What being a good doctor means

Breast cancer is a widely known disease that affects millions across the world. Dr. Mate debates whether breast cancer is caused by stress or not. Some women with breast cancer are blaming their stress load earlier in their life for the condition they have to suffer with now. For example, Michelle grew up in a home with two alcoholics as parents and believes her cancer has a relation with all of the confusion in her life - she never knew if her parents loved her or not and she was always caring about other people's emotional needs rather than her own. Dr. Mate never does reveal whether stress is related to cancer diagnoses, though he does mention a five-year study done on more than 500 women and the results showed that, "women with breast cancer need not fear that stressful experiences will precipitate a return of their disease." At least we know that breast cancer will most likely not return from high stress.

A good point Dr. Mate brings up is that it seems like doctors now a days don't think that connecting with their patients lives is important. That means wondering why someone is so stressed out, or what is going on in their personal lives at all. Of course if the patient does not want to reveal anything about what their life is like, than they should not feel pressured to do so. Though, I do think our personal lives have an impact on our life and how we deal with things and I would like to know that I could go to a doctor to help me through something if I really needed it. First responders are an excellent example of how connecting with a patient can be crucial. I remember talking about how our sympathetic nervous system causes our fight or flight response and then our parasympathetic system brings our nervous system back to normal. When the parasympathetic system brings it down too much, we go into shock. When someone is in shock, it is crucial that whoever is there, is talking to them, calming them down and wanting to hear about their story. I believe that sometimes doctors are too caught up in facts and knowledge when the answer to a diagnoses could be found by learning about someone's history.