Correction: I've had a heart attack.

I have to make an important correction to last night's post entitled "Drug Surplus": Putting me on Lipitor, a drug that decreases cholesterol production by inhibiting the enzyme 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl CoA (HMG-CoA) reductase, was the right thing for my endocrinologist to do. The literature approves of the treatment and medication I received. Because I've been reviewing my medical biochemistry notes, I can tell you that HMG-CoA reductase forms 3-hydroxy-3-methylglutaryl from acetyl CoA which is only a few mind boggling steps away from becoming cholesterol--which is bad. Unless it's the good kind (HDL).

But more importantly, I can tell you how I misread the risk assessment flow chart. I thought diabetes was simply a serious additional risk factor for the development of cardiovascular heart disease (CHD). I wish. Our lecturer today--a "diabetologist"--informed our lecture hall that diabetes was equivalent to having a heart attack. This was surprising to me, as I regularly do not grip my chest and yell, "Elizabeth, I'm comin'."

An equally attentive student asked whether type I and type II diabetes were considered equally dangerous in terms of cardiovascular disease. The diabetologist said "yes" and continued on with his lecture. I threw my hands up. Really? I've had a heart attack? Well, in that case, I guess being on Lipitor isn't that bad, because clearly I'm going to die any day now. Imagine having your first heart attack at age 13. Fascinating.

After lecture, a girl in my same row remarked that during one of our clinical correlation anatomy lectures, the doctor had innocuously stated that women with congenital sclerosis were eight times as likely to develop breast cancer. Just rolled right over that. Didn't say much more about it after that. Just thought it would be a fun statistic for everyone to know--not to be tested on it, but to let that information sink in to some of us with the unpleasant likeness of an unwanted guest or a recurrent nightmare.

Ignorance is bliss.

It's like our professors don't realize that while we all want to be physicians, we are also human. It's not just a flaw in the schools of medicine. It's a problem with our society. Doctors need to be flawless. We expect more of them than we expect of our own family members. They need to know everything and they need to tell us everything. They are omniscient, otherwise they aren't worth going back to. In this way, we expect them to be less like traditional professionals and to be more like gods. Unfortunately, they have problems too. I can't say for sure, but I'm guessing about a third of my class went into medicine because they either had a close relationship with a friend or a relative who had a serious illness, or because they themselves had or continue to have a life altering medical condition.

But we're just people. We don't like being reminded of our imperfections. Especially when our imperfections are highly correlated with increased morbidity and mortality, death and disease.

I know we have to know all the intricate details of disease and life and how the one influences the other, but sometimes, just every once in a while, it'd be great if it was understood that we were human and, just like most of humanity, scared of our own passing. So instead of getting widely-believed, sadistic statistics crammed down our throats, perhaps those sadistic statistics could be sugar coated? Not too much, though. Or at least, not too much for me.

I'm diabetic and apparently I have to watch my cholesterol.