Wife had a precancerous duodenal lesion and the surgeons at Hopkins did the classic Whipple, removing the entire duodenum which is the first portion of the small intestine, 1/2 of the stomach, the head of the pancreas, and the bile duct. Post surgery she really suffered for four months and was talking suicide, but in the end it gave her another 16 years of life before dementia claimed her. She was lucky because the team at Hopkins did nothing but Whipples which has a high mortality and morbidity risk. They were rated among the best in the world. That poor soul had one physical impairment after another and with the help of US medicine beat them all until dementia arrived.
Ah, US medicine, indeed! Many, many prescription drugs have been linked to dementia. Anesthesia has been linked to dementia. Do your own research. Look up Versed, one of the most common anesthetics. I had it, once, as a young guy, and I hallucinated for two days. Very scary, very disorienting. Keep in mind, as you read up on the subject, that anesthesiologists have the big bucks to try and quash studies that are not favorable to their mega-billion dollar profession. Many studies out there are careful to word their conclusions in a very ambiguous way so as not to draw the ire of the anesthesiologist groups out there.
Interesting you should mention prescription drugs and dementia, @Trevalius Guyus My mother had dementia and for a while they thought that the Zyprexa they had her on might be the cause of it. (They have since linked this drug to causing death in those with dementia.) To further the "modern American medicine" theme... She initially went into the hospital from the dementia. A sister stayed there with her to monitor things. One day the orderly comes in with a tray of meds, and my sister noticed that one of them looked different than normal. Doctors were trying to wean her off of the zyprexa and had been giving her a 0.5mg dose. The guy walks in with a cup full of pills, to include a 5.0mg dose...10x the prescribed amount of the very med they thought might be the problem! So our mother then goes into assisted living. That same sister is there in her shared room, when the orderly walks in with a tray full of pills, walks up to my mother's roommate, and says "Time for your medication, Mrs. Brunner." He was gonna give my mother's roommate her medications!!! But drugs must be dispensed so that invoices may be sent. It's the stuff of paranoid nightmares. Fortunately she had good insurance, so we got her back home with a live-in until she passed away a couple of years later.
Latest figures show that about 251,000 people a year die in the US due to medical mistakes. I was prescribed a drug that I'm allergic to, under its generic name. The PA never bothered to read my chart, the pharmacist assured me it was not the drug I'm allergic to! If not for the internet and my memory of details concerning the med, I might have been in for some serious trouble!
My wife had multiple surgeries requiring anesthesia and yes I suspect that her dementia might be related to being put under so many times. Problem is those surgeries were absolutely necessary. I still maintain that American medicine contributed to prolonging her life.
I would agree with the benefits of American medicine. If we were that assured that American medicine were such a net-negative, we would stop availing ourselves of it. But the patient still has to be informed and be in charge. Regarding dementia...my mother never had surgery, at least in my lifetime (she was about 30 when I was born), but it's possible that could be a contributing factor for those repeatedly subject to it. She did all those "keep her mind active" things they say to do as part of her normal life. I know she had high cholesterol, and took heart meds in her later years.
Every time I'm prescribed a med, I go online before I take the first dose and read about it. I read about the side effects and I read about potential interactions with other meds and with OTC pain relievers (just in case i should get a headache.) Before the internet, I kept a PDR at home. I think the infuriating thing about situations such as yours is that some of the gatekeepers who failed in their mission shall continue to dismiss the patient's input because those gatekeepers are "the experts." Your story of that pharmacist is frightening. They are there to prevent that kind of stuff. I've always relied on them for advice.
Wife was well-versed in medicine and made her own choices until the latter stages of frontotemporal dementia. She began life with thymus ca and was thus behind most of us in the health realm. She could have refused surgeries and died at a much younger age.
So many of us have no idea the depth of gratitude we should have for the comparatively good health we enjoy.