Doctors block? I bet they do! What about, "I have no idea what's wrong with her"or "Why don't you try this?"and "If this doesn't work we'll try something else"
HA! ^=^

I blame this obsession women have with learning! It results in softening of the brain & an inability to conceive. Enough already! To your embroidery, woman & leave the learning to the men!

Oh I hear you!!!
For me it is constant struggle to keep up with and balance the demands of domesticity - the house - my commitments to my organizations and my own private interests. Something is always dominant causing the others to be neglected.
I am always convinced I can give time to all three each day but my energies falter and something has to give.

But as Scarlet says - tomorrow is another day.
Or maybe it should be Rhett - Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn!
Live each day to the fullest no matter which part of it you are living.

About Doctor's block. The N Y Times Sunday magazine has a feature about strange illnesses that doctors have given up on until one of them has an "ah ha!" moment. They seemingly often have blocks. Not very reassuring.

can't resist two "stories"
1. When I was in college many years ago they had us read - for some unknown reason as this was a women's college - a book called The Intellectual Life (translated from the French). What I remember is the author's advice that it was good to have a wife so that there would be domestic tranquility and healthy nourishment.

2. A number of years ago we went for a week's vacation on St Martin. A fantastic brand new place. A series of villas grouped around a common swimming pool ( A number of these groupings on the plot and all with a view of the sea) Each villa had its own HVAC & water system. We arrived and discovered our unit had no hot water. "Mon Dieu!" (this was the French side) They would send some one at once! Each day the workers arrived. They took the water heater apart. Parts spread All over the hall. "Ah quell demage! This island does not have the part we need." "Mais Non, the part it has not yet arrived." But each day they came. They tinkered and left. Cold showers were not really that cold and this was the tropics in winter. And the shower had a window that looked out to the sea. Was hot water really necessary? Well, we did finally have hot water - six days later on the last day of our stay.

I know what you mean about wanting your surroundings to be nice - I am the same way. But I hate doing housework. My husband is wonderful that way - he just pitches in.

For me, doing anything artistic or creative always seems to lose out. I know, I really do know, that has to change. But all the other needs just seem so much more immediate - I mean, my family expects to eat every day!

Being artistic and being able to clean house do not seem to go together unless one seems able to use the drudge time to daydream about the artistic while doing the necessary. But that's what they tell me because I am hopeless as a housekeeper and so get to employ someone else as a necessary evil to keep the dust devils at bay.

I am afraid my respect for Doctors is pretty low. I think Doctors are often crap but just wouldn't admit to ignorance or having an off day.

I am feeling a bit blocked myself at the moment. I've been meaning to do a particular thing for months now, something that needs doing, and keep finding excuses not to, or find something else which I will just get done first... I've finally realised that 'just making myself do it' is totally failing as an approach and have started trying to delve into exactly what the roots of my resistance are. Unfortunately they appear to be complex and fairly deep rooted. So I am going to need to do some soul gardening. Pulling up the weeds and untangling their roots from the plants I want to grow, so they stop sucking the nourishment out of the ground of my being...

I do agree that there are problems with the system and it must be hard for individual doctors to rebel against the ethos of the profession... Training appears to have improved somewhat in regard to realising that doctors need people skills. I also appreciate that it must be really difficult for them to keep up to date with all the advances in knowledge and practice across such a wide range of conditions they deal with, but again, continuing professional development is now a part of what is expected. It must also be incredibly stressful a lot of the work they do, the critical importance of the decisions they make, and the suffering and pain they are faced with... and the shortness of appointments on which they are expected to diagnose and prescribe/give advice is ridiculous. Plus many doctors, esp in hospitals, work insane hours. So its not surprising many of them turn to the bottle or the pills...I am also aware of the power of the pharmaceutical industry and how hard it must be to not be sucked in by the lobbying and bribery that goes on...So I am not unsympathetic. BUT ... !

In regard to alternative (as opposed to crackpot) methods of healing and care... yes, exactly. But its even more basic than that I think. As a therapist, part of my professionalism is knowing the limits of my expertise, of my knowledge and skills, and knowing when to suggest a client sees someone else. Alongside that however, I do have the ability to give some basic advice about things like diet, posture, exercise, nutrition, and various simple aspects of lifestyle advice, whether it is making sure you have a good mattress and computer chair if you are having a bad back, drinking cranberry juice if you have a UTI, or avoiding dairy (lol) if you have sinusitis. I would expect every doctor to do the same, (and this is not exactly 'alternative medicine' here) but far too often I have seen doctors fail to give what I would see as extremely basic health advice, AND fail to refer onto a specialist (eg a nutritionist, physiotherapist, etc) or simply a nurse who is able to give this kind of advice. That makes me very "grrr, argh!!!" when someone is not given even the most basic, well evidenced information to help themselves get better and to help prevent a problem from recurring. Worse than that, people are actually told 'there is nothing else you can do' which really gets me spitting! Thats not science versus crackpot, thats just ignorance + arrogance.

Oh and enigmatic... yes... well your LJ is public methinks? I may expand in my own journal at some point...

I was just catching up on your LJ - I'm so behind - and something you said made me think that you might appreciate this: http://www.columbia.edu/~sss31/rainbow/wife.html

It's a piece by Judy Brady which I read it a few years ago, and I think you'll get a kick out of it :-) It's called 'I Want A Wife' and it was written in the 60's here in the States.