We can decide for ourselves.
Pharmacists often talk to their customers. One refrain that seems woven throughout every conversation about prescriptions is both a question and a complaint. Customers ask, “Why do I have to take these medicines for the rest of my life when I feel so bad using them?” They can complain about being “in a fog” or that their joints and muscles hurt, or that they can’t sleep. When asking their doctor for changes or help, the common reaction is to try a different brand of the same basic medicine.
In good faith, most patients make the annual pilgrimage to the doctor where they are measured, poked, prodded, and tested. Samples of their bodily fluids are sent off to a laboratory and their numbers are recorded. Although the initial conversation with the doctor might begin, “Well, how are we feeling”, the focus quickly shifts to comparing the patient’s numbers with everyone else, and all discussions about how we’re feeling vanish. It seems the trek to the annual exam is designed to discover test results that define the visitor as a disease-ridden patient. Where all had seemed well, passing into the realm of modern medicine proved otherwise. We find out the cholesterol numbers are higher than the doctor would like, or the scan indicates one or another pre-conditions (pre-diabetes, osteopenia, and so on). No, the visitor doesn’t have anything, but might, some day, down the line, and was feeling fine until the testing began. Various tactics are engaged to convince the visitor to see the doctor and that it’s vital to follow orders, take the medicine, and report back in a few months for a follow-up.
Our modern medicine system seems driven by test results, instead of an insistence on being well, in which how a patient feels is at the core of the practice. Lab tests do little more than compare a moment in our lives to the compiled results of tens of millions of other patients. When our personal results fail to fall into some model of normal, we find that the only recourse is to take a prescribed a drug that is supposed to drive the numbers closer to an approved range of values.
Shortly after the prescriptions are handed out, a pharmacist enters the picture to fill the orders, prepare insurance claims, and collect co-pays, the fees that always seem to go up rather than down. The costs seem to make the situation worse: “I felt fine, now I have to pay for the opportunity to feel poorly, because my test results weren’t in the normal range.
Remember one detail: Nobody is under an obligation to follow the orders from their doctor. Sure, it’s usually best to believe the doctor has your best interest at heart when ordering. It is vital to understand that there could be something else in play. Some prescribers might be following a standard protocol where everyone with certain test results has prescribed a drug, regardless of how the patient feels.
Prescriptions are strong recommendations, but they cannot be the final word in a world where each person, except minors and prisoners, has a choice in health care. There’s no requirement that a person always must be in agreement with the prescriber, especially when the effects of treatment are worse than the so-called problem the prescription is treating. It is not about temporary unpleasant side effects such as stitches and post-op pain come to mind, but there’s no rationale in causing a person to suffer every day, year-after-year.
It’s difficult to make decisions, but doing so is a right and a duty.