My husband's and my doctor does not even really examine one anymore, we have blood and urine tests twice a year and other testing done "as needed" but any issue we raise in between, we are given a medication to try and see if it helps. "Take two aspirin and call me in the morning".

The big issue I see with medicine today is the importance of dialog. Yes, raise questions about what one reads on the internet -- I often take in medical/scientific papers to my appointments to have my doctor read them because they explain my view in a way I feel he might understand better. But I, too, like jimi have almost had unnecessary surgery/died because of doctors not able to see the whole picture, like I can do better, because it is my picture. I had to piece together information over 5 months of infection, multiple harmful medicines and hospitalizations and look on the internet to find a list of correct medications to try one of. Even the doctor willing to listen (two would not, one had made the problem worse such that I considered suing), my surgeon, said he'd try it but if it didn't work he was cutting again. It worked