Chronic Rants

My energy is low so this will be short. But I think short is fine – after all, we’ve probably all experienced this, so you know what I’m talking about. And if you’re one of the people who asks these questions, you’ll quickly see why you should stop doing that. Right now!

When someone asks why I can’t climb a bunch of stairs, I say I have knee pain and they accept it. They don’t ask what causes the pain. When I say I can’t lift something because I have a “bad back” they accept it. They don’t ask what causes the back pain. When I say I can’t eat gluten, dairy, broccoli or anything else because it will make me sick, they ask why it will make me sick. They want the details. They want the medical explanation. From me!

• Why can’t you eat gluten?
• Why can’t you eat broccoli? It’s so healthy!
• What is it in gluten that makes you sick?
• Will you ever be able to eat X again?

I’m so sick of those questions! I think my new response will be: the last time you had a cold, what exactly was happening in your body that made you feel lousy? What were the germs doing? Oh, you don’t know every detail of the biology of the human body? Well, ME NEITHER!

I think it’s important to be a well-informed patient. I try to learn as much as I can. I know about the various thyroid hormones and why a Free T4 test is better than a Total T4 test. I’ve read about what every thyroid hormone is supposed to do in the body, how they affect organs, how they should interact with cells. Do I remember every detail? No. Just like I don’t remember every detail of what causes a leaky gut. Or a connective tissue disease. Or how my car engine works.

Maybe my problem is that I am informed. I know a lot, so people expect me to know everything. I try to point out to them that I’m not a doctor and I didn’t spend 4 years in medical school, so my knowledge is limited. And yet, they expect me to have all the answers. What can I say? I DON’T KNOW! There’s nothing wrong with not knowing. But I shouldn’t have to constantly state it, repeat it, explain it, and justify it.

I know what I need to know about my body. I know which foods to avoid. If you want to know more than that, look it up online or in the library. Then let me ask you about it in 6 months and we’ll see how well you remember it.

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 23rd, 2013 at 9:11 pm and is filed under Educating, Frustration, Gastrointestinal, Insensitive, Intrusions, Rants. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.