Types of patients who wreck their own treatment.

After seeing so many patients over the last couple of years, I have come to a conclusion that some type of patients come with their fate sealed in their own hands. Unknowingly they deny sound advise and believe hearsay and unverified news, often falling into trouble.

The sad part is that their pride does not let them accept their mistake, and to make up for the wrong decision they wander pillar to post in search of a yes man who feeds their ego, and makes money off it, leaving the patient content, happy, but also sick as hell.

So here is the type of patients who wreck their own treatment. Don’t be like them.

• The Google disciple.

Yes, Gooogle is fantastic. But Dr.Google? not so much. Google is great for general advice like the weather, world history, news and business. But, just like each food recipe has to be modified for individual taste and liking, the medical consultation also needs to be specific to the person it is meant for. But since Google is free to use, and doctor charges a fee, patients often try to pit the two against each other in the hope of proving their free search was better than this paid nerd called the doctor.

I have a detailed video about it. Find it here.

• The sceptics.

It is hard to trust anyone these days. It is even harder to pay that guy who gives you bad news about yourself. So patients, who must have been saving their hard earned money for the vacation of a lifetime, suddenly have to shell it out for unwanted bad news and undergo uncomfortable treatment.

Such is life, but do we have the maturity to accept it? No.

So how do patients behave? they think that their doctor is scheming them. Hence they don’t consent to permanent long-term solutions but opt for quicker, cheaper, temporary fixes. A cunning doctor becomes a yes man for the patient and patient goes home happy for the time being but sick in the long run.

• The ‘best doctor’ hunters.

Some patients are wealthy and smart. So, they try to look for ‘ The biggest doctor of the big toe’, for example, and lose precious time and money arranging a meeting with him, instead of going to the readily available option who could have actually made a difference at the right time.

• The pessimists.

It may sound unscientific. But I have seen that patients with positive attitude heal much faster and show better recovery than pessimists. Some diseases are disheartening and disabling, I agree and have the utmost empathy for the same. But patients who overcome that do really good, compared to the pessimistic ones for whom even common cold is the end of the world.

• The anti-medicine.

I don’t know how it happened. But many patients believe that delaying the taking of allopathic medicines as much as possible is going to help them in some, mysterious way. The various explanations that I have been told are: ‘ medicines make you weak’, ‘ they can be non-vegetarian‘, ‘ they have harmful side-effects’, ‘ ayurvedic is better than allopathic’, ‘ they increase body heat’, ‘ we should try our body’s own resistance till the last stage, before taking medicines’.

These reasons are not just absurd but also reflect the general awareness of people about health and medicines. In this time of easy access to knowledge, I guess one should, on and off, keep themselves aware of their own bodies via Google, YouTube, Newspaper, etc.

Good luck with that is all I say.

Hope this article points one in the direction of seeking right advise.

I also have some insider tips on how to find a great doctor.

Have a great day.

Video of the day :