It doesn’t even have to be a mystery illness. A woman can walk into the clinic with a broken rib, and doctors will tell her it’s menstrual cramps (true story from my partner).
The last time I really lost my temper with someone was with a nurse who told my wife (who was dialated to several cm already) that she wasn’t really in labor and she needed to go home.
There has been a few times before that where a doctor would ask her what was wrong in a normal visit, and she would answer, and the doc would ask me if that was correct. She’s my wife, not my child, why are you treating her like she doesn’t know what’s wrong?
The last one might be because some people (I’m kind of an extreme case) don’t pay enough attention to their own symptoms, and typically downplay the frequency, severity, or at the very least botch up the timelines fairly well.
Not only am I ADHD, I grew up in a household where I was constantly told to just ignore things and suck it up, so now it’s second nature to ignore my body and carry on. I feel like that’s also part of dealing with aging-related and chronic issues.
That’s still not an excuse for a doctor to confirm with his patient’s husband when the wife is the patient.
It is an excuse though, it’s not about being husband and wife it’s not about being a woman, it’s about getting a second opinion from a separate party because of the stuff that the OP mentioned.
Now, some doctors make their sexism more evident, but you can’t really judge them by that interaction, I’ve seen plenty that just try to confirm the story of the patient with the patients companion, regardless of gender.
Determined to be offended, got it.
Yup. It’s fucking ridiculous that I have to go to the doctor with my wife just for her to be taken seriously. And her female doctors are the worst about it.
Is that worth losing your temper over? The midwife sent us home because my wife was only a few cm dilated, and active labour doesn’t start until about 5 or 6cm dilation, after which it generally takes another 5+ hours before the cervix is dilated enough (i.e. 10cm) to give birth. It’s annoying, but it’s standard procedure.
It’d be wonderful if the healthcare systems around the world had infinite resources to care for pregnant women, but unfortunately they don’t.
My wife was in labor. For the 45 minutes between when she was discharged and when she returned unable to stand, they billed us for two visits and would not budge.
Or if you’re fat. “I think I have strep throat.” “Have you tried losing weight?”
Fuck, that would make me so mad. Like holy shit, what a fucking lazy PoS.
Clearly they should have xrayed themselves before coming in. The audacity of some of these people seeking “medicine”. Pathetic.
(The largest /s)
Good God that caught me so off guard
I got extensively checked out for why I was in pain all the time after I ate, losing massive amounts of weight to the point of near-starvation and felt like I had food stuck in my esophagus all the time. Doctors tested me for a couple of weeks for physical esophagus problems, declared I was fine, and sent me to a psychologist who grilled me for 45 minutes about whether I believed the tests or I “still thought something was wrong with me”. I told her I believed the tests but that they were not the right tests yet. Pretty sure I didn’t anxiety myself into losing 60 pounds in 4 months and losing my house, work and relationship… she declared I had “health anxiety”. Oops, turned out I was actually developing LADA, a form of type 1 diabetes. I ended up at the ER later on and they said I would have died or gone into a coma in another 1-2 days.
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I was recovering from extended time with undiagnosed Celiac. I assumed it was related to that. My symptoms seemed a lot like what I experienced with Celiac, but I was so stringently gluten free that I couldn’t figure out what was happening. The doctor i saw was a celiac specialist - and he was great at that - but I needed a more general doctor or an endocrinologist. On the last day of 2 weeks there, after all these esophagus tests, allergists, a dermatologist and the psychologist, he said “It could be Type 1 Diabetes… some people get that too”. Then didn’t order a blood test or do anything.
Insanely bad doctor, wow. Losing a ton of weight super quick is like one of the biggest symptoms of diabetes
I wish I’d figured it out myself. One problem was I was recovering from Celiac, and tried a very restricted diet, and a liquid diet - which actually worked when I started doing chicken in a blender (which is much better than it sounds, especially when you’ve been starving for 4 months). Tell a doctor ‘I was starving and I went to this weird restricted diet’ and it seems they have a really hard time with the order of things. Reality was “I was starving and in pain and then I tried this restricted diet” and they hear “you were on this restricted diet, and then you were starving and in pain”.
Do you know what they call doctors that barely passed medical school, at the bottom of their class?
Doctors.
Also C-doctors
Damn did you message the psychologist the truth?
More like damn did you message your malpractice lawyers?
I’ve thought about it. It was all a lot to handle and I didn’t really think back to it for another year. Probably I should write her “hey, so here’s what actually happened…”
More like “hey, your actions were harmful to my health and you should reconsider your biases as a professional since it’s your job to be open minded even when you think your patient is wrong”
Or at least "hey, here’s my malpractice lawyer’s number.
I wish I had, because they really failed and the psychologist BS was a disappointing insult on top of it. Apparently, this hospital has a reputation for doing that. It’s common, in general, that if they can’t figure out anything or don’t want to keep trying, doctors conclude you’re mentally ill or ‘faking’.
If you want you can read a thread I posted on reddit asking for advice 2 years ago. As best I could gather, there’s a time limit of 3 years and it was too late by the time I recovered enough to consider doing anything.
We’ll run this test, but your insurance probably won’t cover it so here’s the bill. How would you like to pay today?
I always hate how casual they are too. “That will be $3,526, how would you like to pay?”
“Uhh… i wouldn’t, thanks.”
My credit is fucked anyways and I work at a Walmart.
Sue me bitchs.
More like “we already ran this test without telling you how expensive it would be. Your insurance didn’t cover it. Here’s your bill. And here’s a second bill for the same exact thing but this time we’ll call it ‘professional services’ instead of lab work – pay that too or we’ll send you to collections.”
Fucking send it to collections. I’m no rookie at dodging collectors and phone calls.
Welcome to the US department of Veterans Affairs.
Remember all of those guys with Gulf war syndrome whose doctors told them they were faking it until they killed themselves? Ends up. They were exposed to nerve gas and doctors aren’t trained in that. Oopsies!
The same is happening within the VA today. Too many of my friends have killed themselves.
It would be funny if it wasn’t so sad and true. A few years ago I had the flu. Took me three weeks to be completely fit again. Then, like two weeks later, I suddenly got dizzy, I felt like vomiting, I was cold but sweated like a pig. I thought I was going to faint. I laid down and slowly felt better. But it came back every ~30 minutes. Over the day it got better until in the evening I only felt exhausted. The next day I felt good again and went back to work. Around 9 in the morning, BAM, it hit again. I went to the physician and my systolic blood pressure went haywire going up and down between 90 and 180 within 5 minutes. He prescribed me something “for the bloodstream” without any clear diagnosis. It didn’t do shit. I visited him I don’t know how many times. Then I went to the next physician. And the next. I somehow kind of learned to live with it. One year later the third or fourth physician actually did some tests: You have a severe vitamin D3, B6, and B12 deficiency. Your immune system is fucked. Your stomach is fucked. Your metabolism is fucked. I finally got some treatment that actually improved something and felt significantly better but not good. Two years and ~three physicians later it turns out that my problems are somehow linked to my allergies: your immune system is fucked. There’s some trial and error with different medications, at the end of which I actually feel better but still not good. Three years and another two physicians later the fuzzy diagnosis is that I had/have “long flu” (mind you, this is all before covid). It damaged my nerves and somehow mixed up my metabolism. There’s a weird “cross-relationship” with my allergies. Now I take medication daily which lets me at least function and work. I still do not feel good. I haven’t felt good since six years. But, there’s an entry in my file from 5 years ago that I’m a hypochondriac, that won’t go away, despite later tests confirming that several things were severely and factually wrong with me …
Oh hey, fam! Welcome to the club. I have all that as well, they think also as a result of a viral illness prior to Covid. Metabolic (mitochondrial dysfunction) and neuroimmune. At first, I was told I have anxiety, oh no wait, schizoaffective disorder, oh no no wait, conversion disorder, as if any of those things are even remotely similar. Lo and behold when I finally got a physician who has some idea how to diagnose and treat my symptoms, I’m doing much better. Like you said, I’m functional even if I don’t feel great. And funny enough, none of my treatments include psychiatric medications.
This club sucks.
My wife is in the same club. Family history of lupus, all of the symptoms of lupus, several health conditions that are usually caused by an autoimmune disease, but the ANA panel was negative so it can’t be lupus.
Luckily I’ve convinced her to actually go to a clinic that exists to diagnose hard to diagnose autoimmune diseases.
It doesn’t help that she’s a soft spoken petite woman, either. I have to go to doctors appointments with her for them to actually take her seriously.
This club sucks.
You can actually have the hypochondriac thing removed from your medical records if you want it gone. It’s a HIPAA requirement that you have full control over what’s in there. You’ll have to send the request to every facility you’ve shared your record with that don’t have connected systems.
My former cardiologist kept grilling me to lose weight, laughing in my face when I told him I was really active at work but still gaining. Turns out I was retaining water because the heart failure he blamed on my weight was a genetic defect that a few years later required a transplant.
Due to unrelated circumstances, I moved states between my last visit with him and the discovery of how much worse my condition was or I definitely would have had words with him.
You may want to file a complaint with the medical licensing board of that state though. While nothing will probably happen because of it, it may make him think twice the next time before he is so dismissive.
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That, in itself, is a significant issue. Obesity IS a health problem but it is not treated as one or taken seriously. Instead those who are sick with obesity are shamed, belittled, and dismissed. More and more research is showing that, often, it isn’t just because of people “being lazy” and having poor dietary self-control. There are significant genetic, microbiome, and other biological variations that appear strongly correlated and likely causitive.
Turns out that, like telling a person with cancer to “walk it off” or an adult with ADHD to “just apply themselves”, the approach of not actually treating obesity, a known medical issue with all of the qualifying criteria of a disease, including increased risk of premature death and becoming sick with other diseases, as though it is a medical issue isn’t very effective.
I’ve seen doctors do so much stupid stuff. My former oncologist prescribed two drugs I was obviously allergic to, including one that nearly put me on dialysis for the rest of my life.
Another dumbass refused to accept that I had a bone fragment in the back of my hand. Forty years later I have a hand that has permanent bone damage.
Thanks, guys.
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Super specialization in medicine is definitely an issue. I’m sorry you went through that. I don’t think many neurologists would even think of screening someone for eoe.
There’s a lot of problems with the American healthcare system, but one of the benefits to providers being businesses is that you can refuse to pay for services they don’t actually provide.
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They’d charge you for being present in the room, let alone receiving consultation. If they can bill it, they will.
Reminds me of the innkeeper from Les Misérables
After surgery while recovering in a teaching hospital the doctors came through with a boatload of residents who did nothing but watch and listen. I later found out that every single one of those residents billed for each visit.
If you don’t know how to dispute a charge and just roll over and take whatever the system throws at you, sure.
There is no need to be disingenuous to be right. You can dispute any charge for services non-rendered in the US, for anything you pay for.
Provided it is a charge, that is to say, paid with Visa/MC’s or your bank’s money, and transacted over the CC issuer’s payment network.
Quite simple a process and at that point, you have hella bigger guys with interest (not in your money but on the interchange fees riding in that funds transfer. They will get theirs back, and so do you get yours.
There are far more people than you seem to realize that simply do not have access to such credit opportunities.
Even a cash payer for healthcare services would have a headache with our legal system should they need to sue for breach of contract.
That one also sucks, in case it wasn’t clear. And again, is the avenue of a privileged subset.
For the majority of Americans, it’s insurance paying. So that means an insurance appeal.
And well… that’s a system in the sense a shifting labyrinth is a system. But don’t take it from me:
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-to-appeal-insurance-denials-too-complicated
Yes, and then the credit reporting agencies ignore your disputes for months, or possibly forever, and in the meantime anything you try to finance will cost more, if you can get it at all.
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The glare was not enough, a massive middle finger was warranted!
Alternative doctor irl: is just you being old
Oh, everyone experiences that. That’s normal.
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No Gatorade? What kind of barbarism is going on over there?
Hide the pain, literally.
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And also you should just lose weight, that will fix it
Cops in police dramas: we have to catch the murderer! Who cares about his rights, he’s a criminal!
Cops in real life: I’m gonna shoot this black guy, idk he probably did something. Who cares about his rights?
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