Drug reduction and AI med
Nov. 29th, 2025 09:47![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bill_schubertWe had a video conference with Dana's primary doc, who is actually a PA. She is a wonderful person and we always have good convercations. Over time her advice gets more and more on point as she spends time with Dana's physical issues.
The way doctoring is supposed to be.
I ran out my thoughts on putting Dana on Plavix and she agreed. We're not going to do that. There is no supporting documentation. The cardio just added the prescription without putting anything in writing about why but only telling Dana verbally that she'd been having TIAs (contradicting neurologists from the stroke centered hospital we went to) and she needed to be on a blood thinner. He had interacted with her for about 10 minutes and made the decision based mostly on what she told him. And he veered way out of his cardiologist lane.
This is the way too much doctering is now.
The last thing Dana needs (or, I suspect, many of us need) is more drugs. Especially one that promotes bleeding throughout the body.
I'm increasingly a better consumer of medicine because I have to be. And I will give a lot of credit to AI which I thought from the start would be a great tool for medicine. It collects data from all over and explains in language that I can understand and is willing to drill down infinitely into minutia.
A great example. Dana is scheduled to have a follow up MRI to check her aneurysm. I suspect that it has healed but we obviously need a review and the thing is kind of scaring her, for good reason.
BUT she also has low iron. We both do but hers is worse and really effects her. She needs to get an infusion of iron to pump it up in her blood. But, and here's where AI came into play, it turns out that the drug they use for infusion (ferumoxytol) screws up MRIs so if she were to do an infusion now she would have to put off the MRI for three months. I tracked that down while on the call with the PA and we figured out a different path right then that allowed her to take a different supplement until her MRI and then get the infusion. So nice to wrap it up at once.
Documentation of all of this has become a bit of a chore. Someone needs to invent a good app to track senior health issues.
And, long as we're talking about health, we took Toby to the vet. The docs are kind of rotated, you never know who you're going to get there. But we got one of the elder statesmen (who we will now ask for in the future) and he assured us that what we saw as Toby not being able to breathe and in great distress was pretty much him just clearing his post nasal drip. We got a different antibiotic and some other Prednisone kind of stuff to calm things down some and were on our way without another $500 charge. And I think the drugs have already helped Toby and the discussion about how he's really not that bad has helped Dana.
And I'm still well. Fortunately.
The way doctoring is supposed to be.
I ran out my thoughts on putting Dana on Plavix and she agreed. We're not going to do that. There is no supporting documentation. The cardio just added the prescription without putting anything in writing about why but only telling Dana verbally that she'd been having TIAs (contradicting neurologists from the stroke centered hospital we went to) and she needed to be on a blood thinner. He had interacted with her for about 10 minutes and made the decision based mostly on what she told him. And he veered way out of his cardiologist lane.
This is the way too much doctering is now.
The last thing Dana needs (or, I suspect, many of us need) is more drugs. Especially one that promotes bleeding throughout the body.
I'm increasingly a better consumer of medicine because I have to be. And I will give a lot of credit to AI which I thought from the start would be a great tool for medicine. It collects data from all over and explains in language that I can understand and is willing to drill down infinitely into minutia.
A great example. Dana is scheduled to have a follow up MRI to check her aneurysm. I suspect that it has healed but we obviously need a review and the thing is kind of scaring her, for good reason.
BUT she also has low iron. We both do but hers is worse and really effects her. She needs to get an infusion of iron to pump it up in her blood. But, and here's where AI came into play, it turns out that the drug they use for infusion (ferumoxytol) screws up MRIs so if she were to do an infusion now she would have to put off the MRI for three months. I tracked that down while on the call with the PA and we figured out a different path right then that allowed her to take a different supplement until her MRI and then get the infusion. So nice to wrap it up at once.
Documentation of all of this has become a bit of a chore. Someone needs to invent a good app to track senior health issues.
And, long as we're talking about health, we took Toby to the vet. The docs are kind of rotated, you never know who you're going to get there. But we got one of the elder statesmen (who we will now ask for in the future) and he assured us that what we saw as Toby not being able to breathe and in great distress was pretty much him just clearing his post nasal drip. We got a different antibiotic and some other Prednisone kind of stuff to calm things down some and were on our way without another $500 charge. And I think the drugs have already helped Toby and the discussion about how he's really not that bad has helped Dana.
And I'm still well. Fortunately.
no subject
Date: 2025-12-02 14:50 (UTC)