Today I had a chance to meet someone who I hope will be a very good friend because her vision of the diabetic life is very identical to mine and I so wish she would have walked into my life a long time ago because her wisdom is so empowering.

She is on the fore front of the diabetic fight even though she is only pre diabetic. She has decided not to let diabetes impact her life by doing everything that she can to fight it. To most people I have come across during my studies, none has been so proactive in preventing diabetes like she has and I very much applaud her for doing that.

As we were talking today, She told me a story that is so fitting to my anti doctor groove I have been on lately. So here goes the story.

She went for her normal physical at one time and they drew blood as usual, at the time she was feeling a bit faint at times, shortness of breath when climbing stairs and a general weakness.

The blood work results came back and it was determined that she was borderline anemic. Now since she was just borderline and the doctor did not see cause for concern, he did not actually tell her that she was.

This fact being left out would normally not have been such a profound problem but due to different circumstances, she got a different doctor, different drugs were prescribed for her other ailment and needless to say the other medications she was on helped lower her iron count levels.

About six months later she started feeling the same symptoms again, shortness of breath, when climbing stairs, profuse sweating and overall weakness, all the heart attack symptoms and she thought she was having a real heart attack this time.

A trip to her doctor with the magnified symptoms led to more tests and to her dismay she found out that her borderline had become full blown case of iron deficiency and Anemia.

Now I am willing to accept the argument that these were a unique set of extenuating circumstances. That she might not have gotten worse if not for the medications from the other ailment, that caused her iron deficiency to get magnified but my argument is that shouldn’t her doctor have informed her even if he didn’t want to take on an alarmist position.

Yes doctors are an overworked bunch of people, Network and HMO doctors are forced to take on more and more patients and meet quotas so they usher you in and out in five minutes. Barely have time to see the person and not just A patient on a chart.
They are forced to focus narrowly on what is ailing you at that moment and time, and are told not take what is deemed as unnecessary tests to keep costs down.
Most of the time however, they can miss the big picture when it comes to some patients health.

We trust them to know whats best for us and we value their judgment calls because they are obviously doctors right. That’s what they are supposed to do, but how many times have you been at your doctors office and they say something like “your results are back and there is an elevated this but I don’t see a cause for concern yet” and it is left left at that.

If your doctor be keeping something from you that he thinks is miniscule and not a cause for concern, wouldn’t you like to know?