The Autism Retort Blog

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One of the things I love about our neighborhood is all the kids on the street.  It’s reminiscent of when I was a kid and would run the neighborhood from morning till dusk, riding my bike or roller skating or playing a neighborhood game of hide and seek.

True things are a little different now.  My kids don’t really leave our street which limits the bike riding, but it’s a quiet street and they can run from house to house playing games or hanging out on swingsets.  However, I’ve never really been able to let Peanut run with the others without some sort of adult supervision.  Not being the outdoorsy type myself, this has posed some problems.  I prefer to get some things done while the kids are outside.

In the beginning this really wasn’t a problem.  Peanut was relatively happy hanging out inside with me while her sister went over to friends’ houses.  Last summer it got to be more of a problem, but at least we had the backyard she could play in.  Unfortunately, that wasn’t usually good enough, and for reasons I’ve yet to really understand, my backyard is not the backyard of choice for the neighborhood kids. 

As we entered spring this year, I started letting Peanut go into the front yard with Diva, her 8 (soon to be 9) year old sister and the other kids.  Usually I made the teen go out also just to supervise.  Gradually, however, we have started letting Peanut and Diva go out on their own.  In the beginning they had to stay in our yard and any friends who wanted to play had to come to our yard as well.  Usually they would only play outside for about 30 minutes.

Last night however, I threw caution to the wind and let the girls run the neighborhood as I have the older two girls since they were about Peanut’s age.  For a while they played down the street at a friend’s house.  At one point the whole group of kids came up to our house; Peanut in the midst of them all with a toy sword “getting” this kid or another.  As I watched I was happy to see she was just one of the kids.  She wasn’t treated differently.  She wasn’t limited because of her lack of speech.  She was accepted into the fold and was having a great time.  

The girls played outside for over an hour until it was time to come in to get ready for bed.  

It was a great day and I look forward to many more nights where Peanut gets to join the neighborhood friends for games and summer fun.

–Did Kate Middleton over-diet for the royal wedding? (That’s Fit)

–If you’re still contemplating Kate Middleton’s brideorexia, keep reading. (Well + Good NYC)

–Glamping: How to go camping and still look glamorous. (Organic Authority)

–Free Bride: Kate Middleton’s last night as a single. (MyDaily)

–Do you believe in astrology? If you do, Will and Kate have some bad news written in the stars. (YourTango)

–A tropical afternoon snack, if you’ve got a blender handy. (Vitamin G)

–Wild ginger to smooth your hair, because you know summer is going to wreak havoc on your head. (Betty Confidential)

–Eva Mendes ushers in spring at home. (Shelterpop)

–Be friendly; it could help save a life. (ThirdAge)

Photo: Every Joe

Post from: BlissTree

Afternoon Links: Royal Wedding Edition

Viral infection, including rubella during the first trimester of pregnancy, has been studied as a possible cause of autism. Children with Fragile X syndrome or tuberous sclerosis have higher rates of autism than the general population. Autism affects males four times more often than females. The symptoms vary greatly but follow a general pattern. As of [...]

We’ve all read articles about questions to always ask your doctor, how to get the most out of your physical, and most of us have also searched the bejesus out of WebMD. We’re practically equipped with our own diagnosis and list of treatment options before we’ve even seen our physician. But in a new era of patient knowledge and responsibility, doctor-patient relationships are far from improved. Patients are frequently dissatisfied with doctor care, and doctors are forced to spend less time with patients than ever before to satisfy insurance companies: Not exactly a formula for top-of-the-line healthcare. Two articles published this week tackled the problem of doctor-patient relationships: One, written by a physician, argued that more of us need to take a leap of faith and trust our docs. Another, written by a CNN health writer, outlines proposals from a Medical College Admission Test committee that wants incoming medical students to be screened for better social skills. So what’s the answer?

In If Only All We Wanted Was Expert Advice, Dr. Kent A. Sepkowitz waxed poetic in the New York Times on Monday about one of the major problems causing conflict between doctors and patients: Mainly, that doctors easily brush off patient knowledge due to their expertise, and patients easily reject their expertise because they’re ignoring patient knowledge:

It seems to me that what we have here is a basic problem with our attitude toward experts. The calculation ought to be simple: we all seek people who know more about a situation than we do exactly because they know more than we do. Of course, we always want experts. And when we find them, we ought to trust them, right? Instead, however, we dismiss them when they aren’t whistling our tune. We suddenly become more expert at the very thing we thought they were expert at [...] When matters of personal health…are at stake, we want a lot more than expertise from our experts. The rational world suddenly loses its appeal; dull, steady scientific observation seems only dull and steady. We want some pixie dust, a little magic, an eccentric genius who can see through the usual mumbo-jumbo to the core of the problem (paging Dr. House).

His argument sounds slightly arrogant and dismissive, especially if you’re one of thousands of patients who’s visited several doctors without success at treating a mysterious, chronic disease. But he relates to patients — his dishwasher doesn’t work properly sometimes, and plumbers routinely dismiss his suspicions about what’s going wrong, so he knows what it feels like, apparently, to be on the other side. And, to top it off, he says the cure to the doctor-patient problem is, you guessed it, to just sit back and trust your doc:

…until our prince comes, we are left with the most basic, bare-bones determination: do we trust this guy or not? And this decision, rather than following along a perfectly manicured line of reasoning and evidence, relies on that least scientific of all human inclinations — the simple leap of faith.

If only chronic digestive problems and fibromyalgia could be fixed by more patient trust.

The thing is, many patients do trust their doctors to cure what ails them, despite their better instincts. Take Dori Manela, a Blisstree contributor who recently wrote about how her debilitating digestive problems took three years to diagnose. Her long battle to figure out what was going wrong included several expert opinions, including one who, on the basis of inconclusive tests, submitted her to rather painful, embarrassing treatment for a diagnosis that turned out to be wrong:

As test after test revealed inconclusive or negative results, he began to suspect I suffered IBS. But that didn’t stop him from sending me for invasive, expensive (insurance doesn’t cover this) and humiliating pelvic floor physical therapy. The kind with anal probes. I wish I was making this up. (And I wish I’d had enough insight at the time to step back and say “this is ridiculous; enough is enough.”) My problem wasn’t with my butt muscles — of course I knew this! And later, I took a test to prove my theory (one the doctor had failed to mention), and who would’ve guessed! I never needed pelvic floor physical therapy at all.

Unfortunately, she’s not the only one to experience unpleasant treatment for an inappropriate disease.

Of course, doctors should be allowed to be wrong. They’re only human, and I’ve written before that I think health care could benefit from allowing our experts a reasonable margin of error — lawsuits do not a good patient-doctor relationship make. At all. But that doesn’t mean that faith is the answer, either; instead, participating in your own health care and listening to your own instincts should be encouraged and respected, not poo pooed by experts.

Another article, published today on The Chart, CNN’s health blog, detailed the requests of a committee that thinks the Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) should test doctor’s social skills; not just their knowledge of science. Committee chair Dr. Steven Gabbe explained:

We want to broaden the knowledge base that students have about [social and behavioral] factors that influence health. Yes, you must have solid base in science, but you have to understand the challenges. You have to be culturally competent to understand socio-economic challenges in different groups face dealing with health problems.

Their recommendations include adjusting the admissions test to better test understanding of social, cultural, and behavioral factors affecting health.

So while patients might benefit from hearing their doctor out, instead of focusing only on what they learned before their appointment online, many doctors could use a lesson in conversation, too. Instead of asking patients to take a leap of faith and trust their expert opinion over their own experience and instincts, doctors and patients both might do better to just learn how to communicate.

Post from: BlissTree

Doctor vs. Patient: We Need Better Communication, Not Faith