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Wednesday, July 20, 2016

Surviving ... your doctor


I talked before about avoiding “Unnecessary Surgery and Treatments”.



Well, recently I followed my own advice so I hope telling you about this inspires you too to take control of your own health and not accept everything your doctor says without question.
Last week I went to the dentist. This one would be new to me since I moved to Spain. In spite of the free (I know, nothing is really free but you know what I mean) medical care I have private. The plan that I have is pretty good from a well-known company in Spain. So I go to their hospital in the nicest part of town and after a bit of looking around and a fancy 3D scan of some kind I get told that I need two teeth pulled plus implants and work done on 6 other teeth. I already knew I had one in pretty bad shape that probably needed removed and have an implant but I was sure the other one could be saved and the other stuff, most of it honestly sounded like BS.
An important part of developing modern survival skills is learning to “read” people. Not just listen to what they are saying, but learn to tell read their voice tone, body language, gestures and of course using your own common sense. This is how you avoid scams and con artists, how you get good business deals and how you learn to get an upper hand on all kinds of social interactions. This dentist guy, he just didn’t seem honest. His hurry to quickly get started with the pulling of teeth was pretty disturbing as well. After politely but firmly telling him that no, I was not getting my teeth pulled then and there I made an appointment for next week. This gave me time to get a second opinion. Thank God I got that second opinion.
Turns out I only need one implant as I suspected. There’s no need to pull the other one. This second dentist didn’t mention any of those six other teeth that needed to be fixed, just one that has a small, visible dark spot, a cavity on top. It’s not just that I was going to get charged almost two thousand Euros worth of BS dentist work, I was also going to have this guy pull a teeth unnecessarily and probably mess up five others.
The U.S. Health-Care system wastes $750 Billion annually on unnecessary health-care costs. You should expect your doctor to act accordingly and, pretty likely, either suggest or assure you that you need surgery, treatment or medication you don’t actually need. Accept this is very likely to occur.
People: You know yourself better than your doctor or dentist. Always get a second opinion if you have the slightest of doubts. If you feel worried/confused/not sure of what to do, just do what I did. Say you can’t do it right now and get an appointment for some other time. This gives you time to think things over, get another opinion and cancel if needed.
FerFAL
Fernando “FerFAL” Aguirre is the author of “The Modern Survival Manual: Surviving the Economic Collapse” and “Bugging Out and Relocating: When Staying is not an Option”.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Fernando--

Is there someone that the unethical dentist can be reported to? Perhaps a professional standards board or government oversight agency?

Larry

Anonymous said...

I had a similar experience when I first went to university and went to the on campus dentist. It was an over the top extreme assessment, requiring me to have my jaw broken and reset, teeth pulled, and braces for the next few years. At 19 years old, I had avoided braces, and NOW they wanted me to wear them?
I dont think I was even polite and made a fake appointment I wouldnt show up to - I seem to remember telling them to their face they were con artists. Going back to my family dentist, and subsequent dentists since confirmed just about everything they said was a bold faced lie.
I cant understand why they come on that strong, with such a radical assessment. Who just rolls over and says 'yeah, sure' to such a thing?

Anonymous said...

I am in the late stages of training to become a physician and the honest truth is, you want to avoid medical treatments like the plague. You do not want to rely on medical treatment if you do not absolutely have to.

Eat good food, exercise, maintain a good weight, take your vitamins, don't drink, smoke or do drugs, and generally try to take care of yourself as though there were no such things as doctors, and you will be far better off.

Be healthy and vital and avoid all the horror I see on an everyday basis, PLEASE!

Avoid the mountains of drugs, the interactions, the disability, having your legs rot off and need amputation, avoid the heart attacks, the diabetes, the bleeding diverticulosis that comes from not eating enough fiber, just take care of yourself and 99% of what I see GOES AWAY and I am the only one of my peers that would be GLAD.

Maybe I'm just not evil enough for this line of work, but I don't want to see you need any of this. I want to see everyone just be healthy.

I'm not even talking about financial exploitation here, I'm just talking about the treatments themselves! Avoid medical care as much as you reasonably can!

Anonymous said...

My son's wisdom teeth were checked by our family dentist and he said, no problem, plenty of room, do not take them out.

My son moved to a new job in another city and found a new dentist.

This dentist talked him into getting his wisdom teeth taken out, plus "re-doing" all of his fillings!

It's a huge scam!

Anonymous said...

My son's wisdom teeth were checked by our family dentist and he said, no problem, plenty of room, do not take them out.

My son moved to a new job in another city and found a new dentist.

This dentist talked him into getting his wisdom teeth taken out, plus "re-doing" all of his fillings!

It's a huge scam!