Trust Me, I’m A Doctor

Matthew Gates 4m 1,119 #trustmeimadoctr

The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.

When The World Began Trusting Doctors

I am not old enough to remember when doctors made house calls, but I remember seeing it in films, and I also remember when being a doctor was a respected profession. The doctor making a house call was a time when the doctor actually seemed to genuinely care about his patients. There was even a time, when doctors stopped making house calls, where they seemed to still care about their patients.

The doctor was the professional we trusted, no matter what advise he gave, and it was drilled into us, and continues to be drilled into us: “Ask your doctor” before doing anything or taking anything. The doctor is the medical professional that we have come to rely on for all the wrong reasons, and that means big business and money for doctors.

As I get older and I have watched several of my friends, none of whom were over the age of thirty years old, die from the very prescription drugs that doctors wrote to them for whatever reasons, and as I watch my parents shove over ten different types of pills at various times of the day in order to somehow “improve” their health, which from an outside perspective and from years of observation of both my parents, their health has not really improved at all, only remained about the same, I cannot understand why my parents, my friends, and the world seems to believe the words, “Trust me, I’m a doctor” over their loved ones, who may not be a doctor, but is more qualified to tell them that from all the pills they are taking, their health certainly has yet to show any signs of improvement.

The ethical practice of doctors came into question when billion dollar pharmaceutical companies took over and doctors became their means of getting to their source. The doctor became the legal drug dealer, to whom the patient paid money to, not only the doctor, but the health insurance company, and the prescription drug company as well.

These pharmaceutical drugs, which are backed by billions of dollars of research and millions of hours have yet to show hardly any improvement at all. This is not to say that no medicine does not improve health, but most medication seems to either just keep people “good enough”, but prevents them from actually getting any better.

Where is the advice to help people get better? Why has society come to rely on prescription pills to cure their diseases? Why is it perfectly legal for a doctor to prescribe drugs on top of drugs on top of drugs, all causing too many side effects, that clearly show illness in loved ones, and yet, this is considered “normal” in our society.

I cannot fathom the fact that I know my parents, whom are both respectively victims of stroke and heart attack, must be on some form of medication for the rest of their lives, but the fact that they are on no less than three to five medications each is quite disturbing to me.

I live on the other side of the country, so I get to visit my parents, almost as an observer, who gets to see his parents as aging individuals each time that I see them. While I would love to say that I could see them as the young parents I once knew, and I know that, I myself, am getting older as well, I see their health declining more rapidly than should be expected for them to be on medications that are supposed to be “helping” them. What then, is the use of doctors, if these medications are not really there to help or cure people? It hardly seems that many of them treat people, maybe allowing people to “get by” for a few years.

I certainly do not mean to bash the researchers who spends hours and companies who spend billions of dollars to find cures for diseases, cancers, and other illnesses, but when I see that a doctor has loaded both of my parents up on no less than five medications each, with one of my parents on over ten medications, and I see that for the age of my parents, they should certainly be healthier than they are.

We could blame it on genetics for sure, or bad health, or any number of things, but in the decade that both of my parents have been seeing their doctors, I really have to wonder: What exactly has their doctor been doing for either of them, other than prescribing too many drugs?

I would like to think that those who call themselves doctors remain above the influence of money and the ability to write prescription drugs, but it is likely, because greed gets the best of us, that the expensive house, the expensive car, the luxurious nothings that are in the expensive house, are what keeps the doctor going, not what the doctor originally signed up for: sworn in to save lives because they were passionate and actually cared about human beings.

The industry of the Doctor is a business industry, a huge money maker worth billions of dollars to keep people sick each year. When doctors start seeing dollar signs, are happy to see you for 5 to 10 minutes, and diagnose you with what they believe you have, and prescribe you something for it, and make a few hundred dollars, wouldn’t you call that good business? I wish I was making thousands of dollars an hour. I would definitely hope to see as many people everyday as I possibly could. And bonus for selling legal prescription drugs, filled with opiates, and other ingredients (we don’t go to war without a good reason!).

Where are all the good doctors who are still trying to save lives and not willy nilly writing every prescription drug available to them in order to receive that “bonus” that those pharmaceutical companies are writing to fund their lavish lifestyles. Unfortunately, yet again, I must watch more people I love, my brainwashed parents, who put their full faith and trust in their doctors, fade away, get sicker, and die, and there is nothing I can do about it, because they trust their doctor more than they trust me. I love my mom. I love my dad. I love my parents. I am happy they are both still alive, but I know that when their time comes, no doctor will be held responsible for the prescription drugs they gave my parents.

The only lesson I can take away from observing my parents and the healthcare system for well over a decade are that that I can and will never trust a doctor.

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