On Nerves
My Mom is out of surgery and in recovery. It’s natural for any family member to be nervous about a loved one in the hospital but I was trying to think of why I feel particularly pitted in my stomach about it all. My sister was talking to a friend of mine and apparently said “two years ago we trusted doctors who were supposed to know what they were doing. It’s hard to trust again. [she was tragically misdiagnosed]” She hit the nail on the head. I have great admiration for doctors and our remarkable Canadian medical system. Everyone we encountered dealt with us professionally. Of particular note is the careful structured process my Mom experienced at the orthopedic centre recently, or earlier in Infection Diseases division and Intensive Care at VGH or from the Cancer Agency. In each case there was a particularly well thought out process towards increasing family and patient comfort levels.
However, what we see and learn throughout all of that is that medicine is still so imprecise a science (what isn’t). So much (all it seems in infection) depends on helping the body help itself. I think we want to believe doctors have all the answers, and should just know everthing all the time. The reality is no profession can demand such absoluteness, but that can be hard to accept.
My Mom’s case is a particular farce of misdiagnosis and missed chances that she luckily survived, but my sisters right; as much as I now understand the delivery of medical care, I can no longer trust it.