But just as when we buy a new car we suddenly realize how many of them are driving around when we had previously never noticed, so it is with other things. We become more aware when something affects us very personally.
So, what is it that has been rolling around, AGAIN? Sometimes I'm very aware of what we don't know. As a trouble shooter I've been sent to factories around the country to figure out how to get things to work. Sometimes I've been told that other experts had been hired and unable to do the job. At the last factory I helped, they told me, "Five engineers have told us it couldn't be done." So, five different highly paid engineers had all come in and attempted to set up these machines to work together. Because they didn't know how, they told the plant it couldn't be done and left the employees doing things in such a way that someone should eventually get hurt. I came in and didn't know what to do when I got there either. But, I assumed that meant I needed to figure it out. The others assumed that if they didn't know then there wasn't an answer.
They went from ignorant to arrogant.
Medical science is often lacking the science part. If you have a broken arm, the doctors can take a X-ray and see the break. They have data. But there are many things that aren't as cut and dried. Some of the worst offenders are neurological disorders.My rheumatologist and my neurologist have said, "I don't know what it is but maybe it's ______." The specialists are not so helpful. The last one I saw said, "It must be anxiety." Much like the engineers in the above example, he didn't know what the problem is, so it must simply not be.
I was watching some videos on YouTube by people who either wanted to share their symptoms because they know the pain of not being diagnosed or they are sharing their symptoms because they are suffering from not being diagnosed. One, who like me was struggling with uncontrolled movements had recently spent time in the psych ward of a hospital and her main specialist was a psychiatrist. She had heard of another girl who had been institutionalized for 10 years before some doctor discovered she had a legitimate motion disorder.
As I listened to this I was simultaneously not surprised and completely appalled. We can't identify what is going on with you so you must be making it up and therefor we will lock you up. So much of human history is filled with horror stories of how people have been mistreated. During some periods the "mentally ill" were locked up in squalor. In too many cases they weren't locked up for their own benefit but so that others didn't have to see or think about them. How many many people were locked up and they weren't even mentally ill?
To this day we think we know when we don't. We pawn guess work and cruelty off as medical science because we want to think we know.
I can only speak for myself. But, I'll take the care of doctors that admit they are ignorant over any pandered arrogance.