This is a story that resonated with me and I wanted to share my thoughts based on Amanda Lee’s challenges in the U.S. healthcare system. You can read the article “Woman, 27, Body Shamed by Doctor Who Dismissed Her Pain, Later Diagnosed with Stage 3 Cancer” for background: https://bit.ly/3zbxMbr
I love the power that social media had in Amanda’s story. She continued to follow her intuition which told her something wasn’t right about the way she was feeling and her ailments. She took the advice of people that kept saying look for another doctor.
We've continuously heard that a “white coat” is a frame that can be unbreakable – and that’s a frame we need to break. It’s nothing other than a human being wearing a white coat. A white coat doesn’t make doctors God. It doesn’t make them infallible or all-knowing. It means that they went to school and had a lot of training in a certain medical area, not necessarily the area that the person sitting in front of them needs help with. Doctors know a lot and I highly respect that, but the dismissal of symptoms in this story and likely many others, is proving that they are not an expert in YOU.
The majority of people going into the doctor because they rapidly lost 35 lbs. or are having particular ailments, aren’t crazy; they aren’t making this up. We have so much more knowledge today that stress causes diseases, our quality of food in America is terrible and impacts our health, and the overall environment toxicity can make our bodies behave oddly. And when you don’t get answers to your ailments that make sense, you continue to seek out answers. Many people turn to the internet and that’s where I found a lot of answers when I was sick. The internet and social media can help you to see that you’re not the only one experiencing something. This is not to say you should believe everything you read on the internet/social media, but it gives you hope to keep moving forward until you find an answer, and you deserve that. This is your life.
As most of us know, doctors take a Hippocratic Oath – it is an oath of ethics. This means they need to treat the ill to the best of one's ability and I think sometimes this needs to be checked, similar to body cameras on police officers. We need to call out these doctors that are not adhering to their oath and put them on alert. There needs to be better, ongoing education that includes empathy training and reinforcing that doctors needs to approach every case individually, and if we can’t do this, then we have a problem in our country.
If someone is gravely ill but they are overweight, the latter shouldn’t matter. The body shaming that took place in Amanda’s story is never okay. This is negligence on the doctor’s part and we as a society should hold these physicians accountable. We need to look at how the entire profession is structured. One time making a mistake is too much. Doctors are human beings, and it’s ok to make mistakes, but we can’t assume everything they say is accurate – and individually, they shouldn’t act as if their diagnosis is gospel.
I spend a lot on medical care because I don’t go to a normal doctor; I go to a concierge doctor. I recently had a one-hour appointment to go over blood work. They go through everything in detail and what it means for ME – not in ranges. For example, in the U.S. to be diagnosed with diabetes, your standard blood sugar has to be above a certain number at least two times before they acknowledge you have it, but there are a lot of variables to this. My blood sugar is off a lot and if I waited for the “standard” to occur, I might miss really important things. My doctors don’t just look at me and say, “that’s fine.” We have a long conversation about results and why it may be happening. They look at me like a human being and not numbers and ranges. A lot of this has to do with insurance companies, so the conversations with your doctor matter. For doctors to make money, they have to see patients quickly because insurance companies tell them what they’re going to make – that’s not right either. The entire medical profession needs a reset.
No one would fault me today if I was in a wheelchair or on a couch not moving because that’s what doctors told me over and over again that I would be doing for the rest of my life. I would be in a wheelchair and taking low dose chemo forever. In fact, I never took low dose chemo and lead a very active life. Amanda sharing her story gives people hope and that there may be another way. While social media has its downfalls, this is a great success story.