communicate or slowly degenerate

So, i found a new analogy today that compared modern medicine to banking in the way that when either institution becomes too fractured the end users those for whom both institutions were set up to serve, suffer.


Doctors: GPs, medical, patient facing professionals appear to care for their patients by the book and don't do much thinking outside the box. Any creative thinking appearing to be reserved for those who don't face patients, the researchers. 

this is a rule and being such gets broken by compassionate healthcare professionals who can and do look at why a thing is so instead of just rushing to patch it up. We feel more in control and best served when our banks are there to serve us with boring (perhaps) but safe investment strategies that won't risk our hard earned pennies. We never asked for them to gamble for us. Similar to how we'd like our doctors to do the best thing for us and that means not taking risks.

Perhaps this approach is necessary when doctors have a plethora of pharmaceutical offerings to negotiate when employed in the business of keeping people from dying. Would it be pushing the anology too far to compare toxic loans and sophisticated financial loan bundles with pharmaceutically toxic offerings?

We got into trouble as a society when the investment side of banking became divorced from the high street, customer facing end of banking. But perhaps medicine needs to be neatly demarcated into the guys who fix us and the guys who think about the problems from all sorts of disciplines. In using a wide range of folk looking at an existing problem through new eyes will benefit Jo Schmo, ultimately (even if they don't directly interact). For example looking with a fluid mechanics' eyes at symptoms and wondering whether they might be caused by a problem with flow rather than just figuring out how to deal with that specific set of symptoms.

Is choosing not to go with the medical experts in your field of disease a bit like choosing not to believe in God? It requires a conscious decision and ongoing questioning of oneself and our place in the world?

as you may be able to tell, these are thoughts that I've first thought about on this page or perhaps an idea was sparked on facebook and here seemed a more appropriate area for thinking out loud (even tho a fair amount of that goes on on there!


Indecision is the key to flexibility and procrastination Rules!


another facebook inspired thought in response to the channel four coverage of the paralympics - all disabled sports people are superhuman which i would have to agree they are but not all disabled people can/want to become sportspeople. it was suggested by a fellow invisible disease sufferer that a lack of empathy and understanding will more than likely be a long lasting legacy of the coverage.

As possessors of an invisible disease we need to employ humour to get our point across. Yes, we have all our limbs but they ignore us when we ask them to do something. MS has turned our bodies into stroppy teenagers. Generalisations are there for a reason. When they're used well they're a shorthand to aid communication  and likely to cause offense when not.

i know sometimes it can feel like MSers were dealt a sh*t hand in life but it's only us who suffer if we let it colour our view of life. I use the word 'us' as moaning and bitching can get quite tiresome for everyone who listens to it.

humour's good but sometimes it's inappropriate when you want to move things along tothe next level...
a call to arms on the 8th october
yes Ann Boyne I think you do get the spirit of what i mean (which is good going cos I'm not entirely sure myself!) other than I think things need to move along. I was surprised at first that 'CCSVI docs' weren't more rigorous in collecting data from their patients pre & post op but that would have cost money and they already have enough of us interested in getting seen by them. More data might allow patients to work out what their dollar will potentially get them whereas at the moment, treatment might get us an ill-defined 'bit better'. Researchers and us can progress when we have more information... is it more effective to those early on in their diagnosis? Would a course of antiBiotics help? how long of which sort? We might believe so but until it's measured we don't know. Dr Franz Schelling I believe we do need to speak with people who design trials/ medical ethicists the people who know who we need to speak to whilst we organise ourselves in collecting data. There are many vested interests on all sides of the equation (money's tight all over the shop) not just pharmaco.s protective of their profits but stent manufacturers, physios and more i can't even think of. We're a big crowd, we have strength in number. Our data is worth something to people. How can we benefit from it rather than/aswell as others? We need to start stamping our feet in time!