S1E40 - Max on Taking Care of Medical Needs

Episode Notes

Episode summary

Guest info and links

The host Margaret Killjoy can be found on twitter @magpiekilljoy or instagram at @margaretkilljoy.

This show is published by Strangers in A Tangled Wilderness. We can be found at Tangled Wilderness You can support the show on Patreon.

Referenced Texts:

> Fitzpatrick's Dermatology, 9e > Taylor and Kelly's Dermatology for Skin of Color, 2e > Sanford Guide To Anti-Microbials > UpToDate: > UpToDate – Evidence-based Clinical Decision Support | Wolters Kluwer > Where there is no Doctor:Books and Resources - Hesperian Health GuidesHesperian Health Guides > CDC > American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons >

Transcript

Max on Taking Care of Medical Needs

Margaret 00:15 Hello, and welcome to Live Like The Wold Is Dying, your podcast for what feels like the end times. I'm your host Margaret killjoy. I use she or they pronouns. And this week I'm talking to another medical practitioner. I'm talking to a nurse practitioner named Max, who is going to talk about how to access medical care when medical care doesn't want to give you access to medical care. And we'll be talking about the different ways that people source medications, and we'll be talking about the different diagnostic tools and kind of talk about what you can do to learn how to be your own doctor. Yeah, I hope you enjoy it. This podcast as a proud member of the Channel Zero network of anarchists podcasts. And here's a jingle from another show on the network. Ba-da-da-dah-dah-da.

Channel Zero Jingle

Margaret 02:18 Okay, so if you could introduce yourself with your name, your pronouns, and then I guess a little bit of your background as relates to the kind of stuff we're going to be talking about today.

Max 02:27 Sure, my name is Max, I use he/him pronouns. I'm a medical provider, technically, I'm a nurse practitioner with a degree in family health care. I've been working in health care for about 15 years on the, on the East Coast, first doing primary care and working with LGBTQ+ folks, and now mostly doing HIV care in an infectious diseases environment.

Margaret 02:56 Okay, so the reason I wanted to have you on the show is I wanted to talk about, I guess you could say like DIY allopathic health care, or maybe rather like accessing allopathic medical care without access to the allopathic medical system. And, I was wondering if you could kind of give a brief introduction to that, and also explain what allopathy is, for anyone who's listening who's not familiar with that term?

Max 03:21 Sure. Allopathic is the word I think I'm going to use to describe the medical world I work in, I think about it, like how people talk about Western medicine. But I feel like there are so many different contributions to what we think of as Western medicine, from all over the world historically, and currently that it seems kind of like a dumb term. And I sort of reached out to some friends of mine who are in other kinds of health care, outside of this sort of what we think of as like this health care model and was like, "What's the best terminology?" and they're like, "Oh, "allopathic", that's what you should use," you know, and so I think, "all right, that's what I'm going to use for this." And for me, I think a lot about expertise, right? Like someone could learn to work on a bicycle outside of ever having to learn necessarily in a shop or in a school. And they could learn to work on their bicycle super super well, and they could learn to start working on other people's bicycles. And they could go on the internet and they could diagnose problems with bicycles and they could you know, become the person who lives next door who's really really good at fixing everybody's bicycles. And ultimately with experience that person can be an expert in bicycles right? That's that's something we allow people and there's something about allopathic medicine that just doesn't allow for that expertise outside of really rigid model, outside of schooling outside...it it police's its borders. So like, if you want to go and look something up about your own health care on the internet, the things that you find are are terrible, even the things that are supposed to be reliable, like something like Medscape or something like that, you know, it's like every, "Oh, you have a sore throat," you look up sore throat, and it gives you every possible thing that could ever possibly have ever caused a sore throat, including some kind of cancer, right

Margaret 05:16 Yeah like if you look up, yeah.

Max 05:17 Yeah. And if you...but if you look up how to fix a flat, there's not disclaimers about "Oh, you might cut off your tongue while fixing a flat, or run yourself over, or wear a helmet." You know, it's this...it's like, matter of fact, you're allowed to access the information. And I think that there's...it's a big problem when it comes to health care. And...

Margaret 05:29 Well everyone has bicycles, but only some people have bodies.

Max 05:42 No, no one has bodies. No one...

Margaret 05:44 Yeah. But everyone has a bicycle. So it makes sense.

Max 05:47 Everyone has a bicycle. Yeah.

Margaret 05:49 Yeah. Sorry, I cut you off. Please continue.

Max 05:51 No, it's fine. Makes total sense. I, I, I also think too, about a lot of the, you know, I think one of the things I think about in your show is that idea of like, you know, the prepper, and the fallout shelter, or like the little green anarchists like how that's not necessarily like a sustainable model in the, in the tradition, like, because we need each other, right. And I think one of the things that we need about each other is that we need all of each other. And I think this idea of being able to just go and live on the mountaintop and survive on your own is deeply ablest and assumes a lot about bodies and what bodies need and what people need to keep their bodies healthy.

Margaret 06:29 Yeah, and it doesn't take into account that like even able-bodied people aren't always perpetually able-bodied, you know, like, speaking as someone who currently lives alone on a mountaintop...you know, I think about it a lot, right? Like, I'm like, if I fall on the ice, my dog isn't going for help. You know, and like, I could probably only do what I do with access to a cell phone. You know, like, realistically, I mean, sure people successfully live alone for long periods of time, without access to any of that, but people also unsuccessfully live alone without access to other people, too. So I agree with you. I am....Yeah, we do need each other even even, even when you choose to be mostly isolated, which actually come any kind of crisis. I'm not making this about me, I just got really self conscious thinking about the mountain top thing. You kn