Monday, April 5, 2010

Cynicism and Medicine

Okay, I've just accepted the fact that I'm going to have to wait at least six months to see if the new tumor is growing or if there are more. I'm not a patient person so I'm finding this incredibly frustrating. Waiting for an elevator makes me crazy so you can imagine someone like me being told I have to wait six months to a year for another freaking scan. Agh............ But really I can do this. I will find my Zen and calmly accept this waiting period. Can't I?
The radiation has done a number on my spine so I started physical therapy today. This is another one of the medical sciences that I have always thought of as kind of bogus. This idea is regularly enforced by the engineers and doctors I work with that do medical research and development. One of the doctors explained to me that medicine is a "practice". They practice on their patients until they find something that works and even then it doesn't work all the time. Meaning that half the time they are making it up as they go along. This doesn't make me feel very secure even though I carefully picked my doctors for their specific expertise. Someone please talk me down from my cynicism and impatience.