Saturday, March 8, 2014

Dear #Doctors,

I know logic. I studied logic at University, and even passed Organic Chemistry my first time through. I was pre-med and a chemistry major when my health showed me that there was no way I could be a doctor professionally. Didn't matter that my step-mother was a doctor, or that I could have gone to Wash U Med School on an Alumni scholarship (one of my ancestors was the first dean of the Wash U Law School). But none of that matters when I walk into a doctor's office. I'm supposed to be stupid, illogical, uneducated, drug-seeking and all sorts of other nasty terms for patients that I don't care to repeat here. I was even called a "strawberry" once by an ER nurse (it essentially means crack whore).

I'm not an idiot and I'm no fool. It's not that difficult to read test results when they send them to you with instructions written for a 3rd grader. I make my living on dumbing-down highly technical articles written by lawyers, engineers, and doctors! I've done it here even. So I'm no slouch. I know when I'm being fed a line of bull. You can't tell me that it's highly probable that I have a disease more rare than the rare one I have now. That's just stupid. But that's exactly what they're trying to tell me now, bless their hearts. And I ain't buying.

I am proud of my Midwestern roots, and I am proud to be from Missouri, the "Show Me" state. We got that name because of a particularly onery statesman, who on the floor of the U.S. Congress, was able to stop an entire movement with that line. As the story goes, he knew that he was looked on as a country bumpkin, and he used that to his advantage (if you've seen House of Cards, you know what I'm talking about). He let them be swayed by his slow southern drawl, and then when they weren't expecting it, he plunged in the knife:

"Now gentlemen, I may be slow, and I may be just a Missouri bumpkin.... But from where I come from, talking ain't doin'. If you want my support on this bill, then you better SHOW ME it can work..." (I'm paraphrasing...)

Point is, people who don't know forget that St. Louis is a city Older than the United States. If you don't know me, you'd think I was all those ugly terms they like to call patients. (Now I know why they call us patients.... Because they demand we be patient....) But if you were to check your sources, run your tests, all that good due digillance stuff... you'd know: I ain't lying, sailor. Never then, never now.

And I know a thing or two ;)

So on to the next endocrinologist appointment... Wheee! [/sarcasm]

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