A sad state of affairs
I think I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating. I have excellent health insurance. In the US, that really means something. It means that I have full access to an array of doctors, a way of paying for my prescriptions that does cause me to forgo things like food or electricity in exchange. A trip to the hospital will not cause permanent financial hardship.
In the US, that is a very big deal. I should be set.
Unfortunately, what it does not do is guarantee me access to people who can and will actually help me. I’m repeating myself again, but if your problem is not obvious, and preferably mechanical, western medicine, and very specifically American medicine can not help you. Or will not, I’m not exactly sure.
At some point we turned our health care over to the bean counters. They decide what tests you can qualify for without fighting. They apparently decide what is and isn’t an actual problem.
And those doctors who have opted out of the system and treat based on symptoms rather than tests, and treat medicine like the art it should be…have opted out of the system. They don’t take insurance. So it’s back to whether or not you can afford it.
Yesterday I had an appointment with my doctor, who is actually a physician’s assistant, because they are often more open minded. And she is soooooo much better than the average that I hate to even complain. She renewed all my prescriptions, she believes in things like adrenal fatigue, and she doesn’t give me a lot of guff about my weight, because we agreed that I’d love to fix it if we can come up with a solution I haven’t already tried and tried and tried. She’s even nice.
She scoffed at the idea that selenium deficiency could have caused my high white cell count, but she did order the usual blood tests to make sure I’m not suddenly going to explode. Or die of the diabetes and high cholesterol I continue to not have, defying all medical predictions.
What she can’t do, because she doesn’t have the knowledge or tools, is help me. Because I have no idea what else is going on. I don’t know where to research. And it isn’t a tick box on her forms.
So, maybe traditional Chinese medicine?
Which I will have to pay for out of pocket, because my really excellent insurance doesn’t even recognize that as an option.
Pretty crazy.