Moment of Truth

10/8/13 2:30AM

Big day today. I have an appointment with my Johns Hopkins Derm Doc. In my last visit, I told her I was going to pursue a plan other than the one she proposed. I was going to avoid going to the drug Methotrexate and scale down out of the drug Prednisone. And I was going try to cure the inflammation through diet, exercise, meditation etc. I didn't go into any detail, but emphasized the slight improvement I'd experienced and by monitoring closely we could change course to her plan if things deteriorated. She accepted my plan, although reluctantly, and made clear she did not endorse it, but said she did hope that it worked for me.


Now, two weeks later, I am eager to see her reaction to what my other Derm Doc declared as "Dramatic Improvement" and I plan to tell her about my "Killer App" responsible for this favorable result. I am especially interested to learn how she feels about the benefits of achieving such a result without the risks of the drug Methotrexate that she was proposing.

I believe that the Derm Doc as well as my new Johns Hopkins primary care Doc seriously understated the risks of Methotrexate. Since talking with them I have learned it is a drug with a "black box warning", a drug with very dangerous possible side effects including fatality. They did not tell me this. Instead I was told this drug had a long and quite safe history treating, in particular, rheumatism.

I find it hard to get my head around the idea that they would purposely mislead me, or that I misunderstood them or that they are not nice people, or that they could be ignorant of the published data available to all with a simple one word Google search of the drug name. So this is a puzzle. What saved me here was was the Alternative available and my "default position" to choose the Alternative over the Conventional where available for reasons I outlined in a previous post.

I intend to discuss all this with her in a non-confrontational way. Perhaps, there is something I'm missing. I want to understand.

Keep tuned and thanks for reading!