Where is one to find help for medical needs?
- col-lee-elliot-aging-graciously
- January 21, 2025
- 528
Will the real endocrinologist please stand up. Wherever you are, you aren’t standing up here. Patients need you and your expertise desperately, but where are you?
The following information is available on the internet: Type one diabetes is an autoimmune disease that destroys the beta cells in the pancreas, thus destroying the insulin that regulates blood sugar levels. Its cause has not been determined. The patient is insulin dependent and must replace what is missing.
Type two diabetes, on the other hand, occurs mostly in overweight, inactive people and can usually be controlled with diet and exercise. Both high and low blood sugars, as well as both diseases, are serious and need to be carefully attended.
The problem is no one in the area chooses to attend. Statistically, there are approximately 38.4 million diabetics in the United States. Two million of these are type one. It is the eighth leading cause of death.
A middle-aged man is a “brittle” diabetic — a type one whose highs and lows are very difficult to control. He has been trying to see an endocrinologist for months. The only available one is about 30 miles away and will see him in March and not a minute sooner. He started asking in November. Consequently, he has experienced a number of serious injuries as a result of falls caused by low blood sugar. Any doctor consulted basically has said, “I don’t do diabetes.”
In a hospital with a serious injury, he finds no one seems to know anything about the complicated necessity of insulin and its interaction with food and exercise. I can say this strongly: Diabetes is not caused just by eating too much sugar, and those unfortunate enough to live with this merciless condition deserve to be treated by knowledgeable, trained doctors.
My point is where is one to find help? If my doctor cannot see me for two weeks on the day I am extremely ill, how can I plan my illness better? Shall I try to bring on that sore throat and cough a couple of weeks earlier so the doctor can work me in?
In “the good old days,” doctors, if they were not well-informed about an illness, read, studied, learned and treated to the best of their abilities. If I can read and understand information on the internet, why can’t the doctors who “don’t do diabetes” or any other disease go to classes and learn about it? What is the underlying reason doctors no longer “do?” Why are the elderly, who no longer feel comfortable driving a long distance and unused to traffic, not able to see a doctor in their own area who can actually help them when they need the help?
By the way, just in case you have forgotten, “the little pill with the big story to tell” still makes me sick to my stomach.
Speaking of my stomach, one more complaint: Did you know a local grocery store can change the price of chicken thighs from $3.99-$13.99 in a week? All they had to do was change the name from chicken thighs to family pack chicken thighs — same number, same kind, new price. I suppose it’s because of the cold weather.
Stay tuned for a positive column next time.