Medical advice threads and economic realities.

I understand why DU has a very good rule of locking threads that seem to be seeking medical advice and insisting the OP see a doctor. Liability is real, Internet doctors are often fake, etcetera.

But another very real truth is that, for a lot of people (self included) telling them to see a doctor is not only not helpful, it's pretty cruel. There are so many people nowadays living paycheck-to-paycheck (if they're lucky enough to have a paycheck) with no insurance.

There is simply no way I could see a doctor now. The couple hundred dollars it costs just to take up space in an office would make my rent check bounce. I have no insurance, and my two benefit-less part-time jobs barely pay the bills--and yet, because I have those two jobs, I am not poor enough to qualify for government medical care.

A lot of people are in my same boat. So why can't we share what little harm-reduction knowledge we have amongst ourselves, if it helps?

In the years I have been here, I have seen people describing symptoms of very serious diseases being told to try things that would either be useless at best or fatal at worst. There are times when seeking medical advice, no matter how inconvenient it is, is safer than taking advice from well-meaning but unqualified advice from strangers. I've been in the no-insurance/little-money boat myself; at the time, I also had cancer. I found out then that if one lives near a teaching hospital, it is almost always possible to get into a program there for free/drastically reduced cost care on a non-emergent basis - or emergent basis, if need be.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topics&forum=245

because some of us are in the same boat, too (myself included.)

However, you might consider the Free Clinic route, too: http://freeclinics.us/index.php

:D