“Respect for ourselves guides our morals; respect for others guides our manners.” – Laurence Sterne
I have had very personal relationships good and bad with physicians over the years. It was a rocky road for me. I didn’t like them generally, the arrogance mostly. Their attempts at intimidation of their patient as I viewed it. It turns out that this distrust came very early in my life and became my “operating basis”. I remember vividly having an unexplained swollen knee as a young girl, maybe 9 years old. I couldn’t even stand. It happened quickly. My father took a sterilized needle and dug around a little in what looked to be the “site” of the problem to see if he could find a splinter or something that was causing the problem. No luck. He carried me into the base hospital emergency room and I remember him directly and succinctly presenting me and my symptoms along with what he had done to the physician for information. The first thing out of this physician’s mouth was to chastise my father for “digging around in my knee with a needle!” I remember clearly, my father tensing his jaw the way he did when he was annoyed or angry. I was still in his arms and it was pulsing very close to my face. I was ANGRY! HOW DARE YOU INSULT MY DAD! JERK! I tried desperately to pulse my jaw like he did, in UNITY, but I still hadn’t mastered it yet. I think it was then that I chose to hold physicians in low regard. (BTW, it turned out to be a BIG BOIL, cause unknown. I still have a scar from the “plug” that came out of it. My father was absolutely correct to dig around and see if he could find the irritant!)
Later, when my father died (age 12), I remember adults coming into my room one after the other to offer condolences and each one said the same thing, “‘The Doctor’ is outside. 
He wants to give you a shot. Your mother got one, your sister got one. Won’t you get one? Please?” No I kept repeating. A shot? For what? It was then that I became immensely distrustful of physicians as a whole. I actually became frightened and felt trapped, and wondered if it would be forced on me. When my best friend Nancy arrived, I fled the house with her on bicycles for hours and her mother took me home with them that evening. Whew! I firmly believe, to this day, that both my mother and sister never fully recovered from my father’s death because they were in a drugged stupor during the entire grieving process and sometime after. What we were all suppose to “get through” was completely masked for them from the sedatives, and thus they were “stuck” in this heartbreaking tragedy, for most of their lives.
Years later I found some really good doctors in my life. Ones I came to not only respect, but love. Those that validated and appreciated my being responsible for my own healthcare needs and proactive in my understanding. But it wasn’t easy. I found more that I didn’t care for and fought with, than ones I could work with. I realized in my early 30’s that I had a HUGE CHIP on my shoulder and would stress horribly when I had to talk to a new doctor, assuming before I even met them, that they would be difficult and jerks. 
I had a BAD Atti-TUDE. Once I realized I was doing this and why, things eased up a lot and now I have much better luck. I go in with the idea that they are people with an MD and that I have no reason to believe we can’t work together effectively. But I still do my own thing and rarely run to a doctor for basic maladies. I am not stupid. Quite the contrary. I’m pretty smart and intuitive about such matters. I know when its something I can handle and when its something that needs medical attention.
Respect should be earned, in my opinion. Just because they are MD’s doesn’t mean they are good enough to be your doctor. All it means is that they are smart enough and worked hard enough to get through Med School. They’re good students. That’s all. The rest is, the good or bad stuff. Their moral character. How they treat people, their staff, their patients, their family members, their colleagues and their continuing education and professional collaborations, are they organized, good managers? Do they have good relations with others in the medical community upon whose services you will depend? Finding someone who can work with YOU and your goals is vitally important to your experience. Don’t settle. There are good people in the world and some of them are indeed physicians. (And don’t forget your side of the responsibility to also be thoughtful, mannerly, succinct, in your dealings with your medical team. – “It’s All in Your Approach”)
Participatory Medicine is a movement in which networked patients shift from being mere passengers to responsible drivers of their health, and in which providers encourage and value them as full partners.
So, I found this interesting article and then website that is exactly what I was doing and was excited about it. I never heard of such a thing. But its called “Patient Participatory Medicine & Research” (website link here). It reminded me immediately of successes I have had in treating myself and my children over the years as well as what we did for David’s Hyperbaric Oxygen Treatment prior to his stem cell collection. It reminds me of people like Margaret (at Margaret’s Health Blog) and David Emerson (at People Beating Cancer). There are others, and I admire them greatly for taking the less traveled road through diligence and hard won efforts to understand that there is more to your health than mainstream medicine and that it is at the very least, worth exploring and sometimes actively participating in. They are patient heroes to me.
So check out the site, starting with an article on Myeloma (this is their blog site project, but not their main website (above)) and the guy who started it all.
I’m still exploring the site and on the surface it seems rich with interesting information. But I haven’t had the time recently to really dig into it. So hopefully I’m not steering you wrong. Make your own assessments, as always. But do empower yourself. No one is ultimately responsible for your health and well being but you. Get help, but be selective and appropriately demanding of respect from your healthcare team. Because in the end if your doctor/nurses don’t view you and your caregiver as members of the team, then you need to find ones who do.
A Short History of Medicine
2000 B.C. – “Here, eat this root.”
1000 B.C. – “That root is heathen, say this prayer.”
1850 A.D. – “That prayer is superstition, drink this potion.”
1940 A.D. – “That potion is snake oil, swallow this pill.”
1985 A.D. – “That pill is ineffective, take this antibiotic.”
2000 A.D. – “That antibiotic is artificial. Here, eat this root.”
– Author Unknown
