The Perils of Blind Trust in Medical Professionals #25

Okay, everybody, glad to have you here on the DiabeticReal podcast. And I'm Deborah. Deborah E, your host and your friend. I hope you consider me your friend.Now, if you are a regular listener, you probably know by now I shoot it straight. A lot of times I use the phrase, well, to be honest with you, which is a silly phrase because that is what we're doing, right? We're being honest.But it, you know, after many decades of saying that, it is a part of how I speak. Today we're going to talk about something.And I know that there's a disclaimer at the beginning of the podcast because I added it and we play it every episode. But I have to reiterate that again, I am not a medical doctor.I may be really close to finishing my PhD and maybe by the time you listen to this, I will have it completed. But even with the completion of the PhD, that does not make me a medical doctor and it does not make me your medical doctor.And it does not give me the privilege of giving you medical advice. And it certainly does not give me the privilege to have you listen to any medical advice.So now that I've repeated that to point of ad nauseam and saying, do not take this as medical advice, I'll get to the point. How's that? Right.What I wanted to share with you is that your health is your responsibility and you're probably going, wow, I had to listen to Deborah talk about how I shouldn't take this seriously. And now she states the ever so obvious, but, yes, your health is your responsibility and we need to take it seriously.I had something happen and I realized that I was probably putting too much trust in my doctor. It's not that doctors don't deserve the trust. I think doctors in a general, broad sense are probably overworked.I mean, if you're a billionaire and you can pay doctors for their time and compensate them, and if you have a doctor that really cares and they will give their devoted time and attention to your health and ignore every time their phone goes off. So, for example, if you're Elon Musk, and by the way, I happen to like X, formerly known as Twitter.So if you're Elon Musk and you can pay your doctor for his time and pay your doctor to ignore everything else coming in on the phone, including any notifications from X, and only give devoted time to your patient, then maybe you will get the attention.But see, then you're still depending on the doctor to know everything and to have researched everything to have the doctor's team research everything to know everything about everything and to an exponential level so that you don't accidentally die. Have I got your attention? All right.I don't like sharing personal information about myself, but I think the only way to drive this home is to actually share a couple scenarios so that you get the idea of how serious this could get for someone if you don't pay attention.Ultimately, you do have to do your own research and that includes things like googling the outcome and you have to be aware of your own medical history and contraindicators and things like that. Yes, big words like that. You have to know how to do the research for yourself.And I'm not talking about just the basic medical history like oh my mama had great aunt and great uncle who had this particular thing wrong with them. I mean, yes, that information is important, true.But you have to know what impacts you in the here and now and not just how to fill out a medical record when you go to the doctor. I am convinced that they don't really take that into consideration. I think those records and files are there for liability issues. Yes.But based on my experiences, I don't really think it gets used as far as. Look, I'm a software developer.You guys know that if you've been listening to this podcast, and I'm an expert at searching databases, actually setting up databases so that they cross index other tables and, and find information. And I know that the information that I have entered into medical records when I go to the Dr.Is not indexed to a level that things are found about my medical history. So I'm pretty convinced that that's not necessarily a standard practice for doctor's offices. It should be. Oh, it definitely should be.We could save some lives if it was. But I know in my particular situation it was not. And I'm not picking on the particular doctor.I had two incidences and it will make things a little bit clearer.So you can apply when I share my information, which again, I don't like to share personal information, but it will make it a little clearer if you can apply it to your own situation and see what works.So while it's true that yes, this information should be able to be searchable automatically with all our AI and everything searchable automatically and red flagged in, in medical systems, I have not seen that happen. So you have to be responsible for your information.So I had two situations that could have been, and I'm not over exaggerating, could have been deadly. To me, it was the same Doctor and it's not his fault, of course, I'm not going to name names, it's not his fault.But it happened to be that he prescribed two different medicines and they did similar things. But these two medicines, although they worked for what he prescribed them for, they caused two different issues for me.Ultimately, I ended up using something that was completely natural and didn't cause any issue. But anyway, so the first one caused suicidal thinking.Now, for me personally, I have learned over time that if a medicine has a suicidal ideation risk, in other words, even if it's a small matter, if it has a 2% risk or 99% risk, if there is any risk whatsoever that a medicine has that potential that it will cause suicidal ideation, there's something that it will trigger in my brain. Now, I'm not suicidal.So all these little questionnaires, I go to a doctor, it doesn't matter what doctor it is or who they're affiliated with, whatever. You get these questions that say, have you had suicidal thinking in the past two weeks? Have you been depressed? Have you been.I mean, it's like it takes 15 minutes just to fill out that questionnaire. And I'm convinced that that's for liability. So that if you off yourself, God forbid that the legal liability aspect is covered.Now, I think it's really important if you are having any kind of psychological issue or if you need a counselor, definitely seek someone out. So I'm all for that. But there's two different things going on here.There's the psychological aspect where you need help, you need a counselor, you need a psychologist. That's the kind of thing that I went to school for for psychology and PhD for psychology. Again, different topic, not going there right now.If you need help, you definitely need to seek help for that. But what I'm talking about here is medicine that will trigger someone thinking about suicide when they're not suicidal.Now, someone could argue, well, you must be suicidal or it wouldn't trigger that. No, no, no, no. There's actually where medicine will trigger that. If someone doesn't believe that that exists, they haven't experienced it.It actually does trigger that even in people that are not suicidal at all. And I am not suicidal. But if I'm given medicine that can cause that suicidal thinking, it will cause me to have that thinking.It's the strangest thing. So when I have had that and all of a sudden it's like, where are these thoughts coming from? It's the oddest thing.I will pull up the bottle, I'll go Google it. And it's like, sure enough, it has that. So, you know, this is on my record.I have let doctors know, do not give me medicine that causes suicidal ideation. But the databases are not cross indexed. It should flag it. Do not give this woman anything that causes that.And when I've taken it, I have to keep reminding myself, it's the medicine that causes it. It's the medicine that causes it. It's the medicine that causes it.Even after I had this issue and I met with a doctor, I mentioned it, I said, this medicine causes suicidal ideation. And he was like, and by the way, he's an excellent doctor. Excellent doctor. And it did work for what he prescribed it for.But I mentioned it to him and he's like, oh, it does. I was like, well, you don't know this. And you're prescribing it to somebody who has issues with any medicine that causes suicidal ideation.You know, it's like right away it's off the list. I'm not taking it. I can't risk that.So if you are someone who is going through a period of your life where maybe depression is something you're struggling with, do not take a medicine that causes suicidal ideation. It could really wreak havoc on your life.And if all of a sudden you're having thoughts of suicide and you've never had that before, but you just started a medicine, Google that and see if that's the type of medicine that causes that. Because it might not be you, it might be the medicine.Now, as I've mentioned before, not only do I have type 1 diabetes, but I also have epilepsy, something I learned just in the last few years, because type 1 diabetes can also cause seizures. So I am not new to seizures, but I am new to that diagnosis. But the diagnosis, it doesn't really matter. You know, six of one, half dozen of another.My neurologist is exceptional.But when you're going to the doctor for something else and you're being prescribed another medicine for another ailment, it's not like your neurologist is sitting next to you. Now you could call up the other doctor and say, hey, I'm going to prescribe this. Is this safe?Sometimes it gets tricky because maybe one doctor is exceptional in one area, but maybe they don't know about medicines in another area. You're starting to play tag or Where's Waldo as far as who you're talking to.So yes, talk to your doctor rather than just listening to me in a podcast. But it does get a little tricky. So I took this other medicine and I'm really in tune with when I'm feeling seizure prone.And I've gone several years not feeling seizure prone. Yay, we're doing really well. And all of a sudden I'm feeling seizure prone. And it's like, what is going on? Am I stressing myself out?Am I not sleeping enough?You know, I'm going through this checklist in my mind because part of this podcast, DiabeticReal, is about listening to your body, what is going on, and really listening to what your body is trying to say. So I'm going through a checklist and trying to make sure that I'm listening to my body. And it dawns on me.The only thing that's different is I'm taking this new medicine. Well, long story short, I figured out that this medicine is crossing this. What is it called? This brain barrier.See, I'm not an expert, I'm not a medical doctor, but it's. I cross referenced with the doctor later, I said something. It's crossing this brain barrier. It's called the brain blood barrier.And I think that would be a whole other episode to explain that. But there are certain drugs that can cross the brain blood barrier, and I'm learning this by actually googling it. Even as I go through this episode.Most drugs cannot. And as soon as I saw that, I thought about it. It's like if I'm having seizures.And what I do know about seizures, as far as my experience of decades of having seizures, is that it's kind of like I know computers, as I said, software developer here, I know that when I'm having a seizure, it's kind of like when a computer freezes up, a computer is saying, hey, I'm having issues here. Can't describe it. Lock up and the computer automatically reboots.That's what it's like as far as when I'm having a seizure, my whole system locks up and it reboots itself. And the seizure itself is somewhat benign. But where the problem occurs is whatever I fall on or whatever as I'm unconscious.Well, I went to the doctor and I said, it seems to me that whatever this drug is, is causing something where my body, my brain, not my body, my brain seems like it's locking up, ready to crash. I haven't had a seizure, but it's the same feeling I get right before a seizure. Is there something to do with a blood brain barrier?He says, yeah, yeah, this drug actually crosses the blood brain barrier.I thought, whoa, whoa, okay, that would explain why I've been having this seizure prone feeling when I take this particular drug and it takes about a week after I take just one dose of this particular drug that he prescribed, it takes one week for it to get out of my system. I had been walking around again, like back when I was having one to two, sometimes three seizures a month, up to 120 seizures in that period of time.I was walking around on edge.Not on edge, like I said, but back during that time of having so many seizures because constantly I was feeling like I was about to go back into a seizure. Hey, I was enjoying the time not having a seizure over the past three years or so. I mean, that's nice.I gotta say, I'm prepared because I'm used to seizures. What can you say as having epilepsy? But it's nice not to have seizures. So I mentioned that.And I'm thinking to myself, again, I don't want to criticize the doctor. I realize he's overworked and he wasn't thinking about this.But I went into this situation, I did not hide the fact that I have epilepsy and I was given a drug that crosses the blood brain barrier. Maybe I'm thinking too simply here, but don't give that to someone who has seizures. At least talk to the patient about it.That there may be a potential, that there may be issues. Now, maybe he could have missed the first one. Maybe he didn't know that I was prone to issues as far as the suicidal ideation.But I thought in both of those cases it should have been flagged because I gave all the information in my health history. Well, anyway, I'm not here to lay blame anywhere. I'm just here to state that in my opinion. Again, not a doctor.Talk to your doctor, in my opinion, before you put anything in your mouth. As far as medicine, it wouldn't hurt for you to Google it. I say Google, but whatever it is, so do your own research and see what you're consuming.As far as medicine or taking.As far as medicine or medical procedure, whatever you are doing or allowing to be done to your body, double check it, even if you have to get a second opinion from another doctor to make sure that whatever is happening is copacetic with your body and that you will have a positive outcome that won't end up with a bunch of people mourning your passing. So just my opinion. And that's part of what's kept me here on earth.That and loving husband, people who care and paying attention to my body, which I hope for all of you that you listen to your body and that you stick around with all of us. And this is Deborah coming to you from DiabeticReal. And see you in the next episode of DiabeticReal.