Doc, I Don't Feel So Good.

This class was gave a much needed startle to my mind, which has been slowly inculcated into a ridgid disciplinary science thinking pattern. Broadly, the topics that have stayed with me are the discussions on apotemnophilia and Stigmata. As someone who loves neuroscience and likes to see data supporting something, these topics really threw me off. My first thought was that those conditions weren’t conditions at all, but really symptoms of a psychiatric disorder. I must admit that I do still believe the superior right parietal lobe has something to do with apotemnophilia and somatoparaphrenia, however I now see the effects of semantic contagion. Semantic contagion fascinates me. Something that may be false for the originator is adopted and becomes real for a follower/consumer. One person's symptom may become another’s diagnosis.

I also see how market conditioning and FDA coercion gave us HSDD. I have always loved the idea that science is free of things like politics and money, that discoveries and work are just unraveling the complexity of the body or world. Now, I see the sneaking influence of outside entities, from online chat rooms to pink washing Cindy. I can see that our work in science may for a few minutes be pure and neutral, and that after legitimation and commercialization happens. At that point our work may be in the hands of people who use it for ill gain. In some ways it makes me want to pursue a degree in law on top of things so I can deal with people like Cindy.

The reason I picked the title of “Doc, I don’t feel good” is due to how this class has changed my conception of what is “real.” What is not real for me may be real for a patient. What is real to me and what is truth and reality to me may not be real, truth, or reality to a patient. Sickness, beliefs, belief of sickness, all combine to make it so I and a patient may live in two separate worlds. Worlds that need to be bridged. I think that in some ways this class has helped me to think in more abstract terms. I will still love my MEG and fMRI, but I will be open to hearing about conditions I would before have said just need DBS. I will also try not to have a notion of I know what you need (insert brand name) when I hear that someone doesn’t feel so good.