LYME is a “Royal Pain”

If you ever have watched this USA network show “Royal Pains” and have Lyme disease you have wished what I have. That you have a perfectly scripted Hollywood doctor that made housecalls and found your mystery Lyme disease within a 60 minute show and fixed you with one dose of antibiotics, right?

I’m always amazed at the obscure diseases that get major biling on this show. And if you are taking notes, Lyme disease did get center stage once. This “Hank” doctor thinks outside the box and looks for oddities in his patients and doesn’t go with the flow of medicine at all, well, as far as diagnosis is concerned. Treatment is another entire soapbox that I would have to drag out and get on another time.

I watched the Lyme episode and many other ones and I don’t remember Hank getting political pressure not to diagnose one of his patients with one of these weird unpopular illnesses. I don’t remember Hollywood showing him getting brought up by the State Medical Licensing Board for practicing “outside the lines” of traditional “acceptable” medicine. Or the patients getting upset because their insurance companies refused to pay for the treatment to this weird illness.

I especially appreciate that he doesn’t condescend his patients or ignore them – but really listens to them. Hank has compassion and cares for the success and health of each one. When did doctors lose this? Where has the bed side manner gone, the compassion, the kindness?

I can only pray that as the word gets out more about LYME disease, more doctors will think and act like Hank. They will think for themselves, outside-the-tradional-box and really listen to their patients. I pray that these bold and courageous doctors will gather together and treat the illness, not the symptoms and work together for a cure – no matter what insurance and medical boards do to them. The patients and health require it and desperately need it.

I have been blessed to have doctors who do listen and who do care. They have a vested interest in success and it shows in their integrity and knowledge.

Now, about making those housecalls……