Distrust of the Medical Profession

People who know what I used to be like will know how I used to have a very low opinion of doctors and hospitals, and believed that they couldn’t be trusted. Even persuading me to take paracetamol or hay fever tablets was an uphill struggle.

People sometimes ask me whether I was formally diagnosed with Aspergers, but I wasn’t for the reason that I couldn’t see the point, although it didn’t really occur to me either. They couldn’t do anything about it, so why bother with them? There was no logic in it, and I didn’t trust them anyway.

My distrust of the medical profession had its origins when I was 4 or 5 and had to go into hospital. I had what they called a rupture, although nobody explained to me what it actually was. I think it was a kind of hernia, and I have a scar where you normally have a scar if you’ve had your appendix out. It was quite a memorable experience, but for all the wrong reasons.

I was in a children’s ward next to a cot with a baby that howled constantly, so I couldn’t sleep, and it’s howling disturbed me. After the operation, I was in absolute agony, but I was told it didn’t hurt that much and I should stop fussing so much. The British upper lip was still quite stiff in the 1960’s, although I think I must have been overlooked when they were being handed out. By the way, it’s a known autistic trait to have a low tolerance for pain, and I believe this stems from the impaired ability to receive reassurance.

When I was taken home, I walked bent double as it still hurt a lot. But my parents and brother and sister all said that it didn’t hurt as much as I made out and should stop fussing. But I knew that it did, and so I felt lied to. Because of this, I made the judgement that the medical profession was deceitful.

This judgement was reinforced when I was 12 and I broke my leg skiing. Again, the experience was one of not being told the truth about what was going on. I knew the cause was that my bindings were not adjusted properly, but I was lied to about that. The doctor setting my leg, suddenly without warning, pushed very hard on my leg which was excruciating. Then, back in the UK there was the endless trail of waiting for hospital appointments…

I could go on, but I’ve done a lot of forgiving, and it gets a bit tedious going over it all. British society has changed since the 1970’s and so has the National Health Service. I had heard plenty of moany stories too, about people who were not told the whole truth about their condition or that of their relatives, all of which reinforced my viewpoint.

Dealing with this involved mainly tackling ungodly beliefs and soul-spirit hurts. I can’t remember any generational sin or demons being dealt with. Also, I had to do a lot of forgiving of my family and the doctors at the times I had to go to hospital.

The main ungodly belief I had to tackle was: the medical profession is deceitful and cannot be trusted, which was replaced with: doctors and nurses are highly skilled and trained in what they do, and can be trusted to perform their duties with professionalism and integrity.

The soul-spirit hurts focussed mainly on the incident when I was 4 or 5 – recalling how it felt, expressing those feelings to God, forgiving all those involved, and then having Jesus show me where he was in the memory. I had the sense that he knew how much things hurt, and was saying it was OK to be how I was.