One important task in the process of recovery is learning or relearning good physical self-care. Part of this is learning how to be a good consumer of health care. Doctor Skeptic has a thought provoking post on being a “person with a predicament” versus a “patient”.
My right foot hurts. It hurts in the middle, underneath, but not all the time, and only when I walk or take any weight on it, especially when I get up in the morning, when it becomes difficult to walk. It has been hurting on and off since I did an 80km trek three months ago. It could be a stress fracture, or some kind of fasciitis, soft tissue tear, fatigue, injury or degeneration, but I don’t really care, because I am not going to have any tests or see any health care practitioners to get their version of a diagnosis. I’m just going to leave it alone. I am going to be a person with a predicament that I can cope with, and not a patient with an illness.
I’m not posting this as an argument against seeking medical treatment, just that one task in recovery is to notice a symptom and learn to pause and reflect before ignoring it or treating it as a medical crisis.
Read the rest here.
recoveryreview.blog 