“We don’t do autism”
I've been working with doctors for a while now trying to diagnose some issues, and while I share the author's frustrations (believe me, it can thrash your life to shreds if you let it), he seems to be falling into a danger zone that I have been warned about. Which is that "normal" ranges of almost every metric on the human body are not well defined lines. Rather, they describe a bell curve or measurements, such that 6% of the population will just naturally fall out of the "normal" ranges. So a number that is 5, 10, even 50% beyond normal does not necessarily indicate a problem. Not in the slightest. It could very well just be normal variations between humans. But people searching for answers tend get a laser focus on such things, thinking they have found the clue that will lead them to an answer. Most of the time, they have not.<p>And we who search for answers also hear the stories of others like us, spending years trying to get a diagnosis, who did find the one clue, and did follow that to a diagnosis and treatment, which turned out to be correct. But those stories are outliers. Most of the time, we are wrong.<p>Doctors know the numbers. They know that for every 100 people in our situation, 99% of them will have the common answers, and that why they treat us the way they do, and give us the advice they do.<p>But in this author's case, he had someone drill a hole in his brother's head. I'm not going to judge that decision, there are days I would try some pretty extreme things myself. But I can absolutely understand why doctors would not be jumping up to perform that procedure. And at the end of the day, it did not change his brother's condition.<p>In my mind, that is the real point of this story. Most of our own medical theories coming from our internet research are wrong. Not all. And I absolutely do not want to discourage people from seeking answers. You do need to be your own advocate in today's world. But I also have to believe that if you are asking for medical procedures and multiple doctors are turning you down, it is worth listening to their reasons.<p>EDIT: Yes, I stated the procedure incorrectly. Sorry about that. Please do not let my mistake detract from the larger point.