Going to the doctor in this day and age is NOT about getting a gold star, a clean bill of health, or any other affirmation that you’re A-okay.
With all of the wonders of technology available to diagnose and treat, what do we need the doctor for?
To COMMUNICATE!!
COMMUNICATION is a two-way street! It involves a message between a SENDER and a RECEIVER! In a successful doctor-patient relationship, both doctor and patient take turns sending and receiving information.
When you leave your doctor’s office, do you have a clear idea on what transpired? If not, do you have access to your doctor outside of your appointment time, to help you fill in the gaps?
This blog (link below) is a sad story from a clinician’s eyes about a boy who lost TWO YEARS of visual development time because of a lack of communication between doctor and parent. It is always the patient’s choice to follow or not follow doctor recommendations, but it is the role of the parent to make sure that they are informed on the choices they are making on behalf of the child!
It takes TWO.
http://covdblog.wordpress.com/
Which of your doctors do you value most? Â Why?
Doctors that have few or no emergencies are the ones that “have a life”. Pediatricians if you like to work with kids, plmounary doctors, gastroenterologists, and many of the specialties allow you to pick what you would rather be “looking at” when you see your patientsSome specialties can be stressful, so think it through. For example, not everyone is cut out to be a pediatric oncologist.best of luck to you
Thank you for commenting, Jeferson. Are you suggesting that some doctors are better off choosing a specialty which reduces their need to communicate?
For Brendan, vision therapy was nothing short of a miracle. It was very hard work, but he went from lacking binocular convergence entirely to within normal ranges for convergence & tracking within 1 1/2 years. It was intense & often difficult work for him & required follow-up at home with exercises & balance-boards. Neither our insurance nor our school district would help pay for it, but the whole experience was really worth it in terms of enhancing Brendan’s life. He went from being unable to read at all in 1st grade (he couldn’t track left-to-right to follow a page of writing) to reading at a 7th grade level in 4th. Unfortunately, a regular opthamologic examination did not reveal the convergence problem- it was an OT who discovered the problem & referred us to a therapist. When friends enquired of their eye doctor about the value of therapy for their son (with similar visual issues to Brendan’s), they were told it had no value. The prevailing attitude that this sort of therapy is “out there” is a shame, since it’s discouraging those who might really be helped by it, plus putting it financially out of the reach of many, since it’s not considered in the main stream for insurance coverage. One thing I did not understand about vision until Brendan came along is that observing one’s environment is a learned behaviour, & because his visual difficulties weren’t discovered until he was 5 he did not learn to navigate by looking at things. This means that, although his vision is now “normal”, he still has to be reminded to look at things like faces (for recognition of other people), shoelaces, zippers, clocks… not being in the habit of picking up on visual cues gives him a lot of unnecessary frustration, & really speaks to the value of early intervention.
Thank you for your valuable comments. I was touched to read how *your* outlook on life was shifted by your experience with Brendan’s vision therapy program. It is remarkable to recognize that vision is learned, and that we each see our own world as WE are, rather than as “it is.”