19991028/msgs/13853.html