MOM: Don't be a patient "good".

Mother Elizabeth Cohen, Sheila Schwartz, he learns that it is not always important to be a "good" patient.Be respectful of your physician, but don't assume that he or she is always rightYour health depends on your understanding of the problem, therefore asked many questionsDon can't put your relationship with your doctor before your health notes editor of: In honour of mother's day Sunday, the power of Patient reminds us an important lesson for mom Senior Medical corresponding Elizabeth Cohen.

my mother, Sheila Schwartz, is a firecracker. As a lawyer, social worker, wife, mother of four and grandmother of 11, she is always on the go - working, caring, love of life. About 10 years ago, when my mother was approximately 60, something suddenly changed. She began to feel tired, achy and dizzy, and his blood pressure was slightly higher, even if it was the treatment of blood pressure. His internist tinkered dose, but blood pressure would not move.

The internist then told my mother that his blood pressure would decrease if it just stopped working so hard.

"He told me high blood pressure and other problems were being so busy," she recalled. ""Slow down,"he said, ' and you'll be OK." "

This response sounded strange to me. My mother has certainly worked hard - and had fortunately - but she had worked all his adult life, and until that she had been very well. Why all of a sudden his long days would cause him to feel sick?

My mother condition continued to deteriorate. Vacation in another city, she felt particularly low and went to a local doctor. He said that he thought he might have a problem with his adrenal glands, and when she returned, she had checked in with a nephrologist, who then ran some tests. He discovered that she had an adrenal gland anomaly, which dealt with his kidney.

If an internist of my mother had ordered a blood test, it would probably have taken the problem, and that it would have been treated easily with a simple surgical operation. Given that the problem had been allowed to deteriorate, it ends with need of a kidney transplant, she received last year.

There are two lessons from the experience of my mother. One, when a doctor you just said relax to get rid of the real, physical symptoms, it is probably time to find a new doctor.

Second, it does not pay to be a "good" patient. My mother grew up at a time when physicians are authority figures not step to be questioned and be 100 percent trustworthy.

"This is what I've been raised to do", she said. "I was an empowered mother." I was a social worker power. I was an able student. I was not accountable patient. ?

In this case, as in many others, it is advantageous to be a patient "wrong." If my mother had pushed his doctor, asking him to rethink his diagnosis, she probably would have upset him, but it would have been worth.

Click here for a quiz to tell you if you are a patient "good" and remember these three golden rules of being a "bad" patient

1. Ask lots of questions. If you do not understand something, ask for clarification, and if you still do not understand, ask once more. The doctor or nurse may be visibly irritated, but that should not stop you. Remember, your health depends on your ability to understand what the doctor is telling you.

2 Don't worry if your doctor likes you. If you do something that could disrupt the doctor, such as ask many questions, you endanger your health. While it is a natural tendency to want to be loved, your health comes first and second your popularity.

3. Do not forget that it is an operation company. You pay the doctor for a service. you are not in a popularity contest. Of course, you are respectful of the doctor, just as you are respectful to the waitress or your auto mechanic, but you only must your doctor to be the perfect patient.