Hey, I am not denigrating modern medicine ~ I wouldn't be here today if not for the highly sophisticated computer graphic imaging used to pinpoint the radiation treatment that completely eliminated the cancer in my throat last year. I am very much impressed and very thankful.

My experience, however, is that I received much less serious attention for a non-life-threatening but very bothersome poo-poo problem than I did for my malignant tumor. Also, thankfully, the diagnosis and the accepted course of treatment for my particular kind of cancer was very clearcut and unambiguous, while my irritated-bowel symptoms were subject to varous different interpretations.

When I went to get scoped (more than once) for my intestinal complaint, the specialists who performed the procedures were only thinking in terms of cancer screening. Also, they were strangers, not my "regular" doctor who was familiar with my reasons for undergoing the scoping. They simply would report, "no tumors, no problem," and leave it at that.

Only after a couple of repetitions of the (rather invasive) procedures, and then only after repeated questioning ("Didn't you see anything amiss up in there?") did one doctor offer the offhand observation, "Well, you've got some diverticuli ~ no big deal." No advice on what that meant or how to handle it; that came months later, thanks to an unusually attentive and concerned woman doctor who was subsituting for my vacationing primary care physician. The insight I gained from her might just as easily come from a lay person, certainly from anyone living with the same condition who had learned how to cope, either from a doctor or from any other resource.