The Douchebags

I'm renaming the incredibly lame show "The Doctors" to "The Douchebags." Who's producing this giant turd? It's some of the worst television I've ever seen.

It's not good bad TV like The Hills, it's just terrible, useless and maybe even harmful. (Some would argue the same about The Hills - totally fair.)

I tuned in today because they advertised "the four Fs women fear": Turning Fifty, Fatigue, Forgetfulness and Fat. I was interested in what they might have to say about fatigue.

First - lots of Fs today - the plastic surgeon douchebag (PSD) can't keep his smelly botoxed mouth shut for any length of time, even if they're talking about vaginal discharge. Even the ER douchebag and pediatrician douchebag know when to shut up for five minutes.

So, they're talking about turning 50 and the things we should do to age healthily, such as weight-bearing exercise for bone health. The PSD butts in to start explaining how as we age, our bones which were solid become like a honeycomb.

No one interrupted to correct him. Three other douchebag "doctors" sat there and said nothing. Then the gyno douchebag (GD) went on and on about how great it is to go through menopause and not have periods while we pop pharmaceuticals to rebuild bone.

Everything I've read about bone-building Rx's tells me they're not as great as they'd like you to believe - they might actually be harmful. They tell the body to build new bone, but the old bone that must be reabsorbed/removed is not. This makes the bone, which is naturally somewhat flexible, lose some of that flexibility and is more prone to breaking. Hello?! But the GD thinks it's fine to recommend we start popping prescriptions as soon as we turn 50. Excellent work.

There was absolutely no mention of working closely with a *qualified* doctor to manage hormone and/or bone health, no mention of nutrition or any supplements that could be beneficial. Just "go for a walk when you can and take bone-building Rx's." Fugging quacks - all of them.

When they got to Fatigue, they profiled a woman in her 40s who's been complaining of extreme fatigue for years. They followed her to an endocrinologist's office where the doctor explained all the tests she would run to try to figure out what was going on, but that all her symptoms may not have anything to do with thyroid.

???

That is so ridiculous I don't even know how to describe how ridiculous that is, especially when moments later the very same doctor said her test results came back as HYPOTHYROID and that SHE'S BEEN HYPOTHYROID FOR YEARS. What the brackafracka?

So, they show her in the doctor's office with the doc telling her all her symptoms may have nothing to do with thyroid, then later it's the PRIMARY CAUSE? Douchebags! What is the fricking point of that?

The *one* thing the endo douchebag (ED) mentioned that I found interesting was B12. The fatigued woman was very low on B vitamins, so it was recommended she eat red meat more often and/or take supplements. The woman said after she had a B12 shot she felt better right away.

In the past week I started supplementing with B12 and it might be helping. I've also had steak a couple of times in the last week and I'm feeling much better now than I have in weeks.

But I lost 40 minutes of my life to this stinking dung pile of a show. Not only is the show totally disorganized and a stupid free-for-all with PSD constantly chiming in about shit he knows nothing about, they give out ridiculously incomplete information and cannot spend a quality amount of time on any one topic because they have commercial breaks every 45 seconds.

They're making shitloads of money on advertising but they're not supplying any useful information. It's one giant popcorn fart after another. They should all be fired. As in, lit on fire fired.

Doctors Suck

Happened to catch this show on TV yesterday, Mystery Diagnosis, and it made me angry at doctors all over again.

Most seem totally unqualified to be doctors and not even fit to be plumbers. Plumbers are much more thorough about finding and fixing the problem.

Here's a fantastic example of how doctors FAIL, and at something so simple. So simple they should be slapped so hard in the mouth they forget they're doctors and go become janitors.

A woman in seemingly perfect health goes from a size 2 to a size 20 in a matter of a few months with most of the weight gain in her abdomen. She has numerous other symptoms I won't bother to list, but all are completely abnormal.

She sees doctor after doctor after doctor who cannot figure out what's wrong with her. For seven years this goes on as she tries everything she can think of to deal with her symptoms, hoping on every birthday and Christmas that by the next birthday or Christmas someone will help her.

Totally fed up she decides to take matters into her own hands and gets a hold of her medical records. She reads through all the tests and results to see her cortisol levels are WAY too high - ridiculously high. It was right there in her records, but NO ONE SAW IT. Or more accurately, no one bothered to read her goddamn records that were right there in her goddamn file.

She goes online and starts to research high levels of cortisol. In five minutes she diagnoses herself with Cushing's Syndrome.

Seven years. Seven years she tried to get one doctor, any doctor, to help her, and none of them could. Five minutes with her own file and she diagnosed the condition. She was a flight attendant. No medical background of any kind. Doctors - FAIL.

How hard would it have been for one doctor, in the dozens and dozens she saw, to take five minutes to read her lab tests? What colossal lame bags of shit.

So they're not all endocrine specialists - fine. But if the patients can use Google, can't the doctors? Too busy golfing and writing out useless prescriptions?

ARGH! Makes me so mad!

I have to wonder, if we're trusting these people with our lives, why don't we require all doctors to take annual refresher courses and certifying exams to remain practicing physicians? Fail the course and you're on probation until you learn it and pass the test. Can't pass it within a required timeline? You lose your license.

Even my mechanic has to take ongoing training to remain certified to work on my car, but my doctor can graduate med school, complete a residency, then not take another course or exam for 20 years and still remain qualified to do the job? Hardly.

Hyper Hypo

Friggin germs. Now my cold has moved from my throat up into my nose. I'm a snot fountain. Font of snot. Sorry about all that hot, sexy stuff about my snot. Anyway...

I read an article today in the latest Elle about hypothyroidism, which was great to see in a national mag, but still disappointing in that after all this time, after what seems like enough fuss made over the past few years, it still gets little attention and is largely considered by most doctors to be a fictitious disease.

Alternatively, it's been called a "woman's disease," and thus won't ever get the attention it deserves, not like say, erectile dysfunction. It was discouraging to read about women mentioned in the article struggling with the same ignorant doctors I had - doctors ready to hand me bagfuls of Paxil samples rather than do one simple (and inexpensive) thyroid blood test.

How in the hell, after all those years of study and toil, can you end up so cavalier about treating a patient? How, after all the shit you must have to learn in those 8 years of school and whatever else you have to do, so easily dismiss a laundry list of symptoms that are so obviously, or at least possibly, related to thyroid malfunction? Vets diagnose and treat cats with thyroid problems faster and with greater accuracy than most doctors.

I can't imagine what I'd have gone through if I hadn't had access to the Internet to do the research I did years ago. I saw two doctors - both women - and after rattling off my list of symptoms, they both wanted to immediately put me on Paxil without any tests of any kind. That was their answer. Well done, nice work ladies.

After the visit to the second doctor I went home and tried to research the legal ramifications of getting caught writing my own prescriptions. During that research I found a way to buy natural thyroid hormone replacement on the Internet. And so I did. It was amazing. In three days I started to feel better.

After months of debilitating fatigue, always feeling cold, apathy (not depression), constant, gradual weight gain, not remembering shit, missed periods (which never happens), constipation (which also usually never happens), and other symptoms -- in three days, that all started to change.

And that was on the very lowest dose. Just that much, a 1/4 grain a day, made me start to feel normal again. Placebo effect you might think? Placebos don't generally cause ovulation. Sure, it could have been coincidental timing, but likely not.

At some point I was able to get my lab records for the years prior to this experience and saw that, sure enough, my TSH number had been steadily rising every year. I didn't even know they were testing for it at the time, and it would seem they didn't either because no one said shit about it. And it proved once & for all, I wasn't crazy. They'd rather you think you're crazy than do anything to help you to find out what's going on.

So for any women out there reading this, if you're 30 years old or over, start testing your thyroid levels now, and check them every year, and keep track of the NUMBER. Do not accept "normal" or "in the normal range."

The "normal" range is different for each lab, and some labs have still not adjusted to the updated range. The old "normal" range was .5 to 5.0. Today, anything above 2.0 could be considered too high.

Some women say they feel OK even if their TSH number is in the hundreds, while other women report feeling horrible when it's just below 10. Listen to your body, trust your instincts and do your own research. Be your own doctor. Meanwhile, if you need Rx pads, I know someone who can help you out with that.

One of the best books on thyroid is by Broda Barnes - Hypothyroidism, The Unsuspected Illness. That, and Mary Shomon's book, Living Well With Hypothyroidism are the best resources out there besides what you can find online. Be well, girls.