Thursday, September 11, 2008

Thought (for the day / a lifetime)

There's a Sandra Bullock sobriety-recovery movie playing, where the rehab patients try to lift the leg of a horse in order to inspect the hoof. The horses never lift their hooves, when the patients try pulling up on the knee. The teacher exclaims as they try pulling at the knee over and over, that the true definition of insanity is repeating the same behaviors, but expecting a different outcome.

This is pretty funny, on the movie and in life. But when it comes to health care, it can be painfully un-obvious. Are you trying the same treatments to remedy your health concerns? And persisting even though you haven't had the result intended? I exercised for years, never losing weight. I wasted all those years thinking I was doing the right thing, but not succeeding. Turns out I had an underlying disease--hypothyroidism--causing the overweight and interfering with its removal.

How is your health care treatment going? Give each treatment the appropriate amount of time. Know what you expect of it, how long it should take. If you don't get the expected result in a reasonable amount of time, it's probably time to regroup; get a different treatment or figure out what might be preventing your success. Being a scientist, I've seriously fallen down on the job here.

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