Getting Better

Has it ever happened to you that you had some sort of mild allergy, had some blood tests done, and then the doctor couldn’t tell you exactly what the problem was or how to stop it? Or did you have an erruption of purulent pimples on your body and different doctors started throwing diagnoses at you?

Well, for the reasons above, I started listening to this podcast. And, to be honest, I expected some 'Dr House'-ish mysterious thing. As it turns out, though, even if the issue of diagnosing is not simple, there are aspects we can change about it to make it more accurate and helpful.

The story begins with a woman who got sick on a trip to Kenya. Her symptoms included a high fever, and her overall health declined in the years to come. She also experienced excruciating pain when doing simple activities such as walking.

This podcast outlines that, first off, doctors need to look at patients and pain differently. Pain is now seen as a symptom of a disease but, as the podcast explains, it can sometimes become the disease itself.

The second part of the story is focused on how people get misdiagnosed based on race. For many years now, race has been taken into consideration when diagnosing – and this led to black people not being treated properly.

Finally, the third part of the story is about how we may get misdiagnosed depending on gender, but this time because doctors don’t take it into account. As it turns out, men and women do suffer in different manners.