About six months ago, I visited my dentist. Unfortunately, it wasn't a pleasant experience. After jamming a dental instrument into one of my teeth and asking me if I had been eating sweets, she made a decision. She felt that I had an area that needed to be drilled into, "to see how far the problem goes". Fortunately, I declined. This all happened shortly after she told me of her impending wedding. Maybe there is something about a new house, wedding and honeymoon that leads to fuzzy diagnosis? I guess I had one of those gut feelings. You know the kind of feeling that tells you something is grossly wrong? She must have seen the ghost of that thought appear on my face because she started talking really fast. I decided to see another dentist. There was nothing wrong with my perfectly healthy tooth. I don't know about you, but I'm a little uneasy about treating a body part that doesn't really have a problem. In fact, I was so sure there was nothing wrong that I didn't bother to see that second dentist until six months later. My mother's ophthalmologist told her she had glaucoma in one eye and started her on some very expensive medication. The long list of side effects included changing eye color. When she went back for a follow up visit she asked how many drops she should use. The doctor told her to put x amount of drops in both eyes. My mother realized that something had to be wrong as he had previously said there was only a problem in one eye. She went for a second opinion. You may have guessed that the second doctor said she didn't have glaucoma in either eye. Doctors are only human. Whether these mistakes were intentional or not does not matter. The important thing to realize is that if you feel uneasy about a diagnosis, it is a your body and your right to get a second opinion before submitting to a treatment that you aren't sure about. |
