Why Western Medicine Fails

As medical treatment goes, one would think that the idea is to treat the problem. Western medicine, whenever the problem is not an emergency and/or life threatening, is more focused on treating the effects of the problem than the problem itself. I've seen this and experienced this too many times to recount.

The flaw is obvious. Treating effects instead of causes doesn't solve anything. Most of the time, the treatment of effects (drugs) cause more effects. And then you're in a downward spiral. The problem itself remains untreated and therefore exacerbates. More effects emerge or the original effects worsen and are complicated by still more treatment of effects. This is insanity. This is Western medicine.

Oh, and let's not forget the damage some diagnostics do. In 2005 I had an EMG done on my legs and back that's left me with chronic sciatica, which I'd never suffered with for more than a day or two before the EMG. There's nothing like an electric needle piercing your nerves to wake you up. They'll never get near me with that hell torture shit again.

When the nerve damage report came in, no solution was offered, just drugs. I tried the drugs. I couldn't live in the fog that neurontin created. Then the doc suggested cymbalta, which led to 2 years of zombiedom that finally crashed in a huge depression at which point I weaned myself off of it. I'm not thrilled with the trend of pill-taking. Call me crazy, but I prefer getting to the root of the problem and solving it. If that had happened in my life, I'd still be working. It's not that the problem wasn't identified; in my case, I was told I was too young for the surgeries. Now, nearly 10 years later, surgery isn't an option. The damage is done.

The root causes of not getting problems solved in this country seem to be that drugs are profitable and eliminating the problem is not, and being poor puts you at the bottom of the priority list. I wasn't always poor. When my husband was alive and we both worked we were quite comfortable. We had top-shelf insurance, too. So now that I've seen the issue from two financial circumstances, the difference is very apparent. Profit-driven medical care sucks in general, but it really sucks when you don't have the deep pockets they like. Which is why I believe that healthcare should be universal and equal for all.