postgradinterntainment:

“While he may be an excellent doctor in many respects, Dr. Bailey is also, in some ways, a perfect example of what is wrong with medicine. I was just a number to him (and if he saw thirty-five patients a day, as he told me, that means I was one of a very large number). He is a by-product of a defective system that forces neurologists to spend five minutes with X number of patients a day to maintain their bottom line. It’s a bad system. Dr. Bailey is not the exception to the rule. He is the rule. I’m the one who is an exception. I’m the one who is lucky. I did not slip through a system that is designed to miss cases just like my own – cases that require time and patience and individual attention. Sure, when I talked to him, I was shocked that he knew nothing about the disease, but that wasn’t the really shocking part; I realize now that my survival, my recovery – my ability to write this book – is the shocking part.”

— Susannah Cahalan in Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness