You Are Not Joe DiMaggio
Day 223, 104-119
Dr. Sunshine
8/13/20231 min read
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You are, in fact, much greater. No disrespect to Joltin' Joe, just bear with me here. The titular old man in The Old Man and the Sea thinks of the Yankee Clipper late in the book: "But I think the great DiMaggio would be proud of me today. I had no bone spurs. But the hands and the back hurt truly. I wonder what a bone spur is, he thought. Maybe we have them without knowing of it."
He probably does have bone spurs, but since he doesn't even know what they are, or if they hurt, what does it matter? The old man is still reeling in big fish on the open sea.
In conventional healthcare the model is so fixated on identifying and labeling a problem, and then fixing it. Sometimes that is valid, but we need to take a step back and take in the entire individual in front of us. If the "problem" isn't creating an adverse effect, maybe it's not a problem. On the other hand, no intervention is without risk, and sometimes the treatment is worse than the disease and we end up creating a problem where there previously was none. Obviously one does not want to ignore a serious issue, but adjusting one's mindset and managing expectations are severely underutilized in modern medicine.
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No discernible sunrise, so today's therapy was all electrons and campfire.