Sunday, April 02, 2006

Doctor Groupies

As I reflect on all I have seen as I entered and now live in the world of ARD, one of the most disturbing and dangerous things to develop in our realm is the" Doctor Groupie".
He saved my life!
Perhaps... for most, temporarily.
It's their job.
Now the stage is set for something so dangerous to us all.
In our gratitude for relief of our torturous symptoms we become malleable to exploitation. Even when relief is only temporary, our gratitude at being rescued, relieved, our condition explained, validated and believed often sets the stage beyond what should always be a professional relationship. The professional doctor/ patient relationship should be as such for the protection of both parties involved.
Indeed there has been many an example where the doctor/ patient relationship gets out of control. We look at doctors who perform an adhesiolysis on us as God like, life giving, nothing short of a miracle. We deify doctors and perhaps turn to a sort of religious style of fanaticism where we go out and preach the gospel of Dr. such and such....wishing to take those we know who suffer our fate to our new deity to be saved, as we were. Alas, we are not doctors and base these beliefs on emotions and not reality.
I have also participated in this very dysfunctional relationship.
We dismiss that this doctor is real flesh and blood, human, vulnerable to mistakes and enlarged egos. We do all that we can to remain high in their favor.
Even though relief is often temporary we have already committed ourselves to their worship and somehow can lose our objectivity, honesty, our very soul to this devil. We just want to live....who would knock anybody that??? They can spell the word adhesion and did take us as a patient. Is that good enough?
We worship and then more terrifying, we bring new sacrifices to our new giver of life.
It is a set up when the doctor accepts this worship and encourages you to "help" others receive their miracle too.
Our fault is to deify them, their fault is to accept it and not stop it as an unhealthy behavior....scarier yet is when they start to believe it.....use it to their advantage, use it to cover their tracks, their mistakes...it releases them from accountability....nice gig. With each subsequent surgery with our guru doctor the further and harder we will fall as the time does come when we see them as human after all. It might take thousands of dollars and more of our precious time before we are compromised enough, and the realization sets in that we have been part of something so very immoral, so very wrong.
Groupie doctors don't seem to lose much sleep and certainly get rich.....as they expected to when they went to medical school. With our healthcare system out of control....getting rich as a doctor is not as easy as it once was....a very sad thing as good doctors should be rewarded monetarily. With financial security for their families and selves....easier to reach the plane of altruism.
Remember the Hippocratic oath they took, the most resounding statement being , " First do no harm"? When the doctor and patient fall into what I now dub " Doctor Groupie Syndrome", we all lose. The doctors become ineffective and the patient, so very desparate not to let their perceptions die.
Well better perceptions than people.
I do put the blame solely on doctors for allowing this phenomenon to occur as they have been trained to do what they do in a detached manner.
They have observed our deepest vulnerabilities and in their deified state they can and will use it against us but in no court of law but in the prison of our minds that ARD has locked us in and thrown away the key.
Hippocrates was a pretty smart guy....and to paraphrase the oath that carries his name....a doctor should be a humble tool to the science of medicine and the altruistic relief of human suffering.
Vulnerable....we are missing the point, where even criminal activity is pulled into play for fame and fortune when a deified ego is out of control.
We still remain the most vulnerable, desparate, preyed upon victims in the medical world and we remain innocently ignorant to these predators seeking fame and fortune and believing that one person holds our very life in solely their hands.
We have been ignored and we are an easy and vulnerable mark as it appears we will follow anyone who will give us a moment of time.
If they throw us a bone we will die for it in our blind desperation. I now think the battle for relief of ARD should start in healing our minds and not the O.R.
The " doctor groupie syndrome" seems to do nothing more than to create predators with vulnerable, willing accomplices, who just want to live and escape their suffering. We may create it but they know better to stop it and if they don't...they have NO right to hold a scalpel!
Please watch for for this and never fall into the "doctor groupie" trap. It is surely a path to isolation, misery, poverty and even death. Death without question or reproach.
The horror, the horror.
Are those of us afflicted with ARD best served not to seek surgical intervention but rather psychological, emotional intervention which will pull us out of the world of dysfunction that we have been thrown in by those we sought surgery with.
Close the circle.
Surgery, pain, denial, deceit. Surgery, pain, denial, deceit.
We will not conquer this through surgery, so in our need to save ourselves....we can win of we just pull ourselves out of dysfunctional behaviors we recognize in ourselves. In the long run this action my save our life over surgery that could harm us.

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