Mangled Mistruths

Saturday morning, and my dad's particularly chatty today. First thing in the morning after I came back from a run, he went on this crazy diatribe on his crazy theories of health. Well, actually, most of these theories are thanks to the way the mass media mangles medical truths, and also from all the weird books he reads.

He was telling me about how he liked this absolutely insane book about how flouridation of water is evil, how electrolytes in drinking water are evil and how we should only eat 'organic' minerals.



Erm, organic minerals? But but minerals are just free floating ions, whether they come from your tap or from your friendly juicy chicken or tame head of cabbage!

No matter how I try to explain the physiology of fluid and electrolytes in the body, he just can't accept it. That perhaps, his son who's studying scientific medicine may well be correct and the 2 loonys who wrote that book was probably in it just for the money.

I dunno but it's really frustrating when the very people who send me to university, refuse to accept what I learn there. Hmm, maybe they simply can't trust their son who still leaves the kitchen in a mess and wipes his mouth on his sleeves when it comes to serious stuff. *Shrug.*

Everytime I try to start of explaining things in a logical way, saying how their conculsions may have come out of statistical bias and stuff - even he never seems to listen. So I just give up and nod and pretend I'm interested and in my heart, I just want the whole speech to end dammit!

Everytime this happens, I see it as a failure of myself and my education to spread the word of scientific medicine. Bleagh. It ain't easy being me dude. With great powers comes great responsibility, the wise Uncle Ben from Spiderman said.

Somehow it's always me, me and me who gets all the tough questions from family, friends and patients from the wards during my clinical attachments. Even in online forums. And I got this stressful responsibility to say the right thing, even if I may not know enough.

"Yes Mr. XXX. It's true, your glucose self-monitoring device is telling you that your diabetes is getting worse, you may have to take medications. The high readings are probably not due to your surgery."

"It probably is nothing, but better get it checked just to be safe!"

"I'll ask around to see if there's anything I can do regarding your dependence on sleeping pills. It's not good you know, is there anyone you can talk to about it?"

"It's alright madam. You see, this is XXXX hospital you know. It's such a good hospital they will take care of you!"