Okay, so I'm going in for a baclofen trial, to possibly get a baclofen pump put in to treat my muscle spasms... but once again I felt the need with the neurosurgeon I was seeing to defend my parents and pediatricians. Either I look incredibly young for my age and they can't be bothered to read my DOB or they've forgotten that half the "tests" and technologies we have today simply weren't being used 30+ years ago. All of my doctors have asked why the doctors before them didn't test this or test that.... why didn't they do an MRI when I was six and going to PT for spasms? Why didn't I get treatment?
Ummm... let's see, the first MRI machine was built in 1977, but it took another 10 years before Dartmouth college in NH got one (I was 8 by then), and it was "experimental" technology so not covered by health insurance until the mid-90's... I was already in my teens and just at that point lived with it and largely ignored the constant pain. While MRI's were covered by insurance in the mid-90's they were still hard to find places with them, even living by Jacksonville FL, the largest by acreage city in the US, they didn't have any when both my knees suddenly swelled up one day and refused to bear any kind of weight.
There was nothing the doctors could see in the X-rays so it was chalked up to my chronic leg spasms and well... continue to live with it and here's some braces... the knees healed about 2 months later as well as they ever would again at least... but there was no MRI machine without my travelling for quite a ways, and the images they were getting then were still considered sketchy at best.
When I torn my shoulder at age 10, sure Dartmouth had an MRI machine, but the cost for it was astronomical and deemed unnecessary it was pretty clear I tore it, they didn't need some fuzzy image to confirm that, and my folks certainly weren't neglectful of their child's health because they refused to take a second mortgage out on our house for an MRI.
And yet when I rely my medical history to the doctors, they all look at me aghast! Like how could my parents not take me for an MRI of my brain sooner, why did they do a lumbar puncture when I was six? (Well they did one when I was 5 checking for spinal meningitis, and still held the belief you could only get like 3 in a lifetime or you die!) so... no they didn't see the need to put me through all that. The needles were larger then, the risks were greater and they weren't being done on tilt tables or under an active X-ray. It was 5 nurses pinning you down while a doctor stabbed you literally in the back. A bit traumatic and high risk procedure "then". Now pfft it's child's play.
But we've come a long way in a very short amount of time with medical technology, many of the things we can do, the doctors of today didn't even have access to while in med school! And yet they expected me as a patient to have been able to go tripping on down to my local pediatrician and get MRI's and lumbar punctures testing for a disease that when I was 6,7,8 etc there wasn't even a DMD for? Let alone the tests being available... and my parents are supposed to feel guilty over the fact that I couldn't?
Seriously, am I alone in this, or has anyone else found their doctors to failing in remembering the leaps and bounds we have come in such a short time? I mean, who here remembers windows 95 and the taking off of this fad thing called the "internet!"... '95... not windows 3.0 and certainly wasn't taking off on the commador 64's (one of the first inexpensive home "computers" that didn't come out till I was in the 4th grade). Heck the first blackberries didn't come out till I was in high school and weren't really owned by the "commoners".
I do miss the windows '95 days, on occasion, as I sit in my living room typing this up on my iPad
![EEK!](images/smilies/eek.gif)
. 12 years... we went from text only internet that took forever to load a page and lucky if there was at least 1 computer in the household, to even my GB having an iPad at age 2. And the doctors want to know why I didn't get tests done 30+ years ago that the doctors then had barely even heard of, so I could treatments that weren't even invented yet?
And I will grant you, I'm not so old that "when we were kids we had to walk 20 miles to school in the snow uphill both ways! And we only had dirt to play with sticks weren't invented yet!" But I'm also not some 15-17 year old kid, who had access to the majority of the things the doctors now seem to think I should have my whole life. I mean I did have to walk to school, and the routes I took were uphill both ways, and it was in the snow...but it wasn't 20 miles, and sticks were invented by the time I was a kid and yes I played with them... gosh i really feel old now
But all the more my point, I was an active child growing up in the 80's, we played in traffic, waterguns were in every kid's hand the more realistic the cooler, we watched Saturday morning cartoons and that was pretty much it for tv, for the whooooole week... unless you were sick then you had to watch your grandma's or nanny's "stories" (soap operas). We read the Sunday comic strips and were disappointed when they added Dilbert. And if we survived the 80's with our bones still intact our parents could pat themselves on their backs for a job well done! *ignore the permenent and disfiguring scars*
Scars were cool! The stories of how you got them even cooler! Not the late 90's kids who get them at tattoo parlors. We EARNED them! And our parents before us had even better ones, with truly awe inspiring tales to match. And yet the doctors are still aghast that my parents, and my pediatricians didn't do more... there simply wasn't a "more" available.
Anyone else running into this issue? I don't know what else to say to the doctors aside from... they didn't have that then.... sorry for being born 20 years too early, heck I spent an extra month in the womb... must be my own fault for not hanging around in there an extra 240 months, or is it my parents fault for not giving birth to me while my mom was going through menopause, such terrible parents.
Sorry for the rant, had to get that off my chest. It's slightly flattering if it's just because they think I look so young... but aggravating when I need to explain it every time I see a new face at the doctor's office.