This story is about a patient that I saw a few years ago, but it could apply to you or someone you know. It is about how we feel if our condition has a name.
The young lady came to see me about her neck and lower back. She also told me that she had a long history of chronic headaches.
“I have had headaches forever. I went to see my doctor and he prescribed different kinds of medications. They all helped a little, but the pills made me dizzy or made me sleepy and I couldn’t function at school or work. I have been so frustrated. I finally went to the hospital last year and they did a lot of tests on me. I had a CT scan, several tubes of blood were drawn, they did an EEG of my head, and I saw about four doctors. I’m glad I did, though, because now I finally know what’s wrong.”
I asked what she meant. “Well, I finally have a diagnosis. They said I had cephalgia (sef-al-ja). They gave me a different medicine and I feel better most of the time. I still have headaches, but not as often.”
As she related the story her face was nearly beaming as she told me how relieved she was to finally have an official diagnosis.
Those of you in the medical field already know what I am going to explain in a minute. I’ll let everyone else in on the story momentarily.
First, though, I have a question for you. Have you ever had a condition that was frustrating because although you tried to explain it to your doctor, you were left with only a vague idea of what exactly was wrong? Sometimes people don’t care about what their condition is called or what caused it; they just want to feel better. In other circumstances, it is really important to a patient to have a clear understanding of what went wrong with their body to cause their distress.
Unfortunately, even though billions of hours of human time and trillions of dollars have been poured into medical research over the past centuries, there are many human ailments that are not easy to explain or clearly define. The human body is simply too complex to unravel all of the mysteries that are involved with the multitude of malfunctions.
Although it might be preferred if you could go to see your doctor at any point in your life and be connected to a diagnostic computer like your car, that is not going to happen any time soon. You and I are simply too complex and there are too many factors to consider to arrive at such a simple solution to illness.
Back to the patient’s story. Although she was happy to finally have a diagnosis, in fact, she was no closer to a defined cause of her distress than she had been prior to all of the testing. Medical diagnoses are most commonly Latin words that describe the condition in a fairly straightforward way. In her case, the diagnosis of cephalgia is simply the Latin word for “pain in the head.” After all that effort and expense on her part, she was diagnosed with headache – the same thing she already knew.
That doesn’t mean that the testing was not important. It was essential that serious problems be considered and ruled out. It is also good that the patient felt that a thorough evaluation had been done. She had greater peace of mind knowing that her condition had a name, even if it was just the Latin word for what you and I call headache. Thankfully as we worked to improve her spinal problems, her headaches gradually disappeared.
Would you feel better if you knew that your condition had a name? Most people do. Sometimes, that is reason enough to be evaluated by a doctor. This may be a good time to stop worrying about a condition that won’t go away and make an appointment for a professional evaluation.
Next week, a prediction about a disaster that is headed this way.
Dr. Mark Kestner
mkestner@DrKestner.com
|
Email
Print
Digg
Facebook
MySpace
StumbleUpon
Google
Yahoo!