First, let me say that I am not a medical expert.  I'm not even in the
medical profession, but I have a better than average of biology and
keep up to date with health news.

The condition of diarrhea really brought this up.  I ended up in the
emergency room with quite a bit of abdominal pain and diarrhea early
Friday morning.  The doctor ordered a urine test and an X-ray.  Why
would he not get a stool sample?  He said that the urine test would
diagnose a bacterial infection, but isn't it possible that a localized
infection could be isolated in the colon?  Wouldn't a stool sample be
useful anyway?  For instance, if whatever bugs were in there had
altered the PH in my colon, wouldn't that be useful information (so
that I could perhaps alter my diet)?  What use is the X-ray anyway?
For that matter, why have I never had to give a stool sample in a
routine physical?

I know.  I know.  People are supposed to be responsible for their own
health care.  I should have asked these questions at the time, but it
was 6 AM.

I guess that I should suggest tests to the doctors, but with my doc,
I'm not sure that would do much good.  I use Kaiser and while some of
the medical staff seem to be pretty competent, mostly they just seem
to run you in and out pretty quickly.  My physician there seems dumb
as a rock.  Kaiser has put these networked workstations in the
doctor's office and she just looks up whatever my symptoms are and
searches for them among the Kaiser medical documents in the system
(these look to me more like Web MD rather than academic
publications).  I usually try to get her to explain why she's doing
what she's doing in more detail but the answers aren't usually
detailed enough.  It's like she's performing medicine in this little
Kaiser world where all of the medical information has been prefiltered
by the people who put together the Kaiser website.

I'm guessing that other people who have HMOs have this experience?

The doctor gave me bentyl which I discovered relaxed the smooth
muscles of the GI tract.  (Can anyone explain the biochemoical
mechanism, btw?)  I realize that it relieves the symptoms a bit and
I'm greatful, but how can the doctor know if if that is really the
best treatment without actually knowing for sure what sort of bugs are
causing this?  Why does the medical system diagnose people with
drugs?  What I mean by that is the "here, try this. If it doesn't
work, I must have guessed wrong, so come back in a few days."  (In
this case, the doctor did a couple of tests, but that's not always the
case.)

The whole system is of course fixed by the drug companies.  The
treatments that make them the most money are those that cover up
symptoms, and those which are aimed at chronic conditions without
curing them.  I mean bentyl makes sense as temporary pain relief for
me, but if I had chronic IBS (maybe I do), then shouldn't other steps
be taken?  This is the secomd stomach issie that I've had in the last
few months and the dr didn't address where it would have come from or
what sort of diet I should be on or whether treatments like yogurt
enemas or even fecal enemas might be reasonable?

The dr did not inquire as to the color of my feces (it is green).  I
have seen pages that suggest that green feces indicate a lack of good
bacteria and that likely means that a fecal enema or yogurt enema
would be useful, but It seems that many millions of people must just
be taking this smooth muscle relaxant instead of taking this therapy
instead of addressing the root cause (by the way would those things be
helpful?).  Are there active bacterial products that can be dissolved
in an enema without me having to track down baby sh.t?

No offense to you guys, but I'd love to hear about  these options from
my doctor rather than having to read them on newsgroups.