Public Forum
Default group for all members. Biological family sometimes get you down? Come join your logical family!
Organizers:
- Organized by
-
-
When Medicine Creates the Illness
-
When Medicine Creates the Illness
Last year my lovely 89-year-old stepmother had some swelling in her feet and felt a bit tired. Family convinced her to see a doctor. What followed was something many people will recognize.
She was admitted to hospital.
Test after test was run.
Soon she was diagnosed with systemic heart failure and sent home on a long list of medications.
Doctors told her she would not improve.
So she made life-changing decisions. She sold her home and moved in with a family member because she believed the end of her independence had arrived.
But something wasn’t right.
She became a shadow of herself. She slept constantly, lost her appetite, complained that everything tasted strange, and said life felt incredibly hard.
After a few months, the family member caring for her asked a simple question:
Could it be the medication?
A new doctor and cardiologist reviewed everything and repeated the cardiac tests.
The result?
There was nothing wrong with her heart.
All the medications were stopped.
Within weeks she was back to herself—playing cards, enjoying her favorite foods, walking again, and laughing.
Reading Brownstone Institute article The Quiet Crisis of Procedural Medicine by Joseph Varon, this story immediately came to mind. The article discusses how modern medicine can create “procedural cascades”—tests, diagnoses, and treatments that snowball until the patient is trapped in a system that never pauses to ask whether the original assumption was even correct.
In my stepmother’s case, the treatment itself almost became the illness.
Have you or a family member ever experienced something similar—where a diagnosis, treatment, or medication cascade actually made things worse rather than better?
Link to the article in the comments.
-
11 Replies
-
Sounds like the story in Laura Delano’s book, _Unshrunk_.
-
The title should have been, “Lessons on the Importance of Second Opinions”.
-
@shortstop That’s a fair point, but there was just so much trust in the family doctor. Hard to break life-long trust habits, but when you’re right, you’re right. We should always question.
-
Your personal physician with whom you form a bond over time is seldom involved in those decisions (but perhaps they should be). Anyway, those second and even third opinions where life and limb are concerned should be standard practice…moreso after our CV19 experiences.
-
-
-
Many years ago my mother’s mother appeared to be suffering from dementia and going downhill quickly. My mother moved her into our home (in another state) in order to take care of her. Upon setting an appointment with our GP to get my grandmother under his care, my mom took the list of current medications she was taking. Our GP was quite taken by the list, and eliminated several medications while reducing prescribed doses in others. Within a couple of weeks, we had our grandmother back! It was a dramatic demonstration of how medications CAN be the problem, and should always be administered sparingly and with more than one opinion. She lived another 15 years and while losing some of her mental faculties just before her death in her late 80s, she never had the dementia problems again that we caused by the earlier medications.
-
@db4him what a pertinent and lovely story. Thank you. We live with my Dad (89) here in Spain, and he keeps saying, “don’t get old!”, but he’s out and about, slowing down now a bit, but going for his daily walk and playing bridge, driving himself around, and he’s on no meds at all. A bunch of self learned vitamin type suppliments, but other than that he’s good.
-
-
My brother takes every shot is80 now. Started having hand tremors. All tests negative for Parkinson’s and other neurological disorders. His doc prescribed beta blockers, then he started getting mentally slower(I checked his bp and it was 70/50)
So then instead of stopping meds he got Aricept and statins😵💫. They are killing with meds. I am attempting to go to neuro with him. He is a bit resistant due to my strong opinions
-
@gmakos It so tough when you know info that’ll help, and want to help, and your help is rebuffed. I find the window sometimes opens a little and if you can pop a seed through gently, maybe?, maybe the window will open a little more. Good luck.
-
💙
-
-
At 80, statins, etc. aren’t going to make much difference to your brother’s lifespan. He has already beaten the odds. Enjoy the time he has left and leave him to do the same.
-
Log in to reply.