The Vascular System: Unblocking Conduits to Our Rivers Within

The motivation for this paper is based on the assumption that certain patient and health professional users' experiences can serve as a mirror or a model, whether positive or negative, for other patients and health professional users/learners. This narrative presents a patient's experience of his complicated and ad hoc journey through the diagnoses and treatment of his vascular system disorder. It then tries to connect this with health professional opinions and other patient experiences toward the collective goal of ‘getting a proper diagnosis and management of vascular disease.' Interspersed are professional narratives in the form of clinical evidence and expert comments towards clinical problem solving around vascular system disorders. User-driven health care implies shared decision making based upon collaborative partnerships between patients and health professionals. This narrative indicates that power imbalances in knowledge, particularly when the patient is ill and vulnerable, can lead to inappropriate and even harmful treatments, when profit appears to be the main driver of the medical industrial complex.