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Sister lives in another province and is three years older than me. We communicate by Skype messaging.
Sister: i am still bleeding and the dr. wants another ultrasound
Me: bleeding - no fun.
Sister: but my psychic still says it is nothing
Me: Your inner psychic or someone else? (I thought maybe she meant the word "psyche")
Sister: the dr. said maybe i should consider a hysterectomy but I am not at that place
Sister: a friend
Me: ah
Me: Who do you trust, your doctor or your psychic?
Me: tough call. (written ironically)
Sister: my psychic
Sister: and my acupuncturist
The psychic listens to her. The doctor does not. The psychic makes her feel heard. The doctor does not. People fail to understand that the principle allure of alternative medicine is they get actual face time with a single person who takes notes and writes down what they feel and goes back to study it. You will have an objectively better visit with a tarot card reader than a clinic doctor on facetime alone. Try it: go to the Minute Clinic for an infection. You will wait two hours, a doctor will see you for two minutes, will give you a prescription for antibiotics that will be filled half an hour later and two weeks later you'll get a bill from your insurance company that says "this is not a bill." Then another week later you'll get a bill from the Minute Clinic that is a bill. Then you'll call your insurance company to fight about the fact that they're only paying $60 of a $180 visit for $2 worth of sulfa drugs. Meanwhile your infection is gone but you've been made to feel like the problem by two receptionists, a nurse, a doctor, a pharmacist and two faceless bureaucracies. Now go to the tarot reader. The lobby is nice. You pay cash up front. And for half an hour you have the undivided attention of a professional. If the infection goes away on its own, YOU WIN. Besides, you've gotten all this wonderful cold reading stuff to think over. You're learning more about yourself. You are invested in your own health care. You are the captain of your ship and you have a trusty guide to pilot you over unquiet waters. Your best move is to encourage your sister to find someone with actual medical knowledge that will make her feel heard. It's worth the money. People will do whatever an expert tells them to do if they trust that expert's expertise. She's related to you - she can't be stupid. She's just emphasized her own autonomy over the medical knowledge of busy professionals.
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Hi kb, sorry for the slow response. I appreciate your comparison between the medical vs. the psychic experience and there is likely some truth to it regarding my sister. I just want to mention that money is not part of the equation in Canada. The psychic is "a friend" and we never see a bill in Canada for doctor visits or hospital trips. She does pay for acupuncture and Chinese medicine and quite a bit. I posted that conversation because: my sister. I will encourage her in the direction you suggest.
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You're right. For a while, they were completely illegal, but now have some function. But, it's complicated and the private clinics don't have the same hospital privileges as doctors under the national system. My ex belonged to a private clinic when he found out his regular GP was moonlighting there.a fair amount of money
coffeesp00ns · 631 days ago · link ·
I have a very close friend who is like this. She's currently having a few health issues and her reliance on her Naturopath instead of a doctor really makes me afraid for her. I think that a lot of people have a single negative experience with a doctor, and decide to go to some sort of alt-medicine route and they are greeted by someone with a smiling face and made welcome - it hooks them, even if it may not be good for them. Not that all alt-medicine folks are bad news. I knew a guy who was a "chiropractor", but really was functionally a physiotherapist who also did low level chiropractic stuff. As opposed to a lot of Chiros who adjust you then let you go (knowing you'll come back because he just fixed the symptom not the issue), He'd give someone an adjustment and say "OK now, let's talk about what you can do in your daily life so that you don't look like a paper clip anymore, and here are some physio exercises to do to help keep you on track." alt-medicine stuff has its place, but it is not a replacement for a doctor.
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My wife got a degree in midwifery and naturopathic medicine because she gets to spend 90 minutes with patients. I knew a psychiatrist who saw fifteen patients an hour. For eight hours a day. There's a great line in the movie Kandahar where the schlub American who ends up being the "doctor" for a Taliban-controlled village points out that the medical knowledge of the average college-educated Western citizen is greater than the average healer in Waziristan. Thing is, most people in the developed world can figure out what's wrong with them when it's the level of "oh shit I need to go to the doctor" stuff we deal with. When they can't, ANY medical practitioner is gonna have a tough time figuring it out in fifteen minutes. And fifteen minutes is what you get. Into this gulf does alternative medicine jump. Yes - not always bad. Often good. My wife is on the couch next to me right now rustling up bili lights for a baby that delivered early. She's run like 8 labs today alone. I watched her write a scrip for antibiotics before lunch. But up here she's plugged into the system, and she got into it because she wanted to help people not write ICD9 codes. Down in Cali she couldn't have done 2/3rds of those things and Cali is hella more integrated than most of the US. Western medicine is crisis-oriented. If you have a gunshot wound there's nowhere you'd rather be than the US. But if you've got something lifestyle-oriented the US doesn't really know what to do with you other than prescribe drugs. Figuring out anything else takes time, and time can't be billed to insurance. In an ideal world, the alt-medicine folx are doctors. But that upsets a lot of people.
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coffeesp00ns · 630 days ago · link ·
I 100% agree, and agree with you that it's a problem. I also think that a lot of what you have described your wife does isn't "alt medicine". It's just medicine. Midwifery isn't alt-medicine, it's just medicine. Bili Lights (while being something I had to look up before I could say anything about) also are just medicine. It works. Giving someone Oregano Oil to treat their depression is not medicine. Spending 90 minutes with them talking to them Is medicine, finding out how you can improve their lifestyle IS medicine. Time Line Therapy (tm) is not medicine. What we need are more Nurse Practitioners and GPs. The problem is that these are lower paid positions and if you just spent however many years in med school you probably don't want to be a GP. In Northern Ontario, the local medical school has a deal - We pay for you to go to school, you stay in Northern Ontario for X years (I forget. 5 maybe?). There is such a doctor shortage in the north that they needed to do it. Nurse practitioners are great - they can prescribe meds, they can do just about everything a GP can with a few restrictions. there are some procedures they can't do, for example. The best part about them, however, is that you don't need a doctorate - the NP program functions like a Masters degree plus Clinical. This means less training time and fewer barriers to getting people into health care fields. In my ideal scenario, someone like your wife would be qualified to be an NP or GP, with a practice focus on childbirth.Western medicine is crisis-oriented.
user-inactivated · 631 days ago · link ·
I think also, there is a fear forming of modern medicine due to all the recalls people see on TV, the scary list of potential side effects, the seemingly predatory nature of pharmaceutical companies, the bullshit that is our insurance system, etc. Alternative medicine could seem so appealing because it doesn't have any of that social stigma around it (just a different stigma). Additionally, it might also seem less potent which in the minds of people might equate to less risky.
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Existentialist · 631 days ago · link ·
When it comes to psychics (or are you talking about acupuncture?), it isn't so much a placebo effect as it is the psychic making very broad, generalized statements that could be applied to near anyone or any situation.It's complicated, because of the placebo effect.
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Existentialist · 631 days ago · link ·
A friend? Wow. I feel that makes it worse. I can understand lying to strangers for the sake of your job, but I could never do something like that to a friend... Have you met this psychic friend? Do they seem delusional? Do you think they believe they are psychic?
Existentialist · 631 days ago · link ·
Makes me think of this: Japan fortune teller 'ordered to pay' client forced into prostitution bioemerl, also relevant to what you we're saying.