Unfortunately doctors are fallible humans, but also the infallible gatekeepers of pharmaceuticals and surgeries. Unfortunately I've become relatively knowledgeable about a condition I have myself, to the extent where I'll ofyen have much more subject knowledge than a given nonspecialist doctor. All the same they have to make on-the-spot decisions about me that will have serious consequences for both of us, in between twenty similar cases on either side.

As an aside, I'm very sorry for what you're going through. Empathy is easy when you've had something similar! I'll say that in my case removing a tooth that was impinging on a nerve did have substantial benfits that only became clear months down the line. I'm not saying that will happen for you, but a bit of irrational optimism seems to be an empirically useful policy.

Before I moved to where I live now, I had a doctor's office open in my neighborhood I could walk to. At first I thought it was amazing and I started going there. It was a really fancy place, state of art, loads of diagnostic equipment and a limited on-site lab, almost a hospital. But pretty soon I realized I was almost always seeing Nurse Practitioners, or Doctors so fresh out of medical school they were still wet behind the ears.

Even worse, they were almost always wrong about the diagnosis and I'd find myself on 3 or 4 rounds of antibiotics, or would go to the pharmacy to pick up something and they'd let me know the cocktail I had just been prescribed had dangerous counterindications. I finally stopped going when I caught a doctor searching webmd when I was on my fourth return visit for a simple sinus infection that had turned into a terrible ear infection.

My next doctor wasn't much better. And I had really started to lose trust in the medical system and in medical training.

We moved a few years ago to a different city, and I hadn't found a doctor yet. One day I took sick with something, went to a local walk-in clinic in a strip mall used mostly by the local underprivileged immigrant community.

Luck would have it I now found an amazing doctor who's been 100% correct in every diagnosis and line of care for both me and my wife since - including some difficult and sometimes hard to diagnose issues. She has basically no equipment except a scale, a light, a sphygmomanometer, and a stethoscope. Does all of her work using old fashioned techniques like listening to breathing or palpation and will refer to the local imaging center or send out to the local lab nearby if something deeper is needed.

The difference in absolutely wild. I sometimes wonder if she and my old doctors are even in the same profession.

I guess what I'm trying to say is, if you don't like your doctor, try some other ones until you find a good one, because they can be a world difference in quality -- and don't be moved by the shine of the office.

This is part of the reason that alternative medicine has become so popular, there are definitely still some trustworthy doctors out there, but I share the same experience as you where I feel left with no recourse but to take care of things myself after seeing multiple doctors who make it very clear that they have no interest or time to listen to me.

> Most doctor advice boil down to drink some water and take a painkiller

Forgive my brusqueness here, but this could only be written by someone who has not yet been seriously ill.

All the downsides you listed can be solved by public open source models. The ones we have are pretty good already and I would hope that they only get better in the near future. Once you can it on your machine you can safely give it all your data and much more. Of course i would still like a human doctor but it might be a better tool for personal research before you see an expert than what we had in the past.

I’m married to a doctor. We both complain about the medical system. It’s terrible. One of my biggest complaints is doctors seem to have no clue how to get symptoms out of patients in a way that translates to diagnosis.

I’ve had longstanding GI issues. I have no idea how to describe my symptoms. They sure seem like a lot of things, so I bring that list to my doc and I’m met with “eh, sounds weird”.

By contrast, I solved my issues via a few sessions with Claude. I was able to rattle off a whole list of symptoms, details about how it’s progressed, diets I’ve tried, recent incidents, supplements/meds I’ve taken. It comes up with hypothesis, research references, and forum discussions (forums are so useful for understanding - even if they can be dangerously wrong). We dive into the science of those leading causes to understand the biochemistry involved. That leads to a really deep understanding of what we can test.

Turns out there’s a very clear correlation with histamine levels and the issues I deal with. I realize a bunched stuff that I thought was healthy (and is for most people) is probably destroying my health. I cut those out and my GI issues have literally disappeared. Massively, massive life improvement with a relatively simple intervention (primarily just avoiding chicken and eggs).

I tell my doctor this and it’s just a blank stare “interesting”.

Based on recent experiences guiding my parents and younger brother through the medical world, I'm happy with AI as an alternative or complement. There are good doctors out there, but they're often booked solid or you only see them for 5-20 minutes in your parade of specialists you're forced to see to extract as much money from health insurance as possible

> But at the same time technofeudalism, dystopia, etc.

You could run LLMs locally to mitigate this. Of course, running large models like GLM-4.6 is not feasible for most people, but smaller models can run even on Macbooks and sometimes punch way above their weight

A bit invasive and scary to suggest, but I'd push them to rule out any form of cancer. A family member of mine went through a similar ordeal where he went through the removal of multiple teeth, due to continuous pain, and only at a later time with much back and forward between doctors, they went ahead with extensive tests and found he had mandibular cancer.

> I’m kind of torn on this. From one side, I can’t seem to trust doctors any more.

that's alright, if this idea takes off your insurance won't see any need to pay for you to speak to one, when they can dump you onto "AI" instead

I am not a doctor but this could be a neuropathy. Try talking to a neurologist, and possibly try cutting all caffeine.

This is exactly my feelings! I think medicine is a crucial field, but I have very little respect for individual doctors themselves.

- Humans are self healing - if a doctor does absolutely nothing, most issues will resolve on their own or, if they're chronic (e.g. back pain) they won't be worse off compared to the alternative. I'm in a country with subsidised health care, and people go to the doctor immediately for absolutely anything. A doctor could have a 99% success record by handing out placebos.

- Most patients have common issues. I.e. maybe 30 people visit the clinic on a given day, it's possible that all 30 of them have come because they have the flu. Doctors are human, nobody's going to investigate potential pneumonia 30 times a day every day for 6 months. So doctors don't: someone comes in and is coughing, they say it's flu, on to the next patient. If the person really has pneumonia, they'll come back when it gets worse.

- Clinics are overbooked. I don't know if it's licensing, GDP, artificial scarcity, cost regulations or what, but doctors probably don't actually have time to investigate anyways.

- Doctors don't receive any rigorous continuing education. I'm sure there's some restrictions, but I've gone into doctors in the last year and gotten the "stress causes ulcers" explanation for what turned out to be food sensitivity issues (there was no visible ulcer mind you, so it was concluded that it was an invisible ulcer). Slow, gradual maintenance, and heavy reading are hard things that humans are necessarily bad at.

- Patients don't want to hear the truth. Lifestyle changes, the fact that nothing can be done, there's no pills to cure you, etc. Even if doctors could give a proper diagnosis, it could end up being bad PR so doctors are conditioned away from it.

- Doctors don't follow up - they get absolutely no feedback whether most of their treatments actually work. Patients also don't come back when their issue is resolved, but even if they do doctors don't care. Skin issue, doctor prescribed steroidal cream, redness disappeared, doctor declared I was cured, redness came back worse a week later. As a scientific field, there's no excuse for anything but evidence based medicine, but I haven't seen a single doctor even make an attempt to improve things statistically.

I've heard things like, doing tests for each patient would be prohibitively expensive (yes, but it should at least be an option and patients can pay for it) or the amount of things medicine can actually cure today is very small so the ROI would be low for additional work (yes, but in the long term the information could result in furthering research).

I think these are obvious and unavoidable issues (at least with the current system), but at the same time if a doctor who ostensibly became a doctor out of a desire to help people willingly supports this system I think they share some of the blame.

I don't trust AI. Part of me goes, well what if the AI suddenly demands I have some crazy dental surgery? And then I go, wait, the last dentist I went to said I need some crazy dental surgery. That none of the other 3 dentists I went to after that even mentioned. And as you said an AI will at least consider more info...

So I do support this as well. I'd like to have an AI do a proper diagnosis, then maybe a human rubber stamp it or handle escalation if I think there's something wrong...

Sinus infection?

most doctors - like most mechanics - are the worst debuggers in humankind.

I once went to the UCSF er 2x in the same weekend for an issue. On day one, I was told to take some ibuprofen and drink water - nothing to worry about. I went home, knowing this was not a solution. Day two I returned to the ER because my situation had gotten 10x worse. The (new) doctor on day 2 said "we need to resolve this asap" and I was moved into a room where they gave me a throat-numbing breating apparatus and then shoved a massive spinal tap needle in my throat to drain 20ml of fluid from behind my tonsil. I happened to bump into the doctor from the previous day on my way out and gave him a nice tap on the shoulder saying, thanks for all the help, doc. UCSF tried to bill me 2x for this combined event, but I told them to get fucked due to the negligence on day one. The billing issue disappeared.

I had a Jeep that I took into the shop 2, 3, 4 times for a crazy issue. The radio, seat belt chime, and emergency flashers all become possessed at the same time. Using my turn signal would cause the radio to cut in and out. My seat belt kept saying it was disconnected. No one could fix it. What was the issue? A loose ground on the chassis that all of those different systems were sharing. https://www.wranglerforum.com/threads/2015-rubicon-with-elec...

These are just two examples from my life, but there are countless. I just do everything myself now, because I trust no one else.

... at the same time ... OpenAI is a business with limited financial success relative to expenses and insurance companies are thirsty for improved models. Currently the entire might of the US Government is on Central American misadventures so you think they're gonna stop them?

> Most doctor advice boil down to drink some water and take a painkiller, while glancing for 15 seconds at my medical history before they dedicate me 7 minutes, after which they move to yet another patient.

Most of the time, that's the correct approach. However, you can actually do better by avoiding painkillers, since they can have side effects. There are illnesses that are easily diagnosable and have established medications; doctors typically prescribe what pharmaceutical companies have demonstrated to them. But the rest of the "illnesses," which make up the majority, are pretty much still a mystery.

For the most part, neither you nor your doctor can do much about these. Modern medicine often feels like just a painkiller subscription.

Is it serious pain? Lasting a very specific amount of time? In one side of your face only? From zero to 10 pretty quickly?

Doctors are usually just normal people that had the means, memory, drive and endurance to get through an exclusive education that will guarantee them a life in relative affluence and maximized adoration.

Connected thinking, interest in helping and extensive depth or breadth of knowledge in anything beyond what they need for their chosen specializations day to day work are rare and coincidental.