And may the owners of the dog know best how to handle this so as to prevent a recurrence.

What sucks is that the dog owners are B's husband's aunt and uncle. She's an old dog for her breed, so sadly I think that time is going to run out for her simply because she's a large dog. Which is sad because I have met the dog and she's a sweetheart of a dog.

I've been considering how to wade into this, but I think I will not.

I think the same - but I do research medical sociology, health inequalities and disability. I think the key thing to remember in this kind of debate is that critiquing structures doesn't mean critiquing the individuals within those structures. As a teacher, I've heard a lot of "my teacher was crap and made me lose my self-esteem forever." I wouldn't take that personally, much as I might be tempted to. There *are* a lot of health inequalities in our societies, and those can affect people directly and personally. Aaaand now I'm being dragged back to my ridiculously complicated life. "Remember when things used to be nice and boring?" "No."

Aims, I should have said how horrible for your friend. I have a teeny dog who doesn't even play bite, but he doesn't like kids. He will tolerate, but clearly doesn't like (they pet too hard, and he has to hide from them). As friendly as he is, if one of them chased him or cornered him, I can see him growling.

Poor everyone involved!

And yeah, I think when the ranter has hurt someone's feelings it is, if not incumbent, at least polite to apologize and explain that it was exaggeration.

No, what I meant was over-explain ahead of time, in the event that someone reading might know someone who is in some way related to something mentioned in the rant. As in, "I in no way wish to disparage any medical professionals anyone here may know currently or at some time in the future or may have known in the past, but the experiences I've had with doctors have been so uniformly demoralizing that I wish to avoid all doctors and would rather die in my own backyard because I think that doctors are evil, though I am sure that someone here knows or knows of a non-evil doctor or may know one in the future."

Kind of makes the point of having a rant be, well, pointless.

I didn't say that. I said I can see why lisah and ND are upset, and I think (though even they may disagree) that they deserve more than, "You shouldn't be upset and here's why..."

And it's also worth noting that if you have medical professionals in the family or your social circle, you are, by and large, going to have better medical experiences. You will dodge some jerks entirely and get better treatment from many of the ones you're stuck with.

Same is true, to greater and lesser extents, with just about any profession. The teachers in my family had better insight and coping techniques and some favoritism from jerks(if only to protect said jerk's rep) in their kids' educational challenges. The lawers know the good lawyers. Tailors know good tailors. Mechanics know good mechanics. Clergy know good clergy. Cops know the good cops. (It seems one's best approach is to have a large family and/or social circle).

So... in a way saying "Well, I know what ______ is REALLY like because my (state affiliation here) is a _______" has some inherent inaccuracy. You know what GOOD _______ is really like and you've been spared a lot of shit.

I don't think they're saying their experiences with the medical profession is better, though I could be wrong. I read that they were saying, "You're kinda calling my friend/family member a jerk, whether or not you mean to, and that hurts. Please stop."

Also, they said once before that it hurt when people said those things, and yet people continued on without acknowledging that.

thanks, DJ. Yes, exactly.

Eh, I have lots of medical professionals in my family, but that has no bearing on who's been available for me when I've needed to see a doctor.

What it has done, however, is given me the vocabulary to speak to specialists at least. I'm still kind of crap at talking to GPs. Specialists, I'm more comfortable with, because they're looking at something specific, and I know what they need to know and speak their language.

GPs... tend to tell me what I already know, although the last one was really sweet and earnest about it.

Hubby and I have been blessed with very good doctors. The only idiot we ever had was a new resident at the walk-in clinic who was kind of baffled by a skin ailment and tried to dazzle us with Latin bullshit. "Oh, this is a case of bipedal monomanual dermititis, we should be able to take care of this." Hubby and I looked at each other. "Two foot," I said, and Hubby said, "One hand," we looked at the doctor: "skin damage?" The doctor paled: "You know Latin?" "Yes." He scurried out and his supervisor came back a few minutes later to finish talking to us. I think the resident couldn't cope with poor people with educations.

I compare that guy to the very top-flight electrocardiologist who accidentally punched a hole through the side of Hubby's heart and who personally got Hubby's stuff from his room and hand carried it to the new room in Cardiac Critical Care at 2 AM. I always liked him, he had a Buddha shrine in his operating room.