When the Patient is Unreachable

Years of education and training don’t always make a difference in a patient’s life. Words of wisdom often fail to move patients. Doctors spend their lives, for the most part, trying to impart our knowledge on patients and help them make the best medical choices for themselves.  But what happens when the patient is unreachable?

I am not talking about patients who disagree with my advice or refuse to take it. I am not referring to those who listen and the do what they want. The patients I am speaking of are those who hold a false belief about something and cannot be dissuaded from it.

One example I witnessed is the patient who refused to take diabetes medication because she believed in God. I believe in God as well but I do not believe He is opposed to people taking life-saving medication.  I spent countless hours with this woman teaching her about diabetes and what it would do to here. She continue to come to review her blood test results, and then insisted to discount all evidence we have for the treatment of diabetes. Despite an insurmountable effort, she went on to  undergo a leg amputation because of her uncontrolled diabetes. And she never stopped insisting that she would wait for God to heal her, even as they took off her leg. She simply was unreachable.

There is now a whole cult of people seeking “wellness” by rejecting traditional medicine and embracing herbs.  Herbal medicine is not FDA regulated so we do not know whether it is truly effective or even safe. In fact, we may not even know the true ingredients that are in these types of cures. The companies that produce them are not required to tell us because they do not have to adhere to FDA requirements.  Most people belief they are safe and that very faith makes some of them very dangerous. Reports show that people suffered liver damage from certain ones among other side effects. And more dangerous is the fact that many people defer traditional medication for these herbal ones. While doing this for the common cold may be reasonable since this is a self-limited infection, doing it for other diseases can be a death sentence. There are many reports of patients who forego chemotherapy for their diagnosed cancers to use some of these alternative medications. And some have died for it. There are no studies showing any of these remedies can cure cancer.  And it is often difficult to convince these patients otherwise.

And then there is the issue of vaccine safety. Thousands of studies done around the world by various organizations prove vaccines are safe and work. Yet,  many people are unreachable in knowing the truth. Famous celebrities and pseudo-scientists convinced  them of the myths and they forego measures that can prevent them contracting deadly and disabling diseases for themselves and their children as well. There is no convincing them otherwise and I tried. But, despite the evidence, they continue to believe that the MMR vaccine causes autism. And they believe it is due to the miniscule amount of mercury in them despite the fact that these vaccines no longer contain mercury.

It is hard to watch a patient refuse a life-saving intervention. Harder yet is to see them suffer a complication because of it. Patients wishes must always be respected, even when it may be harmful. And we can only strive to reach them, even when they are unreachable.

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