Lack of Faith

I find myself losing faith. Faith in what? Doctors and medicine in general. After a visit to a general practice doctor, a "specialist", an MRI and a few x-rays, I find myself getting the same exact advice I could have given myself with common sense, lets give it a few more weeks. I'm no closer to finding out what is really going on with my knee then had I been opening fortune cookies.

Do doctors really need all those years of school? What exactly are they learning, because I have to be honest, the only skillful doctors I've seen are on TV. Too bad they are actors. It makes me wonder, if the best doctors are actors, does that mean the best actors are doctors?

Not like I have a long history, but lets look back. My first memory of a doctor visit was way back in forth grade for a strange feeling in my knee. The doctor's exact words were "You may have to have something done when you are sixty, but until then it will be fine". A week later, the ligaments broke off a chunk of bone and I needed surgery. I know we all age quickly, but come on! Second example, I was being nagged for years with horrible cases of strep throat over and over again. I practically had to beg the doctor to take my tonsils out. The doctor reluctantly took my tonsils out and actually made the comment after the surgery was over "wow, your tonsils were so bad that they actually began deteriorating". No Shit? The fact that I was in your office constantly for the same exact thing for years didn't tip you off?

Now with my current issue. I don't understand how out of the blue a knee swelling up and it causing pain and discomfort for a month and a half gets the diagnosis of "lets give it six weeks and see how you are doing". That really is a BS job if I ever heard one. Granted it probably doesn't help my case to walk into the office (maybe I should take some acting lessons), but I know my body pretty well and I know when something isn't right. At the very least, I expect to walk out of the office of professionals with a better idea of what is going on. Instead, I walk out thinking I could probably be a better doctor with my common sense and Google.

As a computer guy, I see all kinds of strange things and rarely see the same problem twice, I've got no doubt that a doctor's job is difficult in that respect. But, I also can't think of a time when I've seen a computer problem, done nothing, then come to the conclusion of lets give it a few weeks and see if the problem gets better. People are different from machines, but that logic is asinine. If I solved problems like that, I'd be in a completely different kind of work, unemployed.

Moral of the story, I'm not super impressed with the knowledge of doctors. So far, I'm finding I'm at least as good, if not better as they are with diagnosing my problems. Can I send them a bill?