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.
Concerning your first point : being dilated alone may not be enough to warrant an immediate hospitalization. My wife waters had broken, she was dilated a bit, yet it took her another 28 hours to give birth. She wasn’t in labour, as such. Only reason we had to stay was that the waters had broken and that’s a condition that needs monitoring. But I was told to go home and rest for a while, after 8 hours (we had arrived at 2am).
In general, one of the most important thing to do to help the mother give birth is to feel comfortable, relaxed, etc. Being in a hospital isn’t generally conducive to those things so if at all doable, it’s better to stay home and wait until it’s actually show time. But yeah, not easy to judge, when you’re not an ob/gyn!Your second point is just… there is nothing to defend, there.
The problem is, she gave birth a few hours after we showed up. If I’d driven home I’d have had to deliver the kid myself.
Oh I didn’t assume anything about your circumstances. Just wanted to offer a possible explanation behind the nurse’s reaction, as I’m sure it’s a weird thing to be told!
I hope it all went well in the end :)
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.
deleted by creator
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.
The VA is criminally underfunded and as a result understaffed.
I personally have had nothing but a great experience with my VA healthcare. It seems like it really depends on what region you are in.
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.
I’m glad you found out the real cause before it was too late.
I do have to imagine doctor’s get tired of seeing so many patients who do just need to lose weight. I think if there was less of an obesity issue plaguing the healthcare industry, people in your situation would be taken a lot more seriously.
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.
or an adult with ADHD to “just apply themselves”
I cannot express how deeply this cuts. After taking stims for the first time at 36, I felt like I finally woke up. For the first time ever I felt as though I was present and capable of carrying through with basic tasks.
Not to say I was entirely helpless. I was (and still am) a senior developer with a highly successful track record. But the difference in mental energy to complete even the simplest of life’s tasks was monumental.
I’ve been told ad nauseum in highschool “you have so much potential, you just need to concentrate/try harder”, when I was trying to give 110% every single day.
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.
deleted by creator
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.
deleted by creator
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.
Alternative doctor irl: is just you being old
Oh, everyone experiences that. That’s normal.
You’ll see, the autopsy will show that I was right.
Doctor refused to give me an x ray after I fractured a vertebrae jumping off a Cliff into water. She accused me of just wanting painkillers. I demanded to be seen by another doctor, who gave the x-ray and confirmed broken back and lucky to not be paralyzed. The piercing glare I gave the original doctor when the X-ray was shown…
The glare was not enough, a massive middle finger was warranted!
I should’ve got her fired but I was trying to survive grad school and physical therapy
deleted by creator
No Gatorade? What kind of barbarism is going on over there?
Hide the pain, literally.
deleted by creator
And also you should just lose weight, that will fix it
That does work for a lot of things doctors commonly see. I ran into it. I was sick, and after I mostly got better I was having chronic chest pain that hung on for a month. I finally decided to go see a doctor. I didn’t have a doctor in the area yet, so I went to the one at the office, who was out, so I saw the nurse practitioner filling in. She did an EKG on some 50 year old machine and told me I had a heart attack. I refused the ambulance she tried to call (I had been driving for a month; I could take myself to the hospital), but went to the ER as instructed. They said I was fine, but told me to do some follow ups with my doctor. I found a real doctor who ordered some blood test to start. One metric on that scared me straight, before even going to review the results. I did a complete 180 on my diet. Within 3 days the chest pain was gone. When I went in to review the results, I told the doctor. She said something like, “I guess I don’t need to convince you that you might feel better if you eat better.” I went on to lose 50lbs and pretty much every issue I had went away… stuff other doctors told me to take pills for, even when I asked if it could be weight related and if losing it would help… then dismissed that and told me to take the pills. The pills didn’t help (I took them for 2 years), it was just the weight.
I just meant it’s a very common tactic doctors use to avoid taking the effort to properly diagnose women. There’s so many stories women tell of having years or decades of that dismissal, and finally finding out they had a treatable condition (or combination of conditions) all along.
Figuring out what’s wrong with someone is like troubleshooting a computer. You do the obvious and common stuff to rule it out, then if that’s not it, the more obscure problems can be chased down. The difference is that the obvious and common thing with most people these days is weight/diet, and the doctor can’t do that for a person.
Everyone complains about doctors just giving out pills and not finding the root problem, but this is a big reason why. To figure out the root issue, all the normal stuff needs to be ruled out and most people aren’t going to do it.
My dad had a bunch of health issues that I told him were likely weight related. He assured me they weren’t and said his doctor told him so as well. After a decade of dealing with stuff he finally got on some program that led to him losing weight. All those things he’s been dealing with for 10 years went away. He cries when talking about it. When he was in the middle of it he acted like the treatment was no big deal and would tell everyone about it, telling them to get checked out, because the treatment was so good… turns out losing weight and not having it at all was a lot better. He also found the allergies he thought he had for 50+ years were a mild allergy to wheat or gluten (thanks to what was essentially an elimination diet)… when he eats bread his nose runs, Benadryl stops it. When I suggested if he ate better he might feed better, he claimed he didn’t feel bad, but he didn’t know what the alternative was, because he dealt with it his whole life and never attributed it to the food he was eating.
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?
deleted by creator
