The Bravest Thing You Can Do Is Ask Me A Question

She sat across from me with her arms folded.

I’d known her for six years. I’d watched her wound close once already, watched her get her life back, watched her walk out of my office without the boot for the first time in eight months. So when she told me she wasn’t going to take the antibiotic I’d just prescribed, I didn’t argue.

I asked her why.

“I saw something online,” she said. “It said these medications just feed the pharmaceutical machine. That doctors push them because we’re paid to. That there are natural ways to heal that nobody tells you about.”

She wasn’t stupid. She wasn’t even wrong about everything. And I want to tell you something I don’t think enough of my colleagues will say out loud:

I understood exactly why she believed it.

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Let me be honest with you, because you deserve honesty more than you deserve comfort.

The distrust is earned.

There was an opioid crisis, and it didn’t happen by accident. There have been studies buried, prices gouged, communities used and discarded. If you walked into my office carrying suspicion, I would never roll my eyes at it. That suspicion has roots, and the roots are real, and pretending otherwise would insult both of us.

So when I say what I’m about to say, I need you to hear that it comes from someone who is *on your side.*

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Here is what I’ve learned after more than twenty years of treating wounds that other people gave up on.

There is a difference between *skepticism* and *being sold to.*

Skepticism is yours. It belongs to you. It’s the voice that says *prove it to me, explain it to me, show me the evidence.* I love that voice. I want that voice in my exam room every single day. It makes me a better doctor.

But there’s another voice out there now, and it’s wearing skepticism like a costume.

It’s the influencer who tells you your blood pressure pill is poison — right before linking you to the supplement they happen to sell. It’s the podcaster who calls antibiotics a scam while your infection quietly spreads up your leg. They are not brave truth-tellers. They have never examined you. They have never seen your chart. They will never sit with you in the hospital at 2 a.m. when the thing they talked you out of treating becomes the thing that takes your foot.

They are selling you your own fear, and charging you for the privilege.
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In my world, we have a phrase: *the wound that doesn’t declare itself.*

Sometimes the skin looks fine. Intact. Healthy, even. And underneath, the tissue is already dying. The body hides it. By the time the damage shows on the surface, the easy window has closed.

That’s what bad information does to good people.

You stop the medication. The surface looks fine. You feel fine. And underneath, something is changing that you can’t see yet. By the time it announces itself, the gentle options are gone, and now we’re having a much harder conversation than the one we could have had.

I have amputated limbs that started as something small. Something treatable. Something that a frightened person was talked out of treating by a stranger on a screen.

I will never get used to it. I don’t want to.
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So here is what I’m asking of you. And I’m asking, not telling — because the moment I start telling you what to do with your own body, I’ve become exactly the kind of doctor you were right to distrust.

Bring your questions *to me.* Bring all of them. Bring the ones you’re embarrassed about, the ones that feel rude, the ones you read at midnight and couldn’t shake. Put them on the table between us and let’s look at them together.

You are not a difficult patient when you do this. You are my favorite kind of patient.

Below is a list. Print it. Fold it into your pocket. Bring it to whoever your doctor is — me or anyone else. These are the questions that turn you from a passenger into a partner.
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Bring This to Your Next Appointment

Understanding what’s happening to you

- Can you explain my diagnosis to me like I’m someone you love — plain words, no jargon?
- What’s the actual evidence behind it? What else could it be?
- What happens if we wait and watch before doing anything?

About any medication you recommend

- What is this supposed to do, and how does it work inside me?
- What are the real side effects — not the worst-case scare, the *likely* ones for someone like me?
- How strong is the research behind this?
- Do you have any financial connection to this drug or the company that makes it? *(You are allowed to ask. A good doctor will respect you for it.)*
- Is there a cheaper or generic version that works just as well?
- And the big one: **What happens to me if I don’t take it?**

About other paths

- Are there real, evidence-based lifestyle or dietary changes that could help?
- If I want to try a gentler approach first, what warning signs tell us it isn’t working — *before* it’s too late?

About the thing you read online

- I saw [specific claim]. Tell me straight — what does the evidence actually say?
- I’m worried about being pushed toward something. Walk me through how this was decided.
- What would you do if I were your own family?

About staying in this together

- Can we write my concerns into my chart, so they’re on the record?
- If I choose to decline, what’s our plan to catch trouble early?
- Who can you point me to — a real source, a specialist — to help me think this through?
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Now let me tell you how it ended with the woman with the folded arms.

I didn’t lecture her. I answered every question she had. I told her what the medication did and why I believed in it. I told her, plainly, what I’d seen happen to people who’d let infections like hers go. And then I told her the truth: *it’s your body, and the choice is yours, and whatever you decide, I’m still your doctor and my door is still open.*

She uncrossed her arms.

She took the prescription. Not because I won an argument — I didn’t try to win one. She took it because, for the first time, someone had given her enough real information to make the choice herself, instead of having the choice made for her by people who’d never met her.

That’s the whole thing. That’s all of it.

You don’t need to stop questioning. Please, never stop questioning. But bring those questions into a room with someone who is accountable to you — to a licensing board, to the evidence, to the standard of care, to *you* — instead of someone accountable only to their own sponsorships.

The relationship between you and your doctor, when it’s working right, is one of the most powerful healing forces on this earth. It’s older than any of the technology, stronger than any of the noise. It runs on trust, and trust runs both ways.

You have more power here than you think. The bravest, most powerful thing you can do isn’t to refuse care, and it isn’t to blindly accept it.

It’s to walk in, sit down, look me in the eye, and ask me a question.

I will always have time for that.

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Dr. Eric Lullove, DPM, is a board-certified podiatric surgeon and Chief Medical Officer of the West Boca Center for Wound Healing. He writes about wound care, healthcare policy, and the human beings on both sides of the exam table. He is also the Contributing Medical Editor for Blue Amp Media. You can find all the articles at blueamp.co and here on Substack.

*If this reached you, send it to someone you love who’s facing a hard decision. And print the checklist — it’s yours.*