Thanks for sharing that experience, it means a lot.
Sometimes it feels like the health system is just about keeping you alive, and they don't dig enough in different posible root causes, they focus on treating the symptoms, specially with elderly.
> That would not have been hard
I understand the feeling, and it inspires me to look for a second opinion and someone more involved in finding a root cause. I'm sure in your case you did what you though it was best with the information you had, the reality is that the system does not invest in prevention and education of us patients and relatives. Knowing certain demographic is high risk should be somehow automated to raise flags when certain symptoms are mention even if they are in-passing mentioned as you said, because we as regular people are not educated to weight the importance of symptoms, and often doctors get defensive if you come with a theory.
The other day I was at the doctor, he was asking me many things, trying to figure out my stomach problems, I though I had a stomach flu, then really at the and by chance I mentioned I was at the dentist the week before and they gave me antibiotics for 7 days, it was only then with that small comment that I almost forget to say that the doctor could have the explanation, he said some antibiotics wipe out the gut microbiota, and it just gave me some probiotics and I was fine the day after, with a big improvement. I don't know how much time would have take me to recover if I would have forgotten about that detail.
When I think about it after the fact, duh! of course antibiotics kill gut bacteria, I heard that a million times in podcasts, but I did not make the connection.
My point is that we have enough in our plates and our profession is already quite complex, we deal with tons of complexities and it shouldn't be our job to know the right questions, or the right doctor to go for, but I wish there was a system that focused more on preventions, and finding the root cause with a more multidisciplinary approach rather that specialized niche knowledge doctors that ignore other causes, or symptoms if they are not present if their knowledge map.
Sometimes it feels like the health system is just about keeping you alive, and they don't dig enough in different posible root causes, they focus on treating the symptoms, specially with elderly.
> That would not have been hard
I understand the feeling, and it inspires me to look for a second opinion and someone more involved in finding a root cause. I'm sure in your case you did what you though it was best with the information you had, the reality is that the system does not invest in prevention and education of us patients and relatives. Knowing certain demographic is high risk should be somehow automated to raise flags when certain symptoms are mention even if they are in-passing mentioned as you said, because we as regular people are not educated to weight the importance of symptoms, and often doctors get defensive if you come with a theory.
The other day I was at the doctor, he was asking me many things, trying to figure out my stomach problems, I though I had a stomach flu, then really at the and by chance I mentioned I was at the dentist the week before and they gave me antibiotics for 7 days, it was only then with that small comment that I almost forget to say that the doctor could have the explanation, he said some antibiotics wipe out the gut microbiota, and it just gave me some probiotics and I was fine the day after, with a big improvement. I don't know how much time would have take me to recover if I would have forgotten about that detail.
When I think about it after the fact, duh! of course antibiotics kill gut bacteria, I heard that a million times in podcasts, but I did not make the connection.
My point is that we have enough in our plates and our profession is already quite complex, we deal with tons of complexities and it shouldn't be our job to know the right questions, or the right doctor to go for, but I wish there was a system that focused more on preventions, and finding the root cause with a more multidisciplinary approach rather that specialized niche knowledge doctors that ignore other causes, or symptoms if they are not present if their knowledge map.