a lot of doctors, dare I say most (I do dare)
are biased against chronic illness whether they admit it or not, do not know enough about them to treat them properly, are not willing to treat them long term, or are not willing to learn about new conditions and treatments.
treating chronic illness requires a willingness to learn and ongoing support. there is so little information about so many chronic illnesses... because doctors do not know about them and/or are not willing to learn. the fewer people who want to hear about it or deal with it, the fewer people want to diagnose or research it. a lot of research is from the past few years, despite there being records of these conditions for centuries or longer in many cases.
POTS, for example, diagnosed with a tilt table. easy. but most patients have been dismissed, belittled, or misdiagnosed by doctors at least once prior to a diagnosis. and it takes on average 8 doctors prior to a diagnosis. there is very little research and very little spending on it.
many experts struggle to get other doctors to stop rolling their eyes at genuine medical research. there is an awful sense of pride limiting medical progress. the keynote lecture this year at dysautonomia international was largely about how often autonomic researchers got told to shut the fuck up any time they wanted to talk about the autonomic nervous system, over the past several decades and beyond.
I use POTS as an example because I am familiar with the studies, and many studies are specific to people who have a POTS diagnosis, but many aspect of these negative medical experiencea are identical in other chronic illnesses.
doctors saying "this is just in your head", doctors saying "you only have anxiety", doctors saying "you probably do not have this" without running any tests, doctors running tests and refusing to diagnose despite meeting the criteria, doctors calling patients liars, doctors insisting a diagnosis is just mild and you just need to exercise /get over it/try harder, doctors refusing to believe a particular condition exists, doctors refusing to learn about new conditions or research, doctors never having heard of something before, doctors only knowing some/half/vague information and insisting they are an expert
and all of this contributes to why doctors often need more basic medical presentations than patients, because they either never came across a condition before or had their head up their ass every time they saw it previously and refuse to admit when they are wrong. meanwhile patients are more well-read. it blows
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