Idiocracy, satire becomes documentary

Thank you to Larry L. Beane @ Lew Rockwell.  

The above scene from the movie  Idiocracy is becoming a reality in our American medical system.

It seems like the recent medical school graduates, in general, have no idea how to diagnose anything.  They are technicians at best, pushing buttons and hoping the computer readout will make the call for them.  They don’t listen to the patient.  They run up testing bills only to pass the patient around like a hot potato, hoping they just go away or die before they have to commit to some kind of diagnosis or treatment protocol.  The only part of the equation that is reliable is the slew of bills that will come in for months.

But watching young doctors “diagnose” is like observing a group of monkeys trying to inflate a football.

One of my relatives had a kidney stone.  She was in pain, and concerned that it might be appendicitis, and unable to see her doctor right away, went to the local clinic – who then sent her to the hospital ER for CT scan.  The recent medical school graduate at the hospital, a nice young lady who seemed clueless, told the patient that the scan did not reveal a kidney stone, but rather her problem was probably a disk in her vertebrae, “degenerative spine disease” in the official argot of this medical “expert.”

She has no back problems, but she did, in fact, have a kidney stone.  It had just been broken up by this time.  Her old-school doctor knew what was going on without running her through an expensive battery of scans.

But here is a more serious matter – one that readers may well want to file away for future consideration…

A friend of mine, whose husband is in his eighties, suddenly began to behave erratically, becoming forgetful and moody.  He was diagnosed with dementia by multiple doctors and placed in a nursing home.  His wife was dubious of the diagnosis.  His daughter, an attorney, considered her father’s symptoms, and suggested that he may be suffering from a urinary tract infection (UTI), as dementia does not just suddenly appear out of nowhere.  The medical “experts” did not check him for that.  And they continued to resist doing so.

Finally, and I suspect it was because of his daughter’s status as an attorney, they relented.  Lo and behold, after he had been in a nursing home, confined to a wheelchair for three months – he was tested for a UTI.  And that was his problem all along.  They put him on a treatment protocol, and miracle of miracles, his “dementia” suddenly went away, and he was able to return home in a couple days.

The moral of the story is to stay away from doctors if possible, and if you must go to one, find one with experience in actual diagnosis, and not one of those hacks who just pushes buttons and reads a printout.  If one of your loved ones is diagnosed with a sudden case of dementia, consider that he or she may simply be suffering from an infection.  UTI’s are common in older folks.

Finally, if you have not seen Idiocracy, you might want to.  It used to be considered a comedy.  But today, I’m afraid it is a documentary.