banter and General Discussion, page-11068

Interewsting story @dyode triggering a few thoughts and memories.

A family friend who lived over the road from my grandparents was sent to Larundel. She'd been raped as an 11 year old child and her parents who were overseas on a posting simply didn't believe her. So they sent her to Larundel where she was misdiagnosed as schizophrenic, and given Electric Convulsive Treatment (shock treatment) at those days it was high voltage. She was there for years.

My grandparents supported her, dismissed her parents as hopelessly myopic, told her she was highly intelligent and that's pretty much how she started a path to a degree and a career. She eventually inherited significant money from her parents and and lives in one of the best suburbs of Melbourne. An individual in this situation never really 'gets over' such things but it's possible to survive them. Living well is the best form of revenge.

My grandfather encouraged women not only to think logically but to trust in our independent capacity to do so, and to question authority.

Those in authority, can sometimes lie, sabotage, gaslight and do unreasonable things because they cannot admit to having limitations. Groupthink mentalities can happen in the medical profession, particularly in clinical practice no question about it. I've asked for an independent second opinion only to find the medicos talk to eachother rather than to me, they fail to look at the matter with fresh eyes.

This is precisely the point of seeking a second opinion. It's not asking for a consensus based on what defensive statements and actions have gone before.

They can fail to do basic procedures like close examination because they've jumped to conclusions, and then defend it, in some cases by exaggerating or even lying. This can be maddening but it's important to recognise they are often overworked. The problem is when you only have a hammer everything looks like a nail. And people have frailties as well as egos.

Medical research should be different, of course. We as MSBers are part of a gradual revolution in treatment at the clinical level but it's a long way coming.

My grandfather was a terrific lateral thinker ex British Intelligence and never learned to drive. He had official drivers. My grandmother didn't drive either ex French resistance.
They were complicated people, trauma will do that. Ahh families! Magnificent in their own peculiar ways.

I've said this before, but even arguably the brightest brain of the C20th century, Einstein absolutely refused to believe that black holes were the logical extension of his most famous theories of space/time/relativity. The theorem he produced were greater than his mind, which had demonstrable limitations as he failed to accept the further reasoning involved. There was a bloke hammering away in the trenches of Northern France in WW1 who drew the inferences while on breaks from fighting and presented them to Einstein.... and he was 'nup'! Also quantumn theory was dismissed as improbable. Incredible, but it illustrates the point I feel.

So when medicos disappoint me, they're just being human after all. The point is to not let them make you a victim because that can happen to anyone too. Just stay logical and think laterally.