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Person Asks “Doctors, What Was The Worst Thing You’ve Seen In A Patient That Another Doctor Overlooked?”, And 30 Folks Deliver
Few people will ever be enthusiastic about hospitals. Mostly because, in some places, they charge an arm and a leg for their services. But also it's because it's where people go to fight for their lives, and there is always a non-zero chance that they will not make it.
But stories have to be told. Not everyone truly understands just how real it gets when someone is admitted to the hospital. Like, for instance, when a doctor overlooks a diagnosis. Whether ignores it, or disregards it, or simply doesn't care to look for it. It sometimes becomes scarier than the diagnosis itself.
Folks on Reddit have been sharing stories of how they, as doctors or as patients or as someone who knew people who experienced the worst things that another doctor overlooked. So, fair warning, this list is not for the faint of heart.
With that said, scroll down, upvote and comment, and share your own stories, if you have any, of how one doctor picked up the slack where the other didn't bother in the comment section below.
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#1
My best friend was in her late twenties and was feeling constant irritation in her stomach. She went to see several doctors over the course of almost three years, and they all dismissed her saying she had an irritable bowel. She would try a new diet every few months, but nothing helped.
One day she calls me and tells me she broke her ribs. She didn't know how it happened, but she started having horrible pain and her doctor said her ribs must be fractured.
Long story short, it wasn't fractured ribs. At some point when the pain became too much to bear, she went to the ER and got a CT. Turns out she had stage 4 colon cancer with 4" tumors in her abdomen that were compressing her organs and causing the pain. She died a few months later.
She'd been seeing doctors about her symptoms for three years. If one of them had taken her seriously and sent her to get a colonoscopy she'd probably still be alive.
For the record this was not in the US. Any doctor could have sent my friend to a colonoscopy, but I guess it was easier to write her off. The cancer may have killed her, but the reason for her death was apathy.
Monday 3 years ago (edited)
Stomach issues? Irritation? It's just your period, suck it up buttercup! /s
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Powerful Katrinka 3 years ago
This exact same thing happened to my sister. After years of being shooed out of doctor's offices, and dismissed by ER doctors, she was finally diagnosed with stage 4 cancer throughout her entire GI tract. She died two weeks later.
Lula Fae 3 years ago
Read a post written by a mortuary assistant. Woman who had died had complained of abdominal pain for years. She was dismissed over and over again, even told it was in her head and sent to mental health teams. When they opened her up she was completely wrecked inside by endometriosis scars. Poor woman had been in agony for years and none believed her.
Adira Bennett 3 years ago
I read that same piece. Most of the time, endometriosis doesn't kill, but it absolutely can. The inflammation can cause lesions and growths that damage whichever organs are nearby, which can include the kidneys, the colon, and in some cases even the lungs.
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Leslie Harris 3 years ago
Females in pain are always ignored, "it must be in her head". We need to be our own advocate.
Sensitive Issues 3 years ago
My Best friend just died this same way. dyeing of being female is a thing.
Leslie Harris 3 years ago
same, friend died in childbirth complications because they ignored her before birth when she said she didn't feel well, "first time mom, this is normal..."
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Winter Eleven 3 years ago
Always make the doctor write in your medical records that they decided the diagnosis without further testing. Always. It saved me when i had pneumonia and wouldn't leave the doc until she either send me to do a blood test or write in the file that i was sent home for having a cold and no tests were done.
Id row 3 years ago
Doctors mostly likely would have dismissed her in the US, too. Our health care system plays the odds like Vegas and seeing a 20something with those symptoms would have had them all saying IBS, too. They don't push for colonoscopies unless you're older and male. They write women off as emotional and don't take them as seriously. And god forbid if she was a little overweight, they would have told her to lose weight and she'd feel better. You have to be aggressive and demanding to get proper treatment here. I had to fight with my doctor for him to issue me an MRI. He said it was just muscle pain. I said it was more than that. Turns out it was 5 herniated discs. He was still irritated I wanted that MRI.
Kitten Dog Mom 3 years ago
I've had migrains for years and years , hada MRI , found white spots on the brain and still have headaches and no one knows what the spots are.. I ask and I get " I don't know " even from the neurologist...
Milady Blue 3 years ago
Find another neurologist, and take the MRI results with you. Find another radiologist to look at the MRI results. Make a fuss! Don't stop until you get answers.
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RELATED:
#2
I'm the patient but it's an important story to tell. From the age of about 17 I start getting regular abdominal pain every day and terrible gut problems. I can't seem to eat much anymore. I get fluctuating diarrhoea and constipation. Menstruation gets more and more painful. I start losing enormous amounts of blood despite being incredibly small (less than 5ft). Now you would think any doctor worth her salt could figure out it's a gynecological problem. But my doctor (a woman by the way) at the time insists it anxiety and says she "wouldn't bother testing for or treating a gynecological problem unless I was older and having trouble conceiving". Over the next few years my gut and uterus symptoms slowly deteriorate. I get bounced around the system to dozens of different specialists. I get told it's just stress, anxiety, are you pregnant? ARe yOu SuUuUrE yOuRE NoT prEGnAnt???, every woman has painful periods, it's just constipation take this over the counter product, etc. etc. Meanwhile my gut function slowly grinds to a halt. A functional gut test took 6 hours to pass an egg sandwich when it should have taken 90 minutes. I weighed only 40kg. It get's so bad I even start losing bowel control. No treatment seems to work. I was 24 and unable to work because I was literally uncontrollably sh*tting my pants. Doctors suggest I should maybe seek therapy and suggest I could be exaggerating Anyway one day I see a new GP for some regular sexual health tests but get an abnormal pap smear. Within 2 weeks I go in for an exploratory laparoscopy to rule out cervical cancer only to discover I am absolutely riddled with endometriosis. On my bowel. On my cervix. On my perineum. On some ligaments. Ovarian cyst the size of a tennis ball. It was even in my gall bladder. With excisions + treatment I had my gut function back within 3 months. I will never be able to have children. If that woman when I was 17 had just done her goddamn job I wouldn't have lost 7 years of my life, my gall bladder, my fertility and my mental health
Ozacoter 3 years ago
This. Endometriosis and mensteuation pain is more often than not ignored by doctors. If you feel sick and the doctor ignores you keep going to new ones. Google your symptoms. Dont give up until they treat you. I am disabled and my life is ruined because doctors ignored my textbook endometriosis symptoms.
Kristy P 3 years ago
I had pain in my lower abdomen after gall bladder surgery and was told that "scar tissue doesn't grow down, it grows up" (not taking into account I have mild Ehlers Danlos and my body LOOOOVES to make scar tissue). Nothing was showing up on scans & I was turned away from several doctors before my gynecologist offered to do an exploratory lap surgery since it was " in his area" anyway. He found 3 feet of scar tissue wrapped around my bowel and found lots of endometriosis. Easily solved, but 10 months waiting in pain for someone to take action.
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Minath 3 years ago
My daughter is going through something similar, she has always had problems with her periods, she has had ultrasounds that show cysts on her ovaries but told everything is fine. Went to see gynaecologist who told her everyone has bad period. She now refuses to go to another doctor because her mental health has been destroyed by being accused of attention seeking. Once again a woman is ignored and expected to deal with everything herself.
Evil Little Thing 3 years ago
I have words that can help you! I also have ovarian cysts - polycystic ovary syndrome. 16% of American women have it! A lot of idiot doctors will just say it's not a problem unless you want to get pregnant, but THEY ARE WRONG. It causes a bunch of other health issues such as insulin resistance. It should be treated with METFORMIN and SPIRONOLACTONE. These drugs are cheap and any doctor can prescribe them. Ask your primary care physician to give her a check up. They won't need to poke around in private areas, at most they will do a blood test for LH/FSH levels, but probably with her medical history they won't need to. Her period problems should be sorted out in 6 months or so.
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royal_antelope 3 years ago
i thought of endometriosis when i read the first two sentences. this isa case of being mistreated because of being female. happens so often
Louise B 3 years ago
I thought that too. I remember having a sleepover chat with my friends about period pain, I said, 'Urgh! Yeah, you know it's on the way when you start getting those shooting pains in your legs, vomiting and feeling like your insides will fall out every time you visit the bathroom. Then you know the pain is coming for 8 days. Annoying!' They all turned to me, horrified and said, 'No, that's not normal!' It was only 23 years later that I was diagnosed with endometriosis after an unrelated surgery.
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The leech 3 years ago
I once had a six week long period. They ran multiple tests. Couldn't find anything. And basically told me, we don't know and were done checking. I had to get an implant to stop the bleeding. I still have no idea what was wrong with me.
Impetus 3 years ago
I had that. It was probably related to the polycystic ovary syndrome in my case. And yeah, it's really, really hard to get treated for gynecological problems unless you say "I'm trying to have a baby and I can't". I started just telling doctors we were wanting to try and conceive in the next six months or so.
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John Topper 3 years ago
I had this one figured out after about half of the first paragraph. And I am male. And not a doctor. It wasn't a hard one, your doctors were just garbage.
Disgruntled Pelican 3 years ago
It took me 8 years and 10 specialists across 4 health care systems to be diagnosed with Endo. Most doctors either don't know enough about it or don't care enough to learn. It's disgusting.
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Linda Marrs-Patterson 3 years ago
After going to several doctors (All Men) I get into see a woman OBGYN and within 10 minutes she told Me what was wrong with me. Took me 10 years. So from now on I only see women doctors because (sorry) men doctors don’t take women seriously because they think we are being dramatic
Ozacoter 3 years ago
Sadly it does not seem to be much better with female doctors. Half of my doctors were women and all but once treated me like c**p or were incompetent
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Tori Wilson 3 years ago
Oh my god. I know OP will likely never see my comment but I'm just so, so sorry this happened to her. Utterly heartbreaking.
Muriel Burrows 3 years ago
It took many, many years for a woman doctor to say to me, "You are obviously in pain. Let's find out what's causing it." Long story short, I was riddled with endometriosis. I had to have my uterus and ovaries removed. I was 39.
Eric Lafleur 3 years ago
I had a girlfriend who suffered from this. She was literally emmoraging for nearly one week and menstruating the next one. Third week was spent recuperating so she had only one week with an almost normal life. Luckily, she had a good gynecho who happened to be head of the department at the hospital. Unfortunately, she died of ovarian cancer.
#3
My husband had a weird dimpled spot on his back. Went to the dermatologist multiple times, was brushed off and told not to worry about it. Derm even burned off a nodule that was bothering him (at his belt line) but repeatedly said it was nothing and was visibly irritated with us for being anxious. We waited for nearly 10 years before going to another dermatologist - since our experience was so negative. Next derm immediately diagnosed what turned out to be a sarcoma which had 10 extra years to grow. My husband now has a 48 inch scar snaking down his back from the removal of the tumor and the reshaping of his back. I now have months of experience with wound drains, tunneling, bandages, triage and the laundry that comes with massive wound healing. I would like to take that first dermatologist who was so f*****g patronizing with our concerns and shove his face deeply into his own a*s.
Judy Reynolds 3 years ago
The sarcoma, not the first dermatologist's fate.
Load More Replies... Milady Blue 3 years ago
Alas, OP, you would first have to dig that dermatologist's head OUT of his a$$ before you could shove it back up there.
Tia Fannen 3 years ago
This is why I would never wait 10 years before getting a second opinion. If I have a problem, I keep going until I find a doctor who is concerned and begins trying to find the cause and the cure.
Id row 3 years ago
I've had awful experiences with dermatologists and don't trust them, which is unfortunate because I have a lot of skin issues. I wish I could find a competent one. I actually had one who wasn't paying attention and chatting with the nurse while digging a mole out. 3 things happened at once: I hear him say "Oops!" Then comes the searing pain, then I feel liquid running down my side (I was laying face down). I have a 2 inch scar from that. I snapped at him to pay f*cking attention to what he was doing.
Performingyak 3 years ago
Have a friend who went to 5 different docs to check out a suspicious mole before heading to the one she knew just liked to cut things out. Under the mole, which was cancerous, he found a schwannoma (rare nerve cancer her mother had passed from) So she was very happy that she trusted her gut. Trust your gut and push to get tests.. ask for "peace of mind" if nothing else.
Francis 3 years ago
48inch is around 121cm. whose back is that long?? thats longer than my legs... stil very concerning
Miriam L 3 years ago
The scar is described it as "snaking", so I imagine it doesn't go straight down his spine but instead curves and bends from everywhere they had to cut to remove the tumour. Idk why it would need to be so big, but that's how I understood it. The scar probably crosses over a large portion of the man's back.
Load More Replies... #4
Im not a doctor (Im a nurse, but not in medsurg).
My sister had her gallbladder out, routine surgery, and two days later woke up at 4 am in searing pain, went to the ER by ambulance. I met her there.
The ER docs were all apparently convinced she was a drug seeker and did not even conduct a physical exam beyond taking her vitals. They snowed her to shut her up because she was just yelling “help me! Help me! Im dying!” They did eventually do an MRI but said it was negative and sent her home. She didn’t want to leave, insisted something was terribly wrong, but they said they would call security and have her thrown out.
At this point I’d like to mention that she had no history of drug or alcohol abuse.
She continued to get worse at home and the next day went to a different hospital. They did a workup and found that the metal clip that closed off the bile duct had cut right through the tissue and she had a large bile leak that was literally burning all her abdominal organs. She had to have three surgeries to fix it and was hospitalized for 9 days. Left with chronic pain from adhesions and chemical burns.
When the new hospital finally acquired the MRI from the original ER visit, she was told that the leak was small but clearly visible in that image.
sinead 3 years ago
And even if she was a drug addict, alcoholic, mentally disabled person they needed to treat her!!! Shame on then for leaving her for dead and humiliating and treating her like trash. No one should ever be treated like that.
Kristy P 3 years ago (edited)
My cousin was a well documented drug seeker. When she turned up with an actual problem (cancer), the drs did not perform any tests until it was too late. I'm not sure where medical professionals should draw the line.. They couldn't test her every time she went in search of a prescription....
Load More Replies... Milady Blue 3 years ago
ER doctors need to stop assuming that EVERYONE who comes into the ER department is an addict, and treating them as such. People DO go to emergency rooms in need of actual medical treatment.
Kusotare 3 years ago
My entire extended family (8 aunt/uncle pairs and dozens of cousins) owed an apology to one uncle who was known for being a complainer. After he had open heart surgery, he complained for weeks about lingering pains. All of us, including his wife and kids, assumed he was just being his normal, bitchy self. He finally talked a doctor (not the surgeon who operated on him) into taking an x-ray. Turns out the surgeon left a small piece of wire in his chest, and he was legitimately in pain. A lot of pain. Sorry we didn't believe you, Uncle Bill.
#5
I work in EMS. We got a call for a female with leg pain. When we arrive on scene, this woman’s leg is three times the size of her other one, blue and purple, and she has no pulse in her foot. She fell on ice a few days prior and the urgent care didn’t do any X-rays, told her she had a sprain and gave her a walking boot. In reality, her tibia and fibula were both so badly fractured they were cutting the blood vessels and muscle tissue. She lost her foot.
Katie Short 3 years ago
yeah, I don't go to Urgent care....they have no responsibility to you if they misdiagnose you. They write on the receipt of terms and conditions. Frend broke a foot (missed it), and they lost my x-rays for days. "Not our problem" give us money now.
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Amanda-Joy Veness 3 years ago
Similar experience. Broke my fibula, giant open wound where you could see the bone. Multiple visits to ER who told me it is fine and leave it alone. Eventually got infected, led to sepsis and organ failure with a 75% mortality rate. When I was finally admitted to accused me of being a drug addict because “people’s organs don’t just stop working. Dialysis is no way to live your life.” Over a week in quarantine, 4 specialists later, finally started responding to treatment. Total garbage.
Winter Eleven 3 years ago
In my country they love doing x-rays for some reason... In the ER if you come in with something that hurts they take you to the x-ray room
CrazyDogLady 3 years ago
Same here. I've had so many x-rays it's surprising I don't glow in the dark but many of them actually showed something that needed treatment
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Moxie Mallahan 3 years ago (edited)
I think it actually got worse from her walking on it with no support. It might not have been as bad when she first fell. But not getting it treated properly right away is what caused it to become shattered and destroyed her leg.
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Eunice Bentley 3 years ago
I am so glad this isn't my story. I fell on the ice in December, went to work (I volunteer in the hospital) after about an hour the pain was worse so I took myself to the ER. I get checked in, see the doctor he sends me for an X-ray. The X-ray showed a beautiful knee, no tears, no bone chips, nothing wrong. So he sent me home. Take it easy for a day or 2 then if it is still painful come back again. This happened on Wednesday, spent most of my 4 hour shift in the ER and DI units, spent Wednesday with my foot up, a pillow under my knee and went back to work on Friday morning. First trip into the ER with a patient on Friday and I get "nice to see everything is okay,: from the patient I had brought down to the ER on Wednesday.
#6
I’m a dental assistant and a patient came in and his color was off. His jaw hurt and a tooth. He’d just come from the Dr. who told him to see us. I was suspicious of heart attack. I put the pulse ox on him and almost fainted myself 82% I grabbed our emergency high flow and yelled for the AED and 911. The guy was having a heart attack. The guy lived and brought me a big old heart shaped box of chocolate at valentines. I’ve never been so scared or angry for another person. The dentist I worked for called the MD and said, “my 25 year old assistant just saved your patient’s life.”
Miss Frankfurter 3 years ago
We had a cardiac patient admitted. Lengthy heart history. The first thing he told us was his angina (heart pain) felt like a toothache. That’s it. A toothache on the left side of his mouth. Thank you so much for telling us first thing. Only patient I ever looked after whose angina was like that. But when he was having the pain, like this patient in the post, he looked awful. Difficult to miss.
Mary Jeffries 3 years ago
I had a patient that was being worked up for a familial heart arrhythmia. She coded in the cardiologist’s office and they got her to the hospital, put in a pacemaker and then she was fine. Crazy lucky.
Jaybird3939 3 years ago
So glad the Dentist called him out on it. Usually, between dr's, nothing is said and the idiocy continues.
Amber Cook 3 years ago
I'm an MA in a sleep & pulmonology clinic here in the US. Unfortunately, in pulmonary, we see a ton of patients monthly that their o2 sats will be below 90, and under 85 sometimes. It's crazy to see patients who come in and you take them back to the room & do your normal checking work, then get your pulse ox on the patient and they're o2 is like at 84 (heart rate normal, as well as BP), I'll ask the patient if they're currently using o2. Half the time the answer will be no, and we have to put them on some o2. The other half when you ask will give the answer that they are, but they don't like to have the larger tanks (the portable ones are really in high demand), & that they usually
Trish Smith 3 years ago
DEAR GOD!! Where does the outrageous incompetence end!!! Thank God for the brilliant Dental Assistant!!!
#7
Not a doctor, but actually the patient. I had a doctor prescribe me birth control. While in line to pay for it, i'm reading the paperwork that comes with it and learn that another medication i am on (permanently and everyday) completely voids out any effect the BC would have. I went back to the pharmacist and ask about interactions, and he says I may have side effects. I ask which ones, and he says "Pregnancy". Pregnancy is not a side effect. It is a lifelong commitment. Then I call the doctor and ask why they would prescribe something they KNEW wouldn't work, and she said, "butyou asked for BC". Like, yeah I did, but I wanted some that would work. Silly me for not specifying that.
Milady Blue 3 years ago
But there are some doctors who could use a Clue by Four upside the head. Repeatedly.
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Marilyn Holt 3 years ago
I have always found that the pharmacist provides the most helpful info about any meds you are taking.
Lena Flising 3 years ago
My epilepsy medication doesn't work with certain pain-killers, or rather, together they can cause kidney problems or liver problems. I have several times had to tell doctors and dentists that "No, I can't take that pain-killer, I don't want liver/kidney problems", and they have checked and said "Oh, that's right".
Al Padilla 3 years ago
Probably a GYN. In (my) field of endocrinology, we "joke" that the GYNs only ask 3 questions: Pregnant? Bleeding? Hurting?
pamela nichols 3 years ago
I got pregnant on bc doctor said it probably regulated my abnormal period but before I was pregnant I was told I had a cyst on my ovary. During surgery I was awakened to tell me I was pregnant and the baby was looking good. My cyst is 34m now.
#8
I suppose I have one for this as a resident doctor. We saw a kid in the emerg for difficulty walking. He had been slowly losing the ability to walk over months, and also had random unexplained projectile vomiting episodes. Looking at his records, he saw his doctor several times who X-rayed one hip... Then the other hip... Gave some Zofran, etc.
Turns out on exam he is *blatantly* ataxic (bad coordination) and can't even stand. Failed all our bedside neurological examinations for cerebellum function. It was obvious to me and I'm not even good at this yet. Did a CT scan.
Big a*s tumor in his cerebellum. It was obstructing fluid drainage in his brain too, raising his intracranial pressure and causing the vomiting.
Had to call in the neurosurgeons overnight for emergency drain and he went to ICU. Later had more surgery for the tumor. My supervisor got pretty emotional about it actually.
The history was that he really declined further over the last few days prompting the ED visit, so he looked really bad for us but I'm not sure what he looked like before. To any med students reading this: 1. Do an exam. 2 It's OK to cry sometimes.
Mariah Greenwood 3 years ago
That was my sister. She’d been having problems with her gait, headaches, nausea, vomiting and shitty balance. She’d also had almost constant allergies and colds. She’d seen countless doctors over a period of about 15 years. They all gave her meds for colds and allergies. And she couldn’t breathe through her nose for anything without nasal sprays. One day she had the worst migraine she’d ever experienced that came along with double vision and dizziness. She went to the ER and they did a CT scan. A resident knew she was looking at hydrocephalus before the consult with her attending. They did an MRI the next day and found what ended up being a tumor at the base of her brain. It was approximately 2.5-3 inches in diameter. It was large enough to block off both ventricles of her spinal column. Nearly 2 decades of doctors missing something.
Robertas Lisickis 3 years ago
To anyone wondering, "Henry Carlos" was a spam bot that got banned and their spammy-spam comment is gone forever. Sorry Ellis for now having a comment out of context.
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Ash McBride 3 years ago
This is exactly what happened to me! Ended up getting panicked calls from a radiologist and brain surgeon at 11pm at night. I mentioned the horrible migraines to every doctor, assistant, nurse, and anyone that would listen. The projectile vomiting was the worst. I would have no memory of it, just kinda suddenly realized I was covered in vomit.
Flash Henry 3 years ago
:::symptoms of brain tumor::: nah prob just nausea here have some anti-nausea pills
Al Padilla 3 years ago
Yes. Examine the patient, for as long as you have the luxury of doing so. When you finish training and are out "in the world" your employer (a hospital - or worse) will force your "productivity" to 10 patients per hour, and log your keystrokes to be sure you're not "wasting time" looking stuff up (as should have been done with the birth control story #7). Medicine in the US is just escalating in cost and dropping in "value." (quality)
#9
Not a doctor, but a friend of my mom's went to an opthalmologist for an eye problem. During his exam, he asked her, "So how long have you had MS?" (writer's note: multiple sclerosis). That was the first she was diagnosed. She had been battling various MS symptoms for a couple of decades without a diagnosis.
NsG 3 years ago
It's a shame the light reflection makes it harder to read some of the lines.
Load More Replies... Evil Little Thing 3 years ago
It's actually common for ophthalmologists to diagnose MS because they can see inflammation of the optic nerve on your retina. So people who don't know why they feel bad and may never have consulted a physician about it can get a diagnosis during sn eye exam.
madbakes 3 years ago
Optometrists often find that patients have diabetes or pre-diabetes. I'm guessing there are a whole lot more conditions that an eye doctor can find on exam.
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Shelby Moonheart 3 years ago
Myt opthemologist saved my life. She was doing my annual exam and noticed that my optic nerve was swollen and asked me to immediately get an MRI. My husband took me immediately to the ER. After a CT scan and an MRI, a group of doctors came in and told us I had a brain tumor that was larger than a tennis ball. A week later the tumor was removed and it was benign. I spent 35 days in the hospital. I am very grateful to that doctor and my brain function is doing very well after three years.
Flash Henry 3 years ago
Doesn't help that testing for MS is basically let's rule out these 300 other possible health problems.
Erica Cochrane 3 years ago
i suffered from random constant pain, various other issues for 13+ years. it was all dismissed as growing pains by all my doctors. then i was doing a class that was meant to help with back strength, run by the physio dept and after a couple of weeks the physio said to me that she was pretty sure i had fibromyalgia. she took over my care soon after and we went through the list of symptoms of fibro, and i had almost all of them. sadly being diagnosed didn't help, since none of the possible treatments did a thing for me. but at least i knew that the pain wasn't made up or just growing pains, because i was 21 by this point and i stopped growing at 16. she was the first to take my pain seriously and not assume i was just making it up because i was a kid or a teenager.
Sue Wade-Walters 3 years ago
MS can be extremely difficult to diagnose, as the symptoms are often fleeting and seem unrelated. I've had it for 25 years; the five years before my diagnosis were spent with different specialists to deal with different problems. Only a brain MRI finally confirmed it.
Eva Muller 3 years ago
My mom had optic neuritis 4 times before an opthamologist said "you've had it more than once?! After having it ONCE, there is a 60% chance of it being MS!!" She was diagnosed with relapsing ms in '98, it just progressed to secodary progressive. She also had breast cancer and therefore couldn't get the good ms medicine. I hate ms and I hate cancer!
Salty Wild Hair 3 years ago (edited)
Can I just add that in the US military nearly every member who files a claim with the VA, goes to the exam, and there they learn that they were diagnosed with autoimmune diseases, heart problems, diabetes, and more. And the worst part is that we have to be physically examined once a year for "readiness" and never knew. That means no treatment, no medications, and no cautions against things like certain food and drink that would endanger their lives. Free healthcare...is free for a reason.
#10
Patient was lactating but not pregnant or breastfeeding. Previous doctor told her it was residual from her baby that had been weened for 14 months. Sent her immediately for a brain scan, brain tumor. She had surgery a week later to remove it and is doing very well now.
I did not do any of the follow up care. She left my office with a referral for an MRI and a referral to an endocrinologist, who took over care.
Also, please, if you are concerned about your health in any way or are not happy with your doctor/care, obtain your medical records and bring them with you to a different doctor. Don’t solicit medical advice from strangers on the internet that know nothing at all about your medical history. That is very dangerous to your health.
Tiger Lilly 3 years ago
The doctor I saw just two days before I was rushed to hospital and diagnosed with a 6cm brain tumor told me the only reason I'd been throwing up everything I tried to eat, was having trouble moving, and getting so many headaches for weeks was all psychosomatic. I'm lucky and very grateful to be alive!
Milady Blue 3 years ago
Find yourself a lawyer, and sue that doctor into oblivion.
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Scotira 3 years ago
The hypophysis produces a hormon called prolactin, which lets the breasts produce milk. So if OP had a tumor in the hypophysis this can be one of the symptoms.
Load More Replies... Amber Cook 3 years ago
My baby will be 19 this Saturday.... I'm 2009 out of nowhere. My prolactin levels go up and down all year long. I can't get an endocrinologist to see me because it's not a constant thing. And I've already checked to see if any of the medications that I've taken started the lactation, and no. Me doctor just gave me an rx for a medication to help it stop. About 19 HOURS later I finally woke up. I can not take a medication that causes me to sleep that long twice a week! So, for now I just continue to lactate and just deal with it.
#11
Not a doctor but the patient.
When I was born, I was my dad's third child - two from a previous marriage. He knew something was wrong with me because of the way I was breathing: very rapid, short breaths.
When I was three months old, they noticed there really wasn't a change. The first hospital he and my mom took me to, they said that there was nothing to worry about and babies just breathe like that. He was 100% certain they were wrong.
They took me to a second hospital, and they said there's definitely something wrong. But they didn't have the technology to help (1986). They recommended us to a third hospital, which was a couple hours away.
Finally, the third hospital took me right in and performed surgery that day. Turns out I had *five holes in my heart*. They tried to go through my rib cage, but it didn't work. They had to crack my sternum and go directly through my chest. They took my heart out of its body and patched the holes.
I'm doing wonderfully medically today, and am forever in their debt (not financially, thank you Ronald McDonald House Charities!)
Julia Mckinney 3 years ago
We, thankfully, didn't need them when our 8 yr. old daughter had open heart surgery (she's been fine now for almost 20 yrs) but I always, always donate to them.
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DelvianBlue 3 years ago
Sometimes those can be hard to diagnose. I have a friend in her 60s who just found out she's had a hole in her heart since birth. She's getting surgery to close it. She's also darn lucky not to have dropped dead at any random point in her life. Good on the dad for trying until he got answers!
#12
Patient: While I was pregnant with my youngest I had really bad acid reflux. Like, I lost 20-30 pounds because I couldn't keep anything down, not even water. It was so bad that I would cry and throw up all the time. I got hospitalized for dehydration at the end of the pregnancy. My then nurse practitioner said that I was overreacting and it was good for me to lose weight because I was too big anyway. (I understand I'm not skinny but I'm not morbidly obese) I had the baby and it didn't get better. I was told it would. Popped those anti-acids like candy. Couldn't keep anything down and cried... A lot. One night it was especially bad, I was vomitting blood and the taste/smell coming from my mouth was just horrendous. I was trying not to cry during all this... Anyway, made it to the hospital... Again... And the doctor there was like "were you not here a few months ago?" Of course I said yes. I got a shot of gravol in the hip and it didn't get better. They gave me something else and still, nothing. By this point he's like Woah ok, she's not pregnant anymore so what gives? Calls a surgeon over, she orders x-rays and it's found that my gallbladder is super inflamed and needs to come out. Too far gone to save it. She ordered a mess of medication because finally, someone believed me when I said I was in so much pain. It took a week before the swelling went down enough for me to get surgery. I am so grateful for this surgeon
Leslie Harris 3 years ago
no one ever believes women when we complain about our health or pain.
Milady Blue 3 years ago
Why should they? It's all in our pretty, empty little heads.../EXTREME sarcasm.
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jade s 3 years ago
I've had pain ignored for 2 years but not because I'm a woman. I actually believe it was ignored because I was overweight. First doctor told me I was constipated. 2nd told me it was probably muscular. 3rd and 4th told me it was stress and in my head. 5th told me I was suffering from normality and we all get aches and pain some times. All of them told me to eat better and lose weight. I had a 14mm kidney stone.
jade s 3 years ago
Moral of this story, if you are worried about something keep going back no matter how long it takes.
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cadena kuhn 3 years ago
Same happened to me the doctor kept insisting it was gas. Luckily the nurse said wait my best friend just had this same thing we need to check her gallbladder. Doc looked irritated but gave the ok. Yep gallbladder
Mary Jeffries 3 years ago
Gallbladder problems do go with pregnancy. They should have worked her up.
Lena Flising 3 years ago
Pregnancies can cause a lot of problems, but pregnant people can be sick from other causes.
Lyyyy 3 years ago (edited)
Few days after giving birth I couldn’t control my gallbladder. Like I couldn’t pee even if I really felt like I had to pee all the time, and when the pressure (and my uncomfort) grew too much, my gallbladder leaked itself half empty, usually on the floor. Fortunately this lasted only 2 months, because the answer doctors had? Such a problem doesn’t exist, after giving birth you are supposed to have incontinence, not the other way around. No treatment.
Sabienn 3 years ago (edited)
I think you mean the urine bladder, because the gall bladder stores gall and is attached to the liver. The gall goes to the intestines, where it helps with the digestion of fats. If nothing's wrong with your gallbladder, you shouldn't even notice you have one. Btw, it sucks that you had to go trough that...
Load More Replies... #13
Probably the worst story one can hear. My wife found a lump under her breast that was really concerning. It took her about 2 months to get a proper appointment to have it looked at. Doc diagnosed it as a cyst and fibroadenoma. She drained the lump and it was fine. Grew back a week later and was bigger. Finally after being in pain for weeks on end, the doctor said this is clearly not working, so we will do surgery and remove it. Upon going in for the check up, thinking theyd take a look at the scar and healing, it turns out that she had Stage 2A Triple Negative Breast Cancer. The surgeon was absolutely floored. The most upsetting thing was that while her main surgeon/gyno (who was fantastic) was on holiday another male doctor told her "any surgery would be merely cosmetic and it clearly didnt bother her because he could touch the lump". I almost laid that doctor out in the office. When she got the diagnosis he apologised to both of us for being an a*****e. Unfortunately, this story didnt end well. Despite doing 8 months of therapy (chemo and radio), her cancer returned 7 months later and ultimately led to her death after it spread to her brain and spinal fluid. So many people told me "ah breast cancer, thats one of the easy ones! my *insert relative nobody f*****g cares about here* had it. She switched gynos twice because they wouldnt take it seriously. Its been 6 months now and not a day goes by where I wish I could have taken her cancer away. She was f*****g 27 years old.
To everyone wondering how I am doing: its been 6 months since she passed, though I have been grieving for a while longer (anticipatory grief they call it) and so considering everything, I am doing well. It was her birthday on Feb 28 and she would have been 28, so the week was quite solemn but other than that, I have found ways to move forward with her, not from her. Whenever I have a moment, I let it happen and then continue. I do have PTSD from her time in the hospital but I am learning to deal with it and when COVID calms down I will go to therapy. All in all, I am doing well, enjoying life as much as COVID allows and just processing all my feelings. I miss her everyday and will for the rest of my life.
Ive had a few people tell me to sue the doctor especially considering the cost of treatment, etc. I live in Berlin, Germany and despite that unfortunate initial diagnosis her treatment and care have a been breeze afterwards. She received care from the Charité, Berlin, one of the finest medical institutions in the world and because of our healthcare system, we haven't paid a dime for any of her treatment. Its been a while and I am at peace with it all. I am not going to go down the litigation path and sue a doctor for something that happened in 2019. Though I do understand your concerns. Thank you all.
Party Poison (They/Them) 3 years ago (edited)
Don't forget to check your breast tissue monthly everyone! Cis women, trans women, trans men, genderqueer people, cis men and genderless voids with breasts/moobs!
Mia D 3 years ago
Men can get cancer too, 1 in every 100 breast cancer diagnoses. So every one no matter gender and sex should check their breast tissues. And if you have testickles, check them too, don't forget about prostate after age of 45. Just take better care of yourself!
Load More Replies... Scotira 3 years ago
This is another downside of COVID aside from all the unfortunate souls who got it and died. When hospitals all over started to stop fe operating etc. except in emergencies and told patients with minor problems to stay home, we actually detected a decline in patients for radiation therapy. I've talked to many colleagues if they expierenced the same and most confirmed. So the reason is NOT that we have less cancer patients. The reason is cancer patients in early stages have either not been going to the MD for a check or have been send home from the hospital without being really looked at. This lead to many cancer patiens being detected too late and no longer "need" or are no longer eligible for curative radiation therapy bc the illness is much too advanced. This literaly breaks my heart. There are so many patients out there who no longer can be saved. A lot of patients will die because of COVID while never actually having had the virus. 😢
Miss Frankfurter 3 years ago
I cried over this. NO FN EXCUSE FOR THIS!!! Always treat it as if it could be a tumour until proven otherwise. Hello! Mammogram! Then take it from there. Hurt when you touch it, not hurt when you touch it. Assume it could be a tumour and could be breast cancer. Never assume it’s not. My mom had breast cancer. I’m lucky where I live, if your mom had breast cancer, we automatically are put into a program where we get our mammogram every year and a notification from our provincial health that it’s time so we don’t forget.
TomCat 3 years ago
On the off chance the OP is reading this, take care and be gentle with yourself. There is no timeline on grief and grieving, especially under these circumstances, absolutely will sneak up on you when you think your "doing better". Also, follow up with counseling for PTSD. I didn't and my life is much harder because of it.
Wandaluzt 3 years ago
No, the OP is not reading this. It was posted on Reddit a year ago and copy and pasted here.
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Big Chungus 3 years ago
I am lucky I have a great gyno. I also found concerning lumps and my doctor immediately got me in for mammo and ultrasound. I only had cysts, but it was such a relief to get it taken care of and taken seriously. I feel for this women and her widow, it can be so awful.
Gg 3 years ago
I found a lump during the height of Covid. I was seen right away, mammogram, biopsy, ultrasound, surgical consult. Fibroadenoma. Called for my 6 month follow up mammogram. Gave my DOB and the woman started yelling at me saying I was too young for a mammogram and what was I even doing calling them?!? I find the people working the desk at a Dr office are so much worse than the Dr themselves. Once I get past the gatekeeper I'm usually ok.
#14
Broken neck.
No really.
So this one guy was brought in with an ambulance for upper airway obstruction.
We diagnosed what looked like an advanced throat cancer and did a tracheostomy.
After the operation, where you pull and push the neck like crazy, we checked his neck x-ray and a junior asks when did he break his neck. He had a brand new unstable neck fracture. Checking his initial x-ray we see that it was there PRIOR to the operation.
After questioning the patient he said that on his way to the hospital the ambulance was in a car crash. No one bothered mentioning it to us when he eventually came in. He only thought he had some whiplash, but he was a few millimetres away from permanent paraplegia.
Unfortunately he passed away about 2 weeks later due to the cancer.
1.21Gigawatts?! 3 years ago
That’s terrible. Not trying to make the situation better, but you must admit him surviving a broken neck is kinda impressive. Of course I might have seen to many movies and think that a slightly broken neck is instant death…
just me 3 years ago
My dad crashed mountain biking. Broke his clavicle and needed surgery. He had severe neck pain for over a month before some genius thought maybe they should do an x-ray instead of brushing him off again. He had chipped vertebrae. I can't figure out what doc in the ER didn't think to check his neck when he went flying over the handlebars and landed hard enough to snap his clavicle.
Miss Frankfurter 3 years ago (edited)
Same thing happened to my bff. In a car accident they knew about. That’s why she went to the ER. X-rays done. They looked “fine”. Later Started with pain and difficulty moving both arms. This goes on for months and is not listened to by her GP until finally, to shut her up, Gets sent to a specialist and was asked “So when did you fracture your neck?”.
Stace Kemp 3 years ago
Many years ago my Father was in a nasty accident, wrapped his vehicle around a power pole. The hospital sent him home. Three days later after insisting something was wrong, he ended up being flown to a spinal unit with two breaks in his neck.
#15
LAL17 said:
I found an obvious huge rectal cancer on a patient who was previously told over and over again that she had hemorrhoids.
Boudutunnel replied:
My SIL was fobbed off with the exact same thing. Young female, severe chronic abdominal pain. Finally referred for a scan which was cancelled because she was low risk. She was again in a lot of pain, so my brother insisted she be checked again this time by a new physician who decided to do a rectal check. Diagnosed with colon cancer there and then and immediately referred for a scan then to the best specialist in the area. Chemo, removal of most her bowels narrowly avoided a bag and a lifetime of adjustments but thankfully in remission now. 2 years of being diagnosed with piles instead!
Lauren Caswell 3 years ago
What is with women's abdomen pain being dismissed? I'm missing half my intestines, gall bladder etc because of this, they could have fixed it so easily but no. They let me suffer til it went septic.
Lena Flising 3 years ago
Some doctors clearly need to think "If this was a white male, what would I test him for?".
#16
I was working nights and a patient came in for a nailbed repair under general anaesthesia (it was a slow night). As they're anaesthetising him, he aspirates so we do a chest X-ray to see if he's got any spit/blood in his lungs.
What we didn't know is that prior to this emergency surgery, he'd been going to his GP for over 6 months complaining about chest tightness. They'd put him on various different asthma medications, but none had any effect on him.
The X-ray showed a massive dark mass in his left lung. We kept him asleep and transferred him to ICU.
His wife and three year old daughter were waiting for him on the ward. We had to tell them where he'd gone, why he'd gone there, and what was going to happen.
He died from lung cancer within the month.
Edit: A general anaesthetic is absolutely ridiculous for a nailbed repair but he refused to have it done under local.
A commenter below rightfully corrected me, and after talking with a colleague, the dark space in his lungs was the normal lung, and the rest was whited out because they were riddled with tumors. This man was in his late 20s, a non-smoker, and I couldn't move past the situation for months after it.
Nitka Tsar 3 years ago
Three year old daughter. And it could have been avoided. God, I hate this so much.
EJN 3 years ago
Along the same lines of lung cancers, my mother was a lifetime smoker (my father died at 62 yo of lung cancer) and had chronic bronchitis which probably was indicative of COPD. She was under the care of a GP who was specifically caring for people who had previously had cancer and my mother had had polyps removed along with a section of her large intestine which seemed to indicate cancer presence or potential. She had the routine health check yearly. However, for some reason, she was never given a lung xray as part of those checks. When the pain from her 'osteoporosis' became too bad, she was finally scheduled for an MRI to see what condition the spine was in. At that time, they found a 12 cm tumor wrapped around her trachea, aorta, and esophagus that had originated in lung tissue. She was given 5 weeks to live. Essentially she died of starvation due to inability to swallow and tumor consumption of her body. How could it have been overlooked?
Myst Edenflower 3 years ago
No one believes men when they complain about their health and pain
#17
There was a story pretty recently in the hospital I work for, where a cardiologist in the ER was doing a rather difficult nightshift, and started feeling light-headed, dizzy and fatigued.
Given how intense those shifts are [26++ hours, sometimes multiple times a week], nobody thought much of it, and the doctor in question went to catch a quick nap in the staff room.
People just passed by him in the staff room every once in a while, but they just assumed the poor guy was exhausted and let him rest.
He was dead for several hours by the time someone realized something wasn't right.
Flash Henry 3 years ago
I will never understand why doctors and nurses are forced to work such long shifts. I feel like that is one field where it should be really important that the person in charge of your health should be well rested.
Marat Sverdlov 3 years ago
Understaffing - sometimes your options are "tired doctor" or "no doctor". Nobody likes it, your doctor least of all, but the entire industry has toxically glorified self-sacrifice and is only just starting to slowly undo that damage. Most doctors would rather sacrifice more hours of their sleepless lives than leave their colleagues and their patients shorthanded.
Load More Replies... Louise B 3 years ago (edited)
I live in the UK; universal health care 'from cradle to grave' so I am eternally grateful for the amazing care I have received from the NHS. I just wish that medical staff weren't forced to work such long hours! However poor, rich or privileged you are, when your life is ebbing away, will you be happy that you saved that extra few pennies in tax when your doctor, nurse ,health professional is emotionally and physically exhausted? They are real people, they perform miracles most days but they can't function without sleep
Carito alias La Cototina 3 years ago
I am a nurse in the UK and we only work 12.5 hour shifts 3 times a week and 4 once a month! If we are not rested, we cannot function properly and we can make mistakes, and our mistakes, can be literally 'deathly'.
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#18
I’m not a doctor, but a RN. This happened to me, but isn’t nearly as bad as most of the stories on here. When I was in college, I got to where I couldn’t swallow. It started with difficulty swallowing, progressed to me having to swallow bites of food multiple times/regurgitating it, and then got to where all I could swallow was broths and mashed potatoes with no chunks. I went to the doctor multiple times, and was told every time it was acid reflux and part of my anxiety disorder. I lost 30 pounds (was only 120 when this started) and was just generally miserable. Finally my grandma was tired of watching me be sick all the time, so she called the GI doctor herself. They said we needed a referral, but she explained the situation and they got me in the next day. Did an endoscopy and my esophagus was 95% occluded at the gastroesophageal sphincter. For some reason, some of my primary doctors notes ended up in my discharge paperwork (I guess they had to contact her to get my information) and she had told them it was acid reflux and basically I was being over dramatic. She stated she did not recommend them to do the procedure. Needless to say, I switched doctors. F**k that b***h. Was not a fun year.
Milady Blue 3 years ago
Ah, esophageal dysphagia! Such a FUN thing to live with, especially with GERD.
Miss Frankfurter 3 years ago
Sometimes I don’t want to let docs know my psych diagnosis for fear of whatever is going on gets automatically put down to that. People with mental illness get sick too.
and_a_touch_of_the_’tism 3 years ago
Same. Crippling arthritis got brushed off as anxiety for a month, meanwhile I got progressively worse to the point where I couldn’t move independently. Like, some joints were so stiff I was paralyzed.
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Impetus 3 years ago
Also a nurse. Had severe abdominal pain one day, so bad I couldn't stand up. Ultrasound showed a 9 cm mass on my ovary. On call gyno says it's nbd we'll follow up outpatient. In the outpatient visit he says "it's just an endometrioma, it'll go away on its own". I say, it's really painful and it has a blood supply" and he responds "we're not doing surgery. Unless you want me to." Well, no, at this point I know you're an idiot and you're not touching me. Worked my way in to another gynecologist whose patients did well on my floor. She was scheduling six months out, but reviewed my chart that day, got me in, and had the giant tumor out in less than a month. Thankfully it hadn't started spreading, but if I hadn't known how to get my hands on the radiology report and what it meant, it could have gone very badly.
Laura Lawson 3 years ago
'For some reason' - honey, those notes were not attached accidentally! The hospital was most likely infuriated by your GP's attitude that would have only ended with your very painful death, but couldn't do a thing about it. So they let you know by 'oops, silly me' attaching those notes so you had the proper evidence to sue the a*s off that doctor & get her struck from whatever medical board your country has!!
Ash McBride 3 years ago
I wish I hadn't experienced similar things. It is in my medical records that I was attention seeking, vomiting likely due to anxiety or depression. "Patient is likely faking symptoms and displaying drug seeking behavior."
Erica Cochrane 3 years ago
my friend went to her doctors, incredibly unwell. but they have decided she's a hypochondriac (they have even put it on her notes!) even though she isn't, she just has a lot of very unusual but related symptoms. on this occassion they told her there was nothing wrong with her, she was just acting and to go home. an hour or 2 later she was in the hospital with severe pneumonia. despite this, her doctors still treat her like she's lying about everything
#19
I'm the patient in the story. When I was a toddler and started walking, my extended family noticed that I would waddle a lot... my parents didn't really notice it because they grew used to my funny walking but my grandma and my aunts that saw me so much less often insisted that I had a limp.
So my mother asked our pediatrician about it and he reassured that it was nothing and would fix itself when growing. One year passed and it didn't fix itself, it got more noticeable. My mother asked again to my doctor, she asked for an x-ray to make sure everything was fine and the doctor bite her head off for wanting to expose me to the rays. He insisted it was nothing but referred us to a specialist anyway.
The specialist suggested my parents put some wool around my leg that had the limp. Because wool would warm it up and speed up the growing process. Right.
My dad finally had enough. It was summer and my regular pediatrician was on holiday. His partner visited me because meanwhile the limping became really bad and my parents wanted another opinion.
The new doc measured my legs. There was a 4 or 5 centimetres difference between the two legs. They sent me to a specialist children hospital to get it fixed right away. I had severe dysplasia... so severe my right hip didn't have a socket for the femur bone. 3 years and 3 surgeries later, months of physiotherapy to learn to walk again, I was normal.
If the second doc didn't catch it, I would have grown up disabled. He split up with his work partner (the first doctor). Second doc is now my daughter's pediatrician.
Jill Pulcifer 3 years ago
I have known my whole life that my left hand was considerably bigger, like I would put my hands together to give people a laugh level bigger. I didnt think anything of it until one day out of the blue my husband noticed one of my legs was longer. I went to the foot doc who was amazed that I had made it 39 years with one leg nearly 2 inches longer than the other. As he was walking me out to the lobby he says, "oh yeah, thats quite a limp you have there" I had no idea I had a limp. It did explain why I had so much back and hip pain, and why my shoes always break down weirdly. They put a lift in my shoe and I get around better, but now it drives me nuts, even one shoulder is lower, and one arm has nearly 2 inches on the other and I can't help but wonder if thats why everything hurts all the time.
Barbara Skolly 3 years ago
My sister had hip dysplasia that our grandma noticed. When my babies were little I noticed our GP comparing legs and when i told her there was family history she double checked. I also never left my kids in a the excersaucer or jolly jumper for more than 15 minutes due to paranoia (not parent blaming, some kids just born or developed that way).
#20
MD here. Recently was called over by a nurse who told me a patients bandages were wet as they were bleeding a little. Patient had recently had his leg amputated. We pulled his bandages off and found a spurting femoral artery - at this point the patient passed out. Patient was sent to theatres for an emergency operation. Close call for sure.
#21
Had a literal pelvic exam for severe pain and "something doesn't look right down there, doctor" and the gyno missed the fact I was having an organ prolapse. 91 days and 4 ER visits calling it a heavy period later my female organs were no longer attached to my body but in a specimen cup in the trauma department. Also the whole thing ended in a hysterectomy to remove what didn't completely detach from my body.
NsG 3 years ago
Which makes it worse when it's a gyno who ignores it - you know, the doctor who *specialises* in (at least one aspect of) women's health.
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Chucky Cheezburger 3 years ago
Jesus christ on bumpy bicycle! How the hell does a doctor miss that? Hell, I could probably figure out something wasn't right and I'm not qualified to dress a wound with duct tape and superglue@
Miss Frankfurter 3 years ago
How does a gyne MD make it through not knowing what a cervix looks like. Prolapse of the cervix is pretty damned obvious.
thEBOrdeSTpaNDA 3 years ago
I─ What the f**k?! I know someone who KNEW something was wrong with her female organs, and THE ONLY WAY she got a doctor to listen to her was 'I just want you to have a look at it and I'm sorry if I'm wrong but [aTnd this is the part the Dr listened to] if I'm right and you do nothing I might become infertile.' She was right
Nitka Tsar 3 years ago
Yeah, I had nightmares about this when I first learned this is even possible after my daughter was born.
Lena Flising 3 years ago
Most women have menstrual pain each month. If anything, pain needs to be really, really intense before women complain. We are not weak and hysteric, we are the stronger sex.
#22
Another "not a doctor", but my MIL had all the signs of stroke (severe headache, vomiting, vertigo, vision problems, partial paralysis), but was sent home from the ER and told it was an inner ear condition that would resolve on its own. When it did not get better she saw her GP, who upon merely looking at her asked when she had had the stroke. When he realized it was still untreated, he immediately sent her back to the hospital. There they finally recognized that she had had a major stroke! She could easily have died and was in rehab for weeks. They then claimed that it must have happened after she was there the first time, because - and this is really unbelievable - *her chart from that visit did not say that she had had a stroke*. So much wrong with that statement that I don't even know where to begin.
PandaPops 3 years ago
This can happen. I work in an Emergency department. Had a man come in with stroke symptoms. He had a CT, he had the whole shebang. His symptoms resolved and it was put down to a TIA as CT was clear. 4hrs later he was walking down the road from the hospital and had a full on stroke. All previous tests were clear (as there was an investigation to confirm this), unfortunately it is one of those things. He was in the department for a total of 8hrs. How long do you keep someone with all negative tests and symptoms resolved? He survived as he was found and bought back quickly. If he were at home he wouldnt have survived a stoke that big..
Impetus 3 years ago
I would say TIA and any other risk factors you're gonna wanna keep them at least overnight, yeah? But emergency departments don't really do so great with that anymore
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Miss Frankfurter 3 years ago
Strokes don’t necessarily show up on a CT scan right away. Often takes 24hrs.
pamela nichols 3 years ago
I went to er 2 times my neighbor found me on the ground so I went the 1st time they ask me what happened I didn't know how no remembrance of falling. A neurologist came and did a cursory exam discharged.second time I was at work banging into people and shelves my manager called an ambulance. Neurologist asked did I have no just dizzy discharged. I woke up and my right eye wouldn't open went to work anyway by the time I arrived dizzy and nauseous I told my manager I was going to my doctor 4 blocks away. Doctor comes to reception and tells nurse to call ambulance.. he must have called the er and lit a fire.thrn this er doctor came to me like I was a Celebrity telling I had tosin because my eye wouldn't open.. apparently I was having a tia (stroke). Was sent to another hospital for brain surgery.
HappySquirrel 3 years ago
Relative thought she was having a stroke at home - felt just "weird", dizzy, nauseous, couldn't speak properly. Rushed to ER, then to major hospital ICU where they had better care than the hometown hospital. After 4 days in ICU & multiple tests, discovered she was having multiple, repeated seizures daily - like several per hour. Small, barely detectable seizures from the outside, but inside her brain, an electrical storm was firing off every 10-15 minutes. The kicker? This had been going on for over 40 years, and not one single doctor she'd been to had ever detected it or tested for it, even when she presented with memory problems, "blank spells" where she would just stare blankly for a few minutes & be unresponsive to contact, and repeated falls. 40. YEARS. The damage to her brain was profound - has left her disabled for life. Her short-term memory is almost gone, she will never work, drive or be able to be left alone for long periods ever again.
Huddo's sister 3 years ago
My mum went to the ED I think twice in a week because of severe headaches. She has a lot of pain from chronic conditions, but high pain tolerance so for her to go to the hospital the pain must be bad. She was kept in for a few hours and that's it. Months later she has a scan done by a neurologist for a different reason and he sees something which suggests she had a TIA (min stroke) at some point, which is when it is connected to the previous issue.
#23
I am a psychiatrist, and I am frequently angered by the lack of care that our patients receive from some other doctors. Emergency rooms can be the worst about this when they are trying to shuffle patients through to psych admits as quickly as possible, sometimes neglecting other basic aspects of care in the process. Not every ED doctor is guilty of this by any means–and some are remarkably good about providing appropriate care for this population–but it happens far too often. Probably the most egregious incident occurred a couple years ago while I was on overnight call at a VA hospital. So it started with a relatively routine call asking to transfer a patient to our psychiatric unit from a community hospital emergency department for treatment of psychosis. He was an older guy (I want to say early 70s) who had come in acting strange and delusional. His son-in-law had told the ED staff that he had received care with use for psychiatric issues before. I asked them to fax the transfer packet, a bundle of the assessments already performed there, and I started looking at his chart in the meantime. However, what I found was that he had not actually been admitted to our psychiatric unit, he had been seen by our psychiatry consults team for delirium while he was admitted to the medical floor for decompensated heart failure. For anyone unfamiliar, delirium can occur with any severe illness, where you brain basically isn't functioning properly due to the physiological stress your body is under. Sometime it just manifests as confusion or disorientation, but sometimes it can get more dramatic, with delusions and hallucinations. From what I saw in his chart, he had no actual primary psychiatric issues and had only been seen by the consult psychiatrist while he was delirious. So i get the transfer packet for this guy, and not only has there been no cardiac workup for this guy who has a known history of heart failure, there aren't even vital signs on him. The only labs are a blood count (pretty unremarkable), and electrolytes/kidney markers. These chemistries are also not too abnormal, but I notice that his urea nitrogen is a little elevated. This is generally a sign of poor perfusion through the kidneys, as reabsorbing this urea also helps the kidneys reabsorb every last bit of water they can when the body is dehydrated. However, dehydration and low blood volume is only one possible reason whey the kidneys might see reduced perfusion; another possible reason would if some had uncontrolled heart failure. So I call the outside emergency room and tell them that I will not accept this patient onto our psychiatric floor without at least a basic cardiac workup. I tell them his history, that he has only had psychiatric symptoms in the context of delirium from heart failure and that the little bit of data they actually sent me points to that again recurring. They tell me okay, they will get the labs and vitals that I requested and reach back out to me. I didn't hear back from them after this, and I assumed that they had found evidence of cardiovascular decompensation and reached out to the medicine floor to transfer him there instead. So I am going about my night, and a couple hour later I get a call to come evaluate someone in the ED. I am down there and using one of the computers at their desk when I hear one of the ED doctors mention something about a patient coming in to medicine from the same hospital. (For anyone unfamiliar, transfers to the VA pass through the ED first, despite this literally being illegal to do in other hospitals. I don't understand the reasoning behind it, but it's what they do.) Curious, I ask if it's a guy coming in with decompensated heart failure. I am informed that not only is it the same guy–who will probably be getting a psych consult for delirium–but that he had ACTIVELY BEEN HAVING A F*****G HEART ATTACK IN THEIR ED. Needless to say, I was pretty upset that this outside ED had tried to send this guy to our psych unit, where it is a lot harder to get other medical treatments, without even getting vital signs on him or realizing that he was having a heart attack. I tell this story to medical students who are rotating through psychiatry all the time to try to hammer home the point that just because someone is acting bizarre doesn't mean that you can just throw the "psych patient" label on them and ignore everything else.
Minath 3 years ago
I've spent a lot of time in hospital and seen many older ladies with a UTI who are completely out of it and often quite violent and rude to everyone around. Two days on IV antibiotics and they are totally different people and chatting away happily with the other patients in the bay.
Louise B 3 years ago
I used to work in a hospital. I'm not qualified to answer why. What I do know is that older people who are completely compos mentis can become very confused when they have a UTI, in my experience they return to their usual state after treatment with antibiotics. Very frightening for them and their loved ones though.
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Marie Dahme 3 years ago
Delirium is not always equal to being a psych patient. Back in December 2020, I had been having terrible back pain. I saw my Dr who was dismissive and said maybe my anklosying spondylitis was getting a little worse, lose a little weight..and learn to deal with the pain. I don’t remember much after that except my fiancé said I was talking really strange, and thought maybe I overdosed on my hydrocodone and he immediately gave me narcan. Had no effect. He called Las Cruces New Mexico 911 and was hot, feverish, unable to control my bladder and combative in the ambulance when they tried to give me an IV. Still don’t remember. Fiancé took pictures to show me later. I ended up with urosepsis. This is a UTI that becomes so toxic it starts shutting your body down and when you start to have sepsis, you have hallucinations. I was in the hospital for weeks. But in the ICU, intubated and in a medically induced coma. When I came to about a week and a half later, I was scared. I didn’t
Marie Dahme 3 years ago
…know where I was. Last thing I remembered was being home. Many rounds of IV antibiotics took care of my sepsis. Urosepsis has a 40% fatality rate. Had no idea I was that sick. I drink a gallon a water a day, don’t drink sodas and I’m very clean with my lady parts. Believe me you can get delirious from an untreated UTI infection. If only that first Dr would have listened to me when I was having severe back pain where my kidneys are. And on top of that after being bedridden for weeks, I had to go to rehab to learn to walk again because my leg muscles atrophied. Women are hardly ever listened to when it comes to our health. Never went back to that Dr again.
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Peeka_Mimi 3 years ago
The VA ignored my symptoms of Diabetes for about a decade. Delirious and unable to communicate well, they put me in the psych ward for a week. Absolutely ignoring me when I said I shouldn't be there. It was 3 years later to get diagnosed and in that time put in the psych ward twice. If they had listened to me they would know it was diabetes.
Rosemary Booth 3 years ago
OMG! How horrifying! I can't even imagine how frustrated and scared you must have felt, not to mention the physical pain. I'm so sorry you went through that - multiple times!!
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Xenia Harley 3 years ago
My cousin's husband had gone to the ER where they sent him to the psych ward. Turned out he had an extremely high fever from Meningitis, but they were saying he needs psychiatric help! Took two days for the psych ward to realize, and give him treatment! They nearly killed the guy in his early 20's!
#24
Obligatory 'not a doctor'.
I'm working as a carer while I study nursing. Discovered a 90+ year old woman had a broken hip that the nurse who assessed her after a fall completely missed.
Most elderly people who break a hip will die within a year, fast treatment is crucial and it's a pretty f*****g big thing to have missed.
#25
Neurologist sent patient to our ED without informing her that imaging showed a glioblastoma assuring her impending death. He didn't overlook the disease, he overlooked the communication.
ThatBiBookLover 3 years ago
What?!? That’s horrible… I understand wanting to shield the patient, but I would like to know if I am going to pass away so I can say my goodbyes!!!
Caroline Nagel 3 years ago (edited)
Here in Belgium we had a (female) gyno who did not inform one of her patients that she had cancer, because she was afraid to tell her. The patient - a mother of three - died.
Dee Mendes 3 years ago
amazingly, many doctors in Japan don't believe in telling a patient they have a terminal disease as it would "upset" the patient. tragically, this occasionally results in patients who are convinced they're going to die, when they are not, taking their own life. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/11824932/
Miss Frankfurter 3 years ago
WHAT PART OF CALL THE ER AND ASK TO SPEAK TO THE ER MD THEMSELVES DONT THEY GET!
#26
Once when I was a medical student on surgery rotation, in trauma, we had a patient come in after he fell on the street and bonked his head. Well apparently he had fallen once earlier that day and was discharged when the trauma workup at the other hospital was negative for injuries. We examined him and noticed his eyes were kinda... Yellow. So as part of our trauma workup, given that he couldn't give a great story and we couldn't be sure what happened, we CT scanned his abdomen, and saw his common bile duct was like 3 times normal size, could drive a truck through it. About that time, next set of vitals his temp was 103F. Guy was floridly septic from ascending cholangitis which is why he was falling down. Big miss and that is an emergency.
Metalhead Turtle 🇺🇦 3 years ago
For those who don't know: sepsis is a condition that affects your blood and if not detected in enough time (or worse, untreated), it can be fatal
Gini Sarver 3 years ago
it’s actually an infection * within the bloodstream, just saying that because as read as a condition * someone will misunderstand
Load More Replies... Brenda 3 years ago
I had sepsis caused by micro absences in all my top teeth. Waited till evening to go to the ER when the pain was uncontrollable (it only started that morning). ER Dr said if I had Waited it would have killed me as it was headed to my brain. Don't mess with your health!
#27
In residency I saw a cardiologist miss a STEMI (heart attack). By the time the patient came to us, some of the muscles supporting one of his heart valves had completely died and he was in cardiogenic shock (basically his heart function was so bad that it wasn't circulating the blood in his body enough to support life). It was awful. Happily he made it through though.
Jai Stewart 3 years ago (edited)
Some of the muscles supporting One of the heart valves, not the entire heart.
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Carolyn Stokes 3 years ago
My late husband died, because a doctor who had specialised in cardiology missed the fact my husband was having a heart attack sent him home with gastro tablets died 4days later, I woke up next to him and he'd passed
#28
During my residency we had this lady in her 60s who was getting progressively more forgetful, just overall declining and getting less and less able to take care of herself. She had been seeing her pcp who diagnosed her with dementia. And she saw a neurologist who agreed. She was not really able to provide an accurate history. After talking to her family and friends it became apparent that her symptoms were progressing unusually quickly. I remember seeing the point where her new hair growth met her bright red dye and also her grown out nails with hot pink polish thinking, wow, it really wasn't too long ago that she was not only taking care of herself but like, going to get her hair and nails done. The lady in front of me was so far from that. The neurologist I was training with recognized this, had her admitted and did every test including lumbar puncture. Workup eventually showed Creutzfeld Jakob disease ("mad cow") which there is unfortunately no treatment for. She died a few months later but at least we were able to prepare her family that she would only continue to decline so they could make arrangements. Really sad situation.
Midoribird Aoi 3 years ago
CLARIFICATION: "Mad-Cow" is VARIANT Creutzfeld Jakob disease. The general version is the kind that is either inherited or occurs because of a random genetic mutation. There is no way to tell when it will "kick in" and strike, because once symptoms appear, the brain tissue is already far gone. It can't be treated because it is a prion disease, which are misfolded proteins that cause others to misfold in the same way, so it spreads in neural tissue. It is not a bacteria, virus, or fungus. Mad Cow spread in the eighties because British cows were being fed feed that included ground-up cow brain tissue, which just spread the prion infection further in an act of forced cannibalism of sorts. People would then eat contaminated meat and die months or years later. This is also why there are such strict regulations against blood donors from that area.
Demongrrrrl 3 years ago
I lived in London for six months thirty years ago, and about five years ago the FDA decreed that I can't give blood. But in the interim I worked for the American Red Cross and gave probably three or four gallons over that time.
Load More Replies... Miriam L 3 years ago
That's an astute observation by the medical resident. A lot of cases, it feels like "if the doctors had more time per patient, maybe they'd notice the real issue" (although some of the stories here are straight up disgusting levels of neglect and apathy) but to pay attention to those little personal details and extrapolate from there - well, it does say that the history from family and friends was the first clue. It's a shame the information couldn't provide a better outcome for the patient and her family
Jocelyne Lacasse 3 years ago
My father's best friend from childhood died of the Creutzfeld Jakob disease. I saw him beginning of August and he was himself, he died not even knowing who he was mid-December... 😥
#29
*~*not a doctor*~* (not even a nurse) while working as a CNA on an ICU step down unit, I noticed my patient was acting strange, asked her a few questions got some questionable answers. Thought it might be weird, as she couldn’t really answer questions other than “huh” and “uh huh,” her gait was weird (like a trot rather than a normal walk) plus she was leaning. I was training another CNA and I was like “no matter what you do, if you see something, notify the nurse and chart that you notified her.”
The patient was having a major stroke and the nurse was too far up her own a*s and her own phone to do an assessment. The woman had to go to rehab and was not a candidate for any stroke “reversing” drips as I had charted that she seemed “off” 8 hours before. The only reason anyone “caught it” was because the night shift nurse insisted on bedside report. The nurse I had been working with yelled at me “STROKE??” Like I hadn’t been notifying her of symptoms all day.
I’d like to add that in theory “anyone can call a rapid” but not every institution supports the policies they make. As I commented below: At this same institution I had a patient with a blood sugar in the 30s. Could not get ahold of the patients nurse or the charge nurse. Called the rapid, got scolded for “not giving the primary nurse the opportunity to treat the patient first.” I saw this type of scolding happen at least 4 times before this instance, so the message was that if a nurse doesn’t call it, then you’ll be pulled aside and reprimanded for doing so. It’s a pretty s****y hospital and I no longer work there.
El Dee 3 years ago
I've known people who have had their cancer go undiagnosed, two of them. One had diabetes undiagnosed causing blindness, another who had separate doctors ignore her concerns leading to her daughter's death and two who were ignored because of past addiction issues. If you arrive at hospital with ANYTHING and you were EVER an addict they will put you out as soon as is unreasonably possible, you will not be diagnosed, they don't care if you die. Saw one of those die and the other one keeps going back to hospital to be admitted as an emergency, they get him conscious etc and put him out without addressing the reason he is there. One day he won't make it - they know this and don't care. If they make a mistake the file will immediately be lost. If/when it is found it will reflect them doing everything they are required to do. You meet the head of department to discuss, he tries to make it your fault..
#30
Young student from, I think, Pakistan. He was complaining about his neck feeling stiff, he went to a doctor some days before and he was told he was having "joint pains" that would pass with some common anti-inflammatory drugs. When I visited him I saw many of the lymph nodes in his neck were swollen (which probably caused the stiffness) and not painful (not a good sign). Sent him right away to have a chest X-Ray that showed a huge mediastinical mass (writer's note: tumor), suggestive of lymphoma. Sadly I don't know what happened to him...
Lyone Fein 3 years ago
Why is there a photo of someone treating an animal to illustrate a story about a Pakistani patient?
Dave Lear 3 years ago
Yeah, it took me a moment to see the relevance too. I think it's because the guy is examining the tortoise's neck, as the patient had enlarged lymph nodes in the neck. I don't think it's meant maliciously.
Load More Replies... #31
I’m the patient in this story, but I still think it’s worth saying. I started having horrible ankle pain when I would walk in grade school, and my doctor always attributed it to growing pains. I knew that was b******t, and so I kept annoying him about it. After multiple attempts at diagnosis (everything from knock knees to pigeon toe to just being weak) I finally went to a specialist. He asks me to flex my ankle, and so I do. “No, all the way” he said, even though I was flexing as hard as I could. I could only flex my foot maybe an inch from it’s resting position. Turns out, I had incredibly decreased mobility of that joint due to shortened tendons. He diagnosed me within 5 minutes, after years of my doctors brushing me off. After a few months of physiotherapy and a shoe insert, my pain decreased by a lot.
#32
Not a doctor but the patient. I was given someone else's medicine.....while in the hospital....via an IV. The nurse realized AFTER I had finished the bag that she screwed up. Then hid the bag in the garbage. The night nurse brought it to my attention because he was confused that someone else's used IV bag was in my private room. I was on a severe liquid restriction at the time too, so there was an extra couple hundred ml of fluid that I should have not had. A few other things that happened during that time in the hospital: - left in my own feces while in a coma for HOURS that resulted in it eating away and breaking down my tissue on my coccyx - was restrained and severely burned as a result (they didn't use the pads like they're supposed to, or ask family) Skin blackened. Almost lost my hand. Oh I should explain I was restrained because I was coming in and out of the coma, tried to scratch an itch and accidentally pulled out my nose feeding tube). - my PICC line was pulled almost completely out and was given a LOT of potassium. Now, if it's pure potassium it will burn. Since I was on a fluid restriction it couldn't be mixed with saline. My arm would swell, burn, burn red. It was so painful. It took about a week before someone realized "well this doesn't look right" - booking agent screwed up on an appointment so I ended up getting a vital checkup and bloodwork when my cardiologist and the infectious disease specialist weren't on site. Bloodwork was drawn wrong and no one thought to double check. - was not told my true results from another bloodtest which lead to me almost dying 1 week later - during a debridement they didn't realize I was coming in and out of my coma so I felt everything being cut off and removed, but couldn't say or do anything.
Kitten Dog Mom 3 years ago (edited)
While in labor, I was given someone else's medication to control contractions, I weighed 115, the other person was way over 250 lbs. Every muscle contracted "backwards " and I almost died, along with the baby. When the huge bill came issued for the medical records and the medication name I was given. Still don't know what it was, and still haven't heard back from the hospital...
#33
When in training I saw a child suspected of having meningitis. While I was new to pediatric medicine, I had a gut feeling just by looking at the 4 year old patient that he was too sick just to be a regular child sickness. The thing that tipped me off was the child having a slight delay in the pupillary reflexes. After seeing the child, I asked the head pediatrician to do a lumbar puncture to investigate the spinal fluid for signs of infection. She said there was no need and all signs pointed to some airborne virus that roaming around that time. An unnecessary lumbar puncture can scar children for life and what not. While I didn't agree, I mistakenly doubted my own assessment and assumed the doctor with tens of thousands of hours of experience would surely know better than me. I shrugged I wrote everything down in the dossier and asked the pediatrician to read my evaluation afterwards. I went home after an exhausting evening, having worked almost 14 hours straight. 3 days later the child came back with a fulminant meningitis that had taken a bad turn. When discussing the patient, she remarked she noticed a bizarre pupillary reflexes in the patient. Not only did she discount my suggestion of doing a diagnostic lumbar puncture, she also did not read my evaluation of the patient 3 days earlier. I learned to never doubt my gut feeling and it has led me some outlandish diagnoses sometimes.
Benita Valdez 3 years ago
Please never do. During the beginning of covid quarantine, my nephew ended up having viral meningitis. With all the craziness going on because of covid it was initially overlooked by the pediatrician but once he started having problems moving they rushed him the the ER. He seemed partially paralyzed because of it but they were able to treat him and he's a normal overly energetic 4 year old.
Pumpkin Spice 3 years ago
Thank god he's OK! I wish him a lot of Goldfish that never fall on the floor or get crumbly!
Load More Replies... #34
Yet another "not a doctor" but my grandmother had a lump on her tongue and when she went to the doctors the person who examined her said it looked benign but didn't feel comfortable so said she should go to an expert lest it become malignant. A more senior doctor decided against that and blocked the proposition. A couple months later it is malignant and she needs half har tongue cut out plus tonsils.
and_a_touch_of_the_’tism 3 years ago
Me, sitting here thinking “what is it like to have half a tongue??”
#35
I'm the patient. Had a breast tumor found by an NP at a county health department. She didn't tell me about it. I found it while doing a self exam in the shower a week later because I've always been on top of that s**t. I didn't go back to the doctor for months because I figured the NP would have told me. 4 months later I'm diagnosed with Stage 2 breast cancer at 30. Do your self breast exams and don't let anyone tell you you're "too young" for anything serious.
Benita Valdez 3 years ago
This. Too many young women have been told they are too young and as a result have had severe breast cancer that shouldn't have been so bad and even died. I was classmates with a girl who died from breast cancer in her mid to late 20's because she was too young and insurance wouldn't cover mammograms if you were under 35; shït many doctors told you that mammograms aren't calibrated for young women and some place just flat out refuse you even if a doctor sends you for one. After giving birth to her first child it was discovered that she had late stage 4 breast cancer and it was too late by then; she dïed in less than a year and barely even had the chance to get to know the child she gave birth to. I myself was told I was too young at like 28 for a mammogram and they refused to do one but atleast gave me a sonogram and it was only cystic breast tissue so I was lucky. This wasn't that long ago either; I'd say between 2008 and 2015 (too much happened for me to remember specifics)
Pumpkin Spice 3 years ago
"you're too young to have a fatal disease. because eVeRYbODY lIVeS uNTiL 80, of course."
#36
(Not a doctor - but I had a half-assed dentist) I went to a dentist's office for several years, and was repeatedly told to get braces, and have my wisdom teeth removed. Both of these pose an issue, since I play trumpet for a living, and performing at a professional level is difficult-to-impossible with braces, and having wisdom teeth out would put me out of work for at least a month during recovery. The dentist was told this repeatedly, during every visit. I decided to get a second opinion about the wisdom teeth, so I went to an oral surgeon to have them look at it. They took X-rays, and looked at the records from my dentist. Then the conversation: **Oral Surgeon:** So, you're experiencing a lot of pain in your wisdom teeth, according to you record. **Me:** I am not. At all. I never have. **Oral Surgeon:** ...So, I'm just going to assume your regular dentist falsified the rest of your record too, so I can put this folder down and do my job. He then went on to explain that the way my wisdom teeth came in, they're sitting on a nerve that's next to impossible not to cut in the process of removal, which would leave me without feeling in the lower half of my face for the rest of my life. As you might imagine, this would also be a major issue, given my career. I was advised that if they're not in pain, not to worry about them. I do need to extract an adjacent tooth to one of my wisdom teeth, though, which my regular dentist completely blew off when I asked about it. I never went back to my regular dentist, and will be starting with a new one soon.
Julius Zuke 3 years ago
Too many dentists have a pre-determined agenda of what procedures their patients will receive and how much money they will make from the patients over time. They fail to take individual differences and financial situations into account. Sorry, I'm not on board with your business plan. I need an actual health professional.
CanadianaKa 3 years ago
Had a filling put in and was in horrific pain. Went back, dentist told me that was normal (despite never having had pain after a filling before). It still hurt weeks later so I went back AGAIN. This time the hygeinist lectures me about how she always hurts after, and dentist says if it still hurt in a month, she'd do a root canal. Instead of finding a solution, let's kill the tooth! I traveled home and went to my childhood dentist, who pulled out the filling and guessed that she didn't clean the area properly after drilling and before putting in the filling. He said after a month of nerve irritation it was possible that I might still need a root canal, but thankfully I did not. Next dentist, on hearing the story, said "Root canals are the anti-biotics of dentistry. Overprescribed and rarely needed!"
#37
Doctor here. You guys would seriously be surprised at how much ineptitude there is even within our ranks. I once had a new admission come to me overnight in the hospital who was admitted by someone else the evening before. The patient very clearly had an out of hospital cardiac arrest at a local casino with a defibrillator used with return of spontaneous circulation. The history was clearly described by the admitting doctor however they called it “syncope” or passing out. They had ordered a cardiac stress test for the morning. I caught it early that morning. Ended up needing to go emergently to the cardiac catheterization lab and getting stent to heart artery which was the cause of their hearty stopping. If the admitting doctor had actually obtained a stress test on this patient, It would’ve killed them I have literally tens of stories like this. It feels like half the doctors I work with are morons and literally don’t care I want to clarify something and also defend docs. Medicine is super hard. Period. It’s one of those things where the more you learn the more you basically realize there is to learn and you always have a state of never feeling like you know enough. Also, there are limitations in modern medicine and we frankly don’t know sometimes. Also, most people are truly trying their best so I don’t wanna s**t on all doctors. The system we have in the United States as you guys all know it’s terrible, this also is on our side as well as practitioners.
Kate 3 years ago
Surprised? No. You know what they call the guy who graduated med school at the bottom of his class? Doctor.
Scotira 3 years ago
Tbh that doesn't always matter. Some of the best MD I've worked with were medocre at best when finishing their studies. And some who were at the best of their class were morons. So what's important is what you do afterwards.
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DippityDooDerp 3 years ago
Doctors and other health care workers are like Police Officers. People hate them and talk trash about them until they are in trouble or need them.
Julius Zuke 3 years ago
The best doctors I have had over the years were intuitive. My life was saved several times by doctors who were intuitive instead of "by the book" and were willing to challenge systemic protocols.
#38
Speaking as a patient.
When I was a kid, my eyes were hurting and my dad kept taking me back to the same eye doctor, who insisted that the problem was that I wasn't cleaning my contacts properly and just kept giving me harsher and harsher chemicals to wash them in. It got to the point where I couldn't open my eyes fully in a room with the lights on, and I hadn't worn contacts for months. Finally, after a year, my mom forced my dad to take me to a different doctor. Literally he met me in the waiting room, looked at me with his naked eye, and said, you have a raging eye infection.
A month of medicine and the infection was gone, but there was so much scarring and damage it was twenty years before I could wear contacts again.
EDIT: Getting this question a lot. I was a kid at the time, I didn't know the difference between an optometrist and an ophthalmologist, and it was over two decades ago. I do not remember if I ever knew, sorry I can't tell you.
Justme 3 years ago
I had an eye doc prescribe steroid drops. Eventually over the course of a year I could only see if I used the drops within the last hour. I requested a refill on the drops and was surprised that she didn’t even ask to see me. I didn’t pick them up at the pharmacy and went to a new doc who prescribed antibiotics instead. She insisted on seeing me every 2 weeks until the infection cleared.
#39
Another ‘not a doctor’ but my mum who’s a nurse. I was 15 and had fallen on my wrist while playing football in PE at school. School nurse who was friendly with my mum through nursing circles said to keep an eye on it during the evening. Later that afternoon I’m in agony, but my mum wasn’t having any of it. Said if it was hurting, I’m old enough to cycle to the Dr’s myself (I tried to explain the importance of brakes and wrist usage). After enough whining she finally takes me and then on to the hospital after they said it was broken. She sat very sheepishly in the waiting room after hearing the prognosis. Fast forward 3 years later. My stepbrother comes back home for the weekend from Uni, with a sore wrist from getting into a fight. Same quit whining it’s fine response from her. He goes to the Uni health center when he gets back and then is taken to hospital for surgery and a pin put in place. Edit: Just to address the comments about her must being an awful mother and nurse. Total opposite, she’s been a fantastic mum and now grandmother and is very highly regarded locally for her nursing. But as other kids of medical professionals have mentioned in posts, there’s something about how they react to their own kid’s medical issues. It seems that any medical logic switches off when it comes to their own kids. I’ve met a ton of people who’ve had very similar occurrences with medical professional parents and it’s been good to talk and share laugh at the stories.
Toolkit 3 years ago
The cook's family goes starved... The tailor's children clad in rags... I could go on
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Grudge-holding Treefrog 3 years ago
As the daughter of a doctor, I had almost the exact same situation when I broke my wrist. “Suck it up, it’s not that bad, quit being so dramatic.” etc, etc
Justme 3 years ago
Same experience here - usually you truly are just fine. Some injuries bloom over a few hours. A sprained wrist hurts like a fracture but a fracture will often morph into discoloration and more range of motion problems a few hours into the injury. So the wait and see approach is correct.
#40
One that comes to mind is when I was a resident, the ED doctor wanted to admit a mild septic patient with a UTI. I review her labs, and knowing that she is a diabetic, it was obvious florid DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis). That kind of admission typically goes straight to the ICU to get insulin via a drip and aggressive IV fluid rehydration. She was just in the ED hallway with no medications at all looking like c**p.
#41
Not a doctor- but I’ve been dealing with abdominal pain since a child, countless ultrasounds, doctor appointments, er visits. I was always told it was in my head. Recently had surgery for something unrelated- during the surgery the had to free my appendix that was stuck to my abdomen wall and just the tip is healthy at this point. I’ve been suffering for years with a mild case of appendicitis and my body was pretty much just absorbing my appendix. I will have to go back to get it removed at a later surgery because it was so stuck all they could do was free it, and they didn’t want to risk it at that point because it was going to cause more pain.... so that was cool to find out.
#42
Medical student here (will be doctor in May). Working an ED shift we found what was probably a *missed* testicular torsion. Previous doctor told patient he probably had cancer. When he showed up at our ED, what he had was probably a dead testis missed at initial presentation weeks prior.
People with testes, especially young men: if you have sudden-onset excruciating pain, sometimes without activity, often after/during activity, go to the ED IMMEDIATELY. It’s one of the few things that would make a urologist lounging at home on the weekend turn on his Tesla Ludicrous mode and go plaid to get to the hospital.
Much love to urology. My patient experience was with a male, but indeed ovarian torsion is a similar emergency!
Demongrrrrl 3 years ago
My fiance's son had a testicular torsion but his father refused to take him to the hospital because he didn't want to go out (he was comfortable and lazy). The boy wound up losing the testicle.
Pumpkin Spice 3 years ago
>:( I hope your fiance now has custody of the son. Poor dude.
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#43
Not a doctor, but the patient. And it’s nothing major. I have anxiety that can get pretty bad when untreated. I went to see my general doctor about it and tried to explain my symptoms. She told me it was heartburn. I tried to explain that I thought it might be anxiety and she yelled at me. She got upset and told me how “everyone is stressed” and how “these are stressful times, it’s normal.” I was having heart attack symptoms and I’m far too young with no heart problems to be having a heart attack. I went to a new doctor and before I could even finish explaining she cut me off and said “yeah you’ve got anxiety.” I was out on meds and within the week I was feeling better.
Cawaran 3 years ago
Doctors be like: endometriosis? No it's anxiety. Stroke? No it's anxiety, and so on. Oh, you think you have anxiety? Must be heartburn!
Benita Valdez 3 years ago
Oh I was pawned off as anxiety and acid reflux all the time. Yes I had both and on meds for both as well as a few other things because i have other medical issues including, at the time, severe muscle spasms which were straightening my spine. Went to ER 3 or 4 times because the pains in my chest got so bad and my body felt like it was vibrating and I was losing control of my hands during the episodes. Each time, oh its anxiety, heartburn and tremors, even though you could not see any tremors and I'm pretty sure tremors don't make your whole body feel like a vibrator but im not a dr. Finally see a new doctor after a few months who looked at my prescriptions after hearing my issues and was like "oh no wonder, this medication combo can cause your neurons to misfire. Let's change this one so it stops that". My muscle relaxer and fibromyalgia medication were a terrible combo and I've had no issues like that again after they changed the muscle relaxer.
Load More Replies... DippityDooDerp 3 years ago
Yeah I have to call bs on this one. Anxiety meds take longer than a week to start working. There is absolutely no possible way OP was feeling better in a week If it was anxiety.
RedMarbles 3 years ago
I believe benzodiazepines work within a half hour or so.
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#44
I'm a dentist in the UK. While I was working as a locum in an emergency clinic had a man present with a mouth of infections. He had wanted implants, went to a private uk dentist who refused to do them due to the patient's heavy smoking and poor oral hygiene which would mean the chance of success and good healing would be limited. The patient didn't accept this, went online and found he could go to Hungary and get the implants done, for half the price, and have a holiday. Came back and within a few weeks most of the implants are infected and hes sat in my chair. We gave him antibiotics to clear up the infection but then had to inform him that the implants would need to come out and he would need to find a specialist dentist with the necessary equipment to get that done. He was not happy. Spent all that money only to have to pay again to have them all removed. No better off and at least 10G down. Should have listened when the 1st person told him no!
#45
Patient getting anxious about numbness in his hand. "It's getting more frequent and I don't want to live like this, it gets me freaked out like my hands not there." They assumed the person was suicidal and having symptoms of panic attack (elevated breathing rate leading to tingling/numbness in hands).
They did a CT because I requested it, there was a lesion, they blew it off. MRI showed it was glioblastoma multiforme.
Clarifying - it was missed by the ER physician assistant. The MD supervising them never spoke to me. Not even sure if they reviewed the case.
#46
Obligatory not a doctor, but I am a scientist. Last week I was left a bunch of blood films to look at by a colleague, who after a long nightshift insisted they were mundane and I should just deal with them when I get the chance. I decided to clear them off immediately and the first film I looked at was a gentleman with a haemoglobin of 43, platelet count of 37 and a film jam packed with blasts, it must have been about 40% blast cells. Naturally I'm immediately in acute leukaemia mode, ringing urgent care and the consultant who drags this poor man out of bed and into hospital. Spoke to the consultant today and was told the patient works off shore and is dealing surprisingly well with his condition. My colleague didn't miss the diagnosis, but did miss that film from his queue entirely.
What do you think ?
GirlFriday 3 years ago (edited)
I am the patient. About 9 years ago I started feeling terrible, no energy, no appetite, skin rashes, fog brain, gaining weight. I went to my PCP and he looked me over and told me that I needed to exercise and lose weight. 6 month later, I go in for a check up and even though I had been eating no more than 1,000 calories per day and forcing myself to exercise for one hour each day, I had gained another 25 pounds. He yelled at me for being fat and told me that if I would just lose weight I would feel better. Finally, he sent me to a bariatric surgeon because my "fatness needs surgical intervention." It was only while going through the tests to have bariatric surgery (which I didn't want) that the surgeon found cancer. I had gastrointestinal stromal tumors and stomach cancer that were preventing me from digesting food properly and causing the weight gain. 1 year of chemo and radiation and two major surgeries later, I finally got a NED diagnosis. I hate that Dr.
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
I hate him, too. There's a nurse practitioner who missed my mom's brain tumor. But since I'm not *her* doctor, nobody listened to me, and .... yeah. (And I am an MD. *sigh*) Did that nitwit even do bloodwork?! Good grief.
Load More Replies... Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
I have an MD and had to stop reading. Getting too angry at sloppy colleagues. Argh. Not good for my blood pressure.
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Carol Emory 3 years ago (edited)
My husband was diagnosed with gout when he was 26. He had high uric acid that crystalized piercing his white blood cells and causing his big toe to swell. Painful to walk. We were told by doctors he had to stay away from soy products, seafood and most meat products...especially game style meat like turkey. He was given colchicine to reduce his white blood cell count during the attacks and flush out the excess uric acid. Every time he took it he had symptoms similar to having the flu. Ten years later when he had an attack so bad his knee swelled up and he could only crawl from place to place, an ER doctor asked what kind of maintenance meds he was on. Excuse me...there are maintenance medications. After he was prescribed Allopurinol, he never had another attack and was told to only avoid wild game like venison, but turkey was ok. Guess what we had at Thanksgiving that year......
Craig Silberman 3 years ago
it's an old joke, but true: 50% of all doctors finished in the bottom half of their class
Tiny Dancer 3 years ago (edited)
Patient here. I was 14, possibly the victim of a car accident (found by the side of the road, but not a scratch on myself or my bicycle), grabbed my head once we got to the hospital and screamed the place down. X-rays ensue, a room full of doctors examine them and agree the little shadow near the base of my skull is nothing to worry about. All but one doc. He wasn't happy and wanted to get in there and have a look. My parents reluctantly agreed. Five hours, a shaved head, and 75 stitches later, he walked out with the barest hint of a smile. That shadow had been a blood clot the size of a fried egg that was literally hours away from reaching my brain. Almost 50 years later and I thank the goddess for that one skeptical doctor! They had to remove a bone over my ear to get to the clot and replaced it with a metallic mesh for safety reasons (a smack to the head in that spot would have killed me instantly). I got a kick out of saying I had a metal plate in my head for quite some time :-)
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
I'm glad for that doctor. I also want to kick the docs who said a shadow near your brain is no big deal. Yeah, it is. Always. Yikes.
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Patti Vance 3 years ago
growing up i had unexplained pain in my joints; told they were 'growing pains'. okay. was known as a klutz because simple things like stepping off a curb wrong would result in broken ankle. still, live life normally. exercise regularly. eat well. then, by the time i am 30 notice severe changes in my bones/joints. spend next 8 years going to several drs for diagnosis with no real answer. then, i have an accident that requires surgery. once inside they see my bones and discover degenerative disease w/brittle bones that is genetic in nature.
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
While some are unforgivably lax and stupid, bear in mind that even specialists probably aren't going to know everything about a specialty. An oncologist may specialize in gastric cancers or skin cancers, but rarely both, etc. And if you think your doctor is full of s**t? FIRE THE DOCTOR. Get second-third-fourth opinions. Don't want to pay? OK, but you pay one way or another. It's debt or debt in the US, sadly. And in other nations, you may get a wait, you may get a specialist who isn't the right sub-specialty on the first try, etc. Shouting it again: FIRE DOCTORS. We can be fired by patients. YOU know YOUR body.
Rachel Ainsworth 3 years ago
Can't wait until artificial intelligence and robot surgery are common (hoping that the artificial intelligence doesn't learn too many bad habits from "real" doctors).
Notyomama 3 years ago
My neck surgery was done using robotics. My doctor was a mechanical engineer before becoming a doctor. No one can tell I had surgery. Usually people have these really ugly scars. Also, coincidentally, I didn't go with the first surgeon they sent me to. Always Google your doctors. The first doctor had been sent a cease and desist from the FDA for experimenting on his patients. I had a feeling the guy was a creepy and I was right!!
Load More Replies...
Your Neighborhood Alien 3 years ago
Why did I read these? The malpractice from the doctors really just pisses me off.
GirlFriday 3 years ago (edited)
I am the patient. About 9 years ago I started feeling terrible, no energy, no appetite, skin rashes, fog brain, gaining weight. I went to my PCP and he looked me over and told me that I needed to exercise and lose weight. 6 month later, I go in for a check up and even though I had been eating no more than 1,000 calories per day and forcing myself to exercise for one hour each day, I had gained another 25 pounds. He yelled at me for being fat and told me that if I would just lose weight I would feel better. Finally, he sent me to a bariatric surgeon because my "fatness needs surgical intervention." It was only while going through the tests to have bariatric surgery (which I didn't want) that the surgeon found cancer. I had gastrointestinal stromal tumors and stomach cancer that were preventing me from digesting food properly and causing the weight gain. 1 year of chemo and radiation and two major surgeries later, I finally got a NED diagnosis. I hate that Dr.
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
I hate him, too. There's a nurse practitioner who missed my mom's brain tumor. But since I'm not *her* doctor, nobody listened to me, and .... yeah. (And I am an MD. *sigh*) Did that nitwit even do bloodwork?! Good grief.
Load More Replies... Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
I have an MD and had to stop reading. Getting too angry at sloppy colleagues. Argh. Not good for my blood pressure.
Load More Replies... Carol Emory 3 years ago (edited)
My husband was diagnosed with gout when he was 26. He had high uric acid that crystalized piercing his white blood cells and causing his big toe to swell. Painful to walk. We were told by doctors he had to stay away from soy products, seafood and most meat products...especially game style meat like turkey. He was given colchicine to reduce his white blood cell count during the attacks and flush out the excess uric acid. Every time he took it he had symptoms similar to having the flu. Ten years later when he had an attack so bad his knee swelled up and he could only crawl from place to place, an ER doctor asked what kind of maintenance meds he was on. Excuse me...there are maintenance medications. After he was prescribed Allopurinol, he never had another attack and was told to only avoid wild game like venison, but turkey was ok. Guess what we had at Thanksgiving that year......
Craig Silberman 3 years ago
it's an old joke, but true: 50% of all doctors finished in the bottom half of their class
Tiny Dancer 3 years ago (edited)
Patient here. I was 14, possibly the victim of a car accident (found by the side of the road, but not a scratch on myself or my bicycle), grabbed my head once we got to the hospital and screamed the place down. X-rays ensue, a room full of doctors examine them and agree the little shadow near the base of my skull is nothing to worry about. All but one doc. He wasn't happy and wanted to get in there and have a look. My parents reluctantly agreed. Five hours, a shaved head, and 75 stitches later, he walked out with the barest hint of a smile. That shadow had been a blood clot the size of a fried egg that was literally hours away from reaching my brain. Almost 50 years later and I thank the goddess for that one skeptical doctor! They had to remove a bone over my ear to get to the clot and replaced it with a metallic mesh for safety reasons (a smack to the head in that spot would have killed me instantly). I got a kick out of saying I had a metal plate in my head for quite some time :-)
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
I'm glad for that doctor. I also want to kick the docs who said a shadow near your brain is no big deal. Yeah, it is. Always. Yikes.
Load More Replies... Patti Vance 3 years ago
growing up i had unexplained pain in my joints; told they were 'growing pains'. okay. was known as a klutz because simple things like stepping off a curb wrong would result in broken ankle. still, live life normally. exercise regularly. eat well. then, by the time i am 30 notice severe changes in my bones/joints. spend next 8 years going to several drs for diagnosis with no real answer. then, i have an accident that requires surgery. once inside they see my bones and discover degenerative disease w/brittle bones that is genetic in nature.
Leo Domitrix 3 years ago
While some are unforgivably lax and stupid, bear in mind that even specialists probably aren't going to know everything about a specialty. An oncologist may specialize in gastric cancers or skin cancers, but rarely both, etc. And if you think your doctor is full of s**t? FIRE THE DOCTOR. Get second-third-fourth opinions. Don't want to pay? OK, but you pay one way or another. It's debt or debt in the US, sadly. And in other nations, you may get a wait, you may get a specialist who isn't the right sub-specialty on the first try, etc. Shouting it again: FIRE DOCTORS. We can be fired by patients. YOU know YOUR body.
Rachel Ainsworth 3 years ago
Can't wait until artificial intelligence and robot surgery are common (hoping that the artificial intelligence doesn't learn too many bad habits from "real" doctors).
Notyomama 3 years ago
My neck surgery was done using robotics. My doctor was a mechanical engineer before becoming a doctor. No one can tell I had surgery. Usually people have these really ugly scars. Also, coincidentally, I didn't go with the first surgeon they sent me to. Always Google your doctors. The first doctor had been sent a cease and desist from the FDA for experimenting on his patients. I had a feeling the guy was a creepy and I was right!!
Load More Replies... Your Neighborhood Alien 3 years ago
Why did I read these? The malpractice from the doctors really just pisses me off.
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