Pain in the ass patients more healthy?

There's no doubt you are right in some ways. It is also true that not all doctors are good doctors, no more than any other profession. My mother was a nurse and brought me up to question and judge a doctor's competence. The doctor that I have is my doctor because he is a good doctor. To be honest, I sometimes think he's psychic about what's wrong with me. He is willing to listen. He wanted me on cholesterol medicine, I wanted to try diet & exercise first. He said, okay but I want you back in X amount of time. He was right. I needed cholesterol medicine. LOL, you'll never have to worry about drug-seeking behavior from me. I fight most meds, but I'm also intelligent enough to know that sometimes, meds are for my benefit, so I take them whilst I grumble. And to be honest, I wouldn't want to be a doctor. I'd spend half my life shell-shocked by patient problems or what I had to tell them.

If you read about what happened with my father, we had no choice in most of the issues. He needed a new cardiologist. The cardiologist had a good rep but certainly didn't deal well with my father. I know he wasn't an easy patient to deal with, I know he brought his heart problems on himself through alcohol abuse but he was also a human being and deserved to be treated with dignity and respect, neither of which he got. If my brothers and sisters hadn't advocated for him, I doubt that his treatment would have been as good as it was and that wasn't so good.

I want to trust medical people but I've found that not all medical people are deserving of that trust. I'm not saying that about either physician here because I don't know you. It sounds though as if you do one of the prime things that I like about any good doctor. They listen to their patients.

mstevens wrote:

Kairosgrammy wrote:pain in the ass patients are probably better treated if for no other reason than medical folks dislike dealing with them so give them what they want to get them off their backs.

Getting what you want is not necessarily good treatment. Sometimes, perhaps more often than you might think, it's the worst possible treatment.

If advocating for yourself in an appropriate manner with your doctor makes you a pain in the ass, you probably need a different doctor.