Doctors upset people

[Guest guest]

Do you hesitate to upset people?

Doctors don't.

Doctors know that people need to know stuff. They didn't always. I

come from an era where doctors were just moving away from the idea

that " the patient can't know she's going to die. " Now they tell you.

You're a little like a doctor, aren't you? You know how to cure things.

The first step in someone curing is often her or him becoming upset

about it; this leads to step 2, working the problem, which then leads

to step 3, teaching themselves and/or rigorously applying immunics.

I know it isn't pleasant to upset friends, but that's what you're

going to have to do. Sorry. I wish this were easier. But everybody

knows that curing cancer, or stopping HIV from turning into AIDS, or

averting a person who's on the HIV cocktail from " crashing " --

crashing means the cocktail loses its effectiveness and the HIV turns

to AIDS -- or dying of the lethal form of lupus, or having a bee sting

complicate into Bell's palsy due to the presence of a herpes virus,

HSV 1, or even just having a flu " run its course, " may involve saying

things to your friend that initially produce upset.

The upside of upset: if you just look at the word, you'll see it's a

good thing. It means things that are set get flipped over and strewn

around. Some have to be discarded. The whole thing has to be

reassembled. Well, if you have somebody who's going to die, what

could be bad about that?

Or if the person's going to be sick for two weeks with the flu, what

could be bad?

Upset, if you take it literally, means that the course to be run, the

future, is no longer set (in stone?). You've changed it just by

upsetting the person. And even if the person runs for the hills,

you've probably had a salutary effect, and the best effect that you

could have had, under the circumstances.

People are always running for the hills around me. That's been

happening all my life. I'm used to it. I'm hard to be around. I get

people upset.

The Buz