Originally Posted by
marta
I'm also not a trained medical doctor, but I have to add one more opinion on this topic, and then I shall cease and desist. I feel compelled to write about it because it's hitting close to home right now. I just wrote about it on my blog, and I can't seem to articulate it the way it lives in my brain, but I'm giving it a go here, and I promise not to get upset if there's a tsunami of disagreement coming my way.
Iatrogenic disease. I first heard the term in a 4th year Medical Anthropology seminar I was attending while at university. For those who haven't heard it, it's the disease and death caused by medical mistakes. This includes, vaccines, drug interactions, mistakes by medical practitioners, or things picked up while in hospitals. As most of us know, Alisia believes that Phil's passing was iatrogenic in cause, and I just buried a friend (who didn't have WG or anything else that was serious) and he passed away on November 9th. I am 100% sure he passed because he was prescribed two meds that shouldn't have been prescribed together and he died of internal bleeding. I, a lay person, went on line to look up the meds on his most recent medical prescription record (filled less than a week before his passing) and I can see all the warnings, and red and yellow symbols telling people not to mix them together, but his doctor filled the script, and the pharmacy gave him the combo. I brought the record back to the pharmacy to ask if this combo of drugs is unusual, and the pharmacist just stared with her mouth open. Didn't say a word.
When you look up stats on Iatrogenic Death, it's absolutely mind boggling. It's more people dying from this one cause than if a 747 jet plane full of people crashed every day of the year and killed everyone on board. Imagine how much money was spent looking for that missing plane over the ocean. But nobody and I mean nobody is trying to help the over hundred thousand people dying each year from medical mistakes.
IMHO, I believe the problem is that healthcare is a profit driven commodity. We have given the reigns over to corporations that have a profit driven agenda, and count off the dead humans as stats and a necessity for us moving forward. Granted many of these people have life threating disease and might have died earlier without medical intervention, but many haven't (like my buddy I spoke of earlier.) I'm not a communist, I lived that life as a kid, and my parents risked life and limb to come to Canada where we can have a real life. I spent time in jail running away from communism, so it's not where I'm going with this, but I think that the wrong guys have the power over our society's healthcare. If we didn't have them making the healthcare decisions, we wouldn't have tons and tons and tons of meds that only mask symptoms, and create other nasty side effects and not a single cure. Polio. That's one that has been cured, but how long are we going to ride those coat tails? We need research using all funding and energy looking for cures instead of symptom maskers, but sadly health is not profitable. That's why this element of our society needs to be taken out of the hands of corporations with different agenda and motives.
This is political, but if we bury our heads in the sand, then nothing will change. We just keep letting these guys get rich off of us, and continue killing people under the guise of helping. I AM angry. I feel helpless. I miss my buddy. He should not be dead right now. We should be going for a ski together. I miss my old life. I miss my strength. I miss going out in the mountains and having enough strength to be out there all day. I miss a lot of things. And for me all of this started with getting a simple, 'safe' H1N1 vaccine (which in the 2009 Canadian batch was full of Squalene.) Hey but they were just trying to make it stronger because that way they could vaccinate more people with less vaccines.
It is political. I feel like I'm sick from political reasons. I'm sick of politics. Because some rich guys wanted to get richer, and my life (along with my family's and friends) happened to be a stepping stone to their final destination. My docs know I have WG from the vaccine. It is written in black and white on the vaccine insert I got it from the health nurse, and also from GSK's website, that Vasculitis is a possible negative reaction to getting the flu shot. So many doctors are useless and will just spout the 'party line' because they are too busy to do the deeper research - this I have learned through my WG journey.
Here's a joke I heard from a doctor - "Q: What do you call the Med School graduate with the lowest marks in the class? A: Doctor"
So I have found that not researching, or only listening to 'trained docs', might not be the best course of action when you have a fairly unknown disease like WG. I have been given so many bum steers in the last 5 years, it's absolutely frightening for people who just trust - like my friend who is now dead. I am alive because I have you guys in my corner and because I don't take everything I hear from the 'professionals' as gospel. I question. I look things up. I make sure my meds don't contradict. I never go for vaccines any more. I try and use the analytical skills I acquired in university to research this whole scene, and I think our problem is that government has dropped the ball and given carte blanche to profit driven corporations to play with the populace health as they see fit.
I'm not telling anyone to do anything. I'm just suggesting that we are in a situation that most docs do NOT understand, and we should research, educate ourselves, and make informed decisions. Go to an ER and find out that most pros there don't give a flying crap that you're immune suppressed and shouldn't be sitting beside the guy who is so sick that he's blowing chunks, and that catching his virus could put you in a life threating situation. They don't get it.
Oh and one last thing. When I spoke with the investigator from the Medical Examiner's office regarding my friend, the reply came back "When you're on meds, it's YOUR responsibility to make sure that everything's right. He was a grown man, he should have understood his medication." So now there's a sentiment that it is all in our hands... whether you're professionally trained or not.
There. I've written a novel.
Now you can crucify me.
Begin.
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