April 7, 2004

• Do-It-Yourself Medical Care
  
  
  When I was a kid, I planned to go to college and enter the medical
  field.  As told in my memoirs posted here, I did briefly enter
  nurse’s training.  Then I got too sick to continue, besides
  finding out that I lacked the “professional detachment” my supervisors
  thought I should have.  What it was, I just did not care to shut
  down my empathy or turn my back on others’ pain.  Anyhow, the
  combination of chronic illness, lack of money and/or insurance, and an
  interest in the healing arts has brought me to where I’m not only
  comfortable but reasonably competent at caring for myself.

  When I get a virus, I stay away from the local clinic.  Why would
  I want to go spread the virus there?  They have enough illness as
  it is.  I do go to that clinic about once a year to get my asthma
  prescriptions renewed.  I don’t have “asthma” in the classic
  sense, what I have is dyspnea associated with the ME/CFIDS sensorimotor
  deficits.  I get short of breath and the asthma meds help.  I
  don’t take everything they wanted to give me when I went in for meds
  after a particularly rough exacerbation.  I refused the inhaled
  steroids, because steroids have some nasty side effects and I had a
  brief psychotic period once when I was given high-dose steroids for a
  contact dermatitis (poison oak, I think).

  Last time I went in for my checkup and scrips, the PA (physician’s
  assistant, the closest thing to a doctor in this remote area) who saw
  me noticed that I had some sniffles.  She said there was a virus
  going around and asked me if I’d like her to write a scrip for some
  antibiotics.  I asked her if she knew that antibiotics don’t kill
  viruses.  It turned out that she did know, and she didn’t have any
  good explanation for why she wanted to give them to me.  She said
  something about some people liking to take antibiotics when they get a
  cold.  That’s nuts, I think.  Antibiotics have bad side
  effects too.  I’d rather keep my healthy intestinal flora, thank
  you very much.

  I don’t do medical care for anyone outside my family, but I do openly
  criticize the medical monopoly and advocate good nutrition and
  self-care.  I recommend books whenever I think one will provide
  information that will be helpful to someone I know.  Innumerable
  times I have seen people sicken and even die because they were
  ignorantly trusting of some incompetent professional.  Not all
  professionals are incompetent, of course, but they’re not all
  competent, either.  In many cases even if the doctor is competent
  he or she can’t do the necessary care that a patient needs because that
  care needs to be done 24/7, not in just a 15 minute office visit. 
  Many people who go to doctors place too much faith in the meds and
  don’t give enough attention to their part of the care and healing.

  This has been on my mind in connection with the third-degree burn I got
  on my thumb this winter.  I found it quite interesting, not ever
  having had one that severe before.  It is true, as it says in my
  books, that there is no pain in the 3rd-degree-burned area. 
  That’s because the nerves are destroyed.  Tissue is destroyed,
  also, and if it is an extensive area or if the dead tissue starts to
  rot, then the burn has to be debrided, cleaned of dead tissue. 
  When I worked in a hospital, I did some of that wound cleaning. 
  It caused pain to the patients.  I learned as a child that it was
  less painful, for example, to pull my own splinters out than to have my
  mother do it.  For that reason, I prefer to do my own wound
  cleaning and minor surgery.  It hurts less and I know I’m doing a
  good, thorough job.  If I needed surgery in some place I couldn’t
  reach, that would be a good enough reason to get help, I guess.

  To get back to the thumb, when I burned it a couple of people, one here
  at home and another on Xanga, said I should go in and “have it looked
  at.”  I laughed at that.  What good would it do me to let
  someone look at my burned thumb?  I know it’s burned.  I know
  what to do to care for it.  And I’m here 24/7 to provide that
  care.  Nobody else in the entire world could do it with more
  attention, nor any more lovingly and gently, than I can.

  I have a theory that people who place too much trust in professional
  caregivers are more likely than I and my sort of do-it-yourselfers are
  to neglect important things such as changing dressings and keeping
  wounds clean.  Since I’m the one responsible, fully responsible,
  for my care, I pay attention as no one else can.  It would be
  absurd to have a nurse, doctor or EMT follow anyone around to provide
  such basic services.  It is equally absurd to let such basic vital
  care go undone.

  After the crispy crust over my burn cracked, I was scrupulously careful
  to keep that open wound uncontaminated.  Disposable latex gloves
  helped a lot.  As the new skin underneath grew back, I trimmed the
  dead stuff from around the edges of the burn.  “Trimmed” is a nice
  word, neutral word, for it.  I nibbled away at it with my
  teeth.  I did try using scissors, but the teeth were more accurate
  and less painful.

  As I look at my two thumbs now, side by side (and that is what
  motivated this blog:  my sitting here comparing my burned thumb to
  the other one)  The one I burned actually looks better than the
  “old” one.  It’s all new and pink.  I got rid of a layer of
  old skin and some ingrained dirt.  The only way to tell that there
  was a severe injury there it that something is obviously gone
  missing.  Skin grew back over the burn, but the tissue underneath
  is gone, leaving a dimple, a concavity on the grasping surface of that
  thumb.  I have a similar but larger concavity on the opposite arm,
  the remaining trace of an abcess formed thirty-some years ago when I
  missed a vein with a shot of meth, but that’s another story.

  A Barefoot Doctor’s Manual
  Where There Is No Doctor
  Prescription for Nutritional Healing
  Your Body Knows Best
  The Best Treatment

  • 3:18 am
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