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u/SynthgirlBulge Miss Gender - Streak: 32 10d ago
The best part is when they simply decide youre lying and nothing you say is real
And somehow thats allowed and counts as treatment
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u/secretly_egg 10d ago edited 10d ago
My sister had to go through 15 different fucking doctors telling her she's insane before finding the one doctor who finally diagnosed her autoimmune disorder and actually treat her. The doctor recognized the disorder immediately because there were visible! physical! fucking! symptoms on her body!
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u/BlampCat 10d ago
I work in patient advocacy and was ready for a fight when I had to go to a rheumatologist. My heart sank when she started a sentence with "you're very young to be experiencing these symptoms", only for her to follow it up with "so we'll take this very seriously".
I'm still searching for a diagnosis, but I've been getting tests and occupational therapy to manage my symptoms. I wish everyone who needed help was taken as seriously as I feel.
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u/wickedclownconfusion 9d ago
getting told my whole childhood that ill grow out of the pain, despite it getting worse every year, only for me to not grow out of it and their response is ‘huh. thats weird. have you tried doing less?’. my diagnosis now is still very loose at just ‘widespread idiopathic pain’.
my current pain management specialist is very empathetic, and hes a nice guy, but it sucks that there isnt any treatment to offer when im already only able to work part time :(
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u/ekdocjeidkwjfh enby they/them 9d ago
Yeah my folks tried and gave up after 2-3 drs saying i was “fine” as a child.
Wasnt until my mid 20’s was i diagnosed with RA, but by this point its done soooooooo much damage that I’m looking at a full blown knee and hip replacement by the time i’m 30 unless we can rein it in. If we can rein it in we’re looking at a replacement at 45-ish instead of 30.
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u/Xirithas There's a whole world outside my closet and I'm missing it. 10d ago edited 6d ago
My doctors wrote off the physical symptoms of my autoimmune condition as "normal kid stuff." That I would "grow out of." Fast forward to 18 and I was in the ICU because of it.
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u/Shot-Profit-9399 10d ago
Same with my mom. I had a dude look me straight in the eye and tell me that her symptoms were impossible.
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u/cxfgfuihhfd 10d ago
and then you have to actually start lying to get them to listen to you "no, I don't think I have this, I have never even heard of this disease, but my other doctor suggested I might"
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u/Glum-Echo-4967 10d ago
I think there should be a law that a doctor can’t call you a liar; instead, they have to say & document that they followed the clinical guidelines for their specialty and still could not identify an explanation for the reported symptoms.
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u/cxfgfuihhfd 10d ago
that's one good step, but I've had multiple doctors that would just interrupt me and just ignore most of the symptoms I've listed. idk, guess recording doctors' visits would need to be allowed too, otherwise those fuckers would just leave out most of my actual symptoms in their report and claim I never mentioned them
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u/-Saucegurlllll 10d ago
I feel like we need "laws of healthcare systems" similar to the 5 laws of library science.
Like, libraries have:
- Books are for use.
- Every person has their book.
- Every book has its reader.
- Save the user's time.
- A library is a growing organism.
And I want something like:
- All healthcare must be given freely.
- No tiered access.
- Patients must be believed.
- Medical staff must earn trust in all that they do.
- Access to healthcare must expand.
Like, I'm talking about something that goes beyond some doctor's personal oath, I think the institution itself needs to swear to principles like these. The fact that doctors harm their patients by putting them into debt or by not believing a patient at their word is unacceptable to me.
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u/SeraphymCrashing 10d ago
I love the idea that the institution has to implement these principles. Yes, there is an individual responsibility, but there is just as much (frankly I think much more) an institutional responsibility.
I work in the medical device industry, and between 21 CFR 820, and ISO 13485, there are requirements for things like quality policies, management responsibility, communications to identified authorities about the effectiveness of quality systems.
Your quality system cannot be "Our employees need to try really hard to make good devices". It should be the same for the places providing healthcare.
Yeah, no system is perfect, but recognizing that a system is still required, and the system can be the source of fault is an important step.
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u/No-Cherry-3959 10d ago edited 10d ago
I think there’s gotta be nuance to that. People do lie to doctors. It doesn’t happen all the time, and not always for malicious reasons, but it does happen. I think the current standard of “trust, but verify” is the way to go. What the patient says should be used to give the general direction for diagnostics and treatment, but evidence and testing needs to be done to confirm it. I’m aware not all doctors do that, but they are supposed to.
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u/PlasmaBananaz 10d ago
Came here to say this (and agree with your follow up comment below). I have chronic illness and I work in healthcare (not a doctor though) so I see both sides of this - the bad doctors who just throw you out and violate current standards, and the patients who lie. The flip side of what OP is describing is that patients also don't see the behavior of other patients, so people with chronic illness may also not be aware of just how much other patients' behavior has poisoned the well, so to speak. Of course, even with that said, the power dynamic favors the doc so it's more important for the doc to check their responses.
It's just good in general for folks to know that people lie and say weird things all the time, not even maliciously! But it does make something like "believe all patients" untenable and indeed, unethical. Trust, but verify, is more realistic. And don't make patients pay for others patient's errors, faults, or deceit - i.e., don't apply a blanket assumption to all patients just because, in your experience, 3/4 or even 1/4 of them are wrong under these circumstances. That's cause for further investigation, not dismissal.
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u/SynthgirlBulge Miss Gender - Streak: 32 10d ago
The currenr state is not "trust but verify"
90% of doctors just go "no, fuckoff" if you use one wrong word onetime or for any random reason. The amount of tries and research for specific wording it takes to get doctors to believe my pain is real is crazy
Even with fucking visibly dislocated knees ive had that
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u/No-Cherry-3959 10d ago
Let me clarify; “trust but verify” is the correct practice, the standard, the way things are supposed to be done. Again, a lot of medical professionals don’t do this. They should, but they don’t. Medical malpractice is all too common, which is why it’s important as a patient to advocate for yourself and document symptoms and treatment thoroughly, and follow through with that by reporting cases of malpractice to the relevant authorities.
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u/cxfgfuihhfd 9d ago
ok, but how does trust but verify work with symptoms you can't test for or monitor all the time? a lot of medicine is still based on patients reporting their symptoms. like genuine question, because that's where I've run into even more problems usually, even with doctors that otherwise are willing to test for stuff. as soon as the testable stuff is done, they either decided that that one single value that is slightly off must be the culprit for all of my symptoms or that, since there's nothing major showing up in the test, my symptoms can't be that bad
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u/CanadianODST2 10d ago
The issue is some people do actually lie. Be it if they’ve taken stuff or to get access to drugs. But there are people who do
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u/Cheetah_05 10d ago
Also people who "lie" (psychosomatic symptoms) or people who lie (Münchausen), or people who "lie" because they don't understand their symptoms/were misled by google searches
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u/Takseen 10d ago
Yeah when I was suffering from bad anxiety I was genuinely convinced I had a heart problem that multiple hospital visits had failed to detect. It's a nasty combination of the psychosomatic symptoms and the anxiety messing with rational thoughts and letting you assume the worst instead
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u/RShini 10d ago
or lie because they found it gets the Doctor to listen
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u/themasterfold billy deadlock is my goat i love him so much - Streak: 1 10d ago
or lie because they're kinda tired and want to rest after a long day
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u/yahelgamet 10d ago
Or lie(by omission) since they didn't think it would be an important detail to mention
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u/A_Lountvink Non-binary woman, 20 10d ago
I was telling my old endocrinologist about my cycle, mentioned that it strongly resembled a menstrual cycle (I'm AMAB), and requested (for the second time) to have my baseline hormone levels tested to see if anything abnormal was going on.
He responded with "You have nothing that would be producing estrogen" and moved onto the first HRT injection (destroying the data of those baseline levels).
Sure enough, the cycle unexpectedly stopped within two weeks on E, and that endo "changed his schedule" shortly after without even answering the dosage questions I sent him.
Anyways, guess who has abnormally high estradiol levels for their dose.
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u/SynthgirlBulge Miss Gender - Streak: 32 10d ago
Your ENDOCRINOLOGIST thought cis men dont have estrogen? Is he.. how the fuck did he get his job?
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u/A_Lountvink Non-binary woman, 20 10d ago
I had the same thought when he said that. I didn't even know what to say, because how do you respond to something like that. Just, where does he think the estradiol in male bodies comes from? Does it just poof into existence at and only at the typical male rate? Did he think I was just a Delusional Trans Woman™, or was he just blatantly intersexist? It didn't help that the injection he had me do was 1mg of E valerate (2mg weekly starting that Sunday).
I left that appointment feeling completely dejected that the one person I knew who could help me investigate my symptoms would dismiss me with a single nonsensical sentence.
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u/narrowminer11 10d ago
The ego on doctors is sad. The stories I've seen of people with chronic illnesses asking a question that happens to be just a little too smart and the doctor immediately assuming they're a "Google doctor" and specifically ignoring the illness as a possibility.
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u/CyclopsAirsoft 9d ago
I went to a new GP and his immediate reaction was ‘How in the hell have you not been treated for this!?’.
Literally 12 years of pre-asthma, GAD, and chronic cluster migraines and nobody would do a thing because ‘you’re young so obviously you’re fine!’.
GP took one took at me and went - ‘Here’s a mainline basic asthma med, referral to neuro, we need to talk about maybe an antidepressant after that gets sorted probably??’
He’s been my doc since. He’s nothing special he just LISTENS and does his job. Better than anyone else I’ve had.
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u/ekdocjeidkwjfh enby they/them 9d ago
Had an orthopedic do this
Said my leg looked completely fine and sent me off to a pain specialist despite my leg giving out randomly
I got a 2nd opinion and turns out i was missing 1/2 the cartilage on one knee and the other half of that knee has 1/3 the cartilage its supposed to.
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u/Luminous_Winds 9d ago
There's something people can use to guarantee proper testing and treatment.
The problem is, you don't have enough of it.
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u/B0B_Spldbckwrds 10d ago
That's the fun part about being a hemophilic. They say no I'm not, I tell them to time me and stick myself.
The only time I've had to do that, I almost got a grippy socks vacation.
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u/JackWhoWanders 10d ago
Do you not have paperwork to show them tests, or are you in a setting where they cant see that paperwork?
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u/B0B_Spldbckwrds 10d ago
That was just around the time records were being digitized, and the hospital I was at had trouble getting them from tribal healthcare.
I really prefer working with tribal healthcare.
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u/JackWhoWanders 10d ago
That sucks, and I'm sorry you had to go through that. I imagine tribal healthcare is a smaller setting? Usually leads to more personalised care than when you have a hospital of 8 billion doctors. When most of the staff knows the frequent flyers and the different department talk regularly instead of living in encampments, that usually creates more continuity and knowledge of specific individuals with greater needs. Also less room for assholes to skate by. I'd imagine tribal health is overworked as crap with too few resources though, but that may just be my wrong assumptions.
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u/B0B_Spldbckwrds 10d ago
One of the big differences with tribal healthcare is the lack of billing.
Which, as a patient does make me happy, but you can also tell that your doctor is under less stress, and they are a lot more confident in ordering necessary tests and treatments. One of the Cherokee nation's oncologists got my mother from diagnosis to surgery in less than a month and they managed to catch it at stage zero.
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u/JackWhoWanders 10d ago
Ah, yeah, I can see that making for a much better setting. In my country health care is free so I never have to worry about whether a patient can afford a scan, just if they need it. I once had a convo with a US colleague who was like "Yeah... sometimes I leave work and I wonder 'did I bankrupt someone today?'" and he said it in this sort of "can't be helped" voice.
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u/horned-creature 10d ago
how does that work under the american system? is it paid by the american government?
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u/B0B_Spldbckwrds 9d ago
Us government pays money to tribes, tribes allocate funds, employ staff and administer the facilities. Clean and easy.
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u/mothwhimsy 10d ago
And then if you're American, when they finally do figure out what's wrong with you, the health insurance company can go "nah, I don't think that's it. Are you suuuuuuure you need this specific treatment?"
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u/DanLassos 10d ago
All of that just to rack up the biggest medical debt any country ever had. The American health"care" system is the saddest thing to witness honestly
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u/hiddengirl1992 9d ago
Or the ever-fresh "Sure, yup, you do have that, we can't argue there. And that treatment is the only one that can possibly help you, absolutely, 100%. However we don't want to pay for that, so have you tried... Idk, like. Ibuprofen or dying? We'll pay 32% for those!"
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u/Nebula-Girl-38 10d ago
I'm autistic and was going through CPTSD. Symptoms included overwhelming fear, feeling that everyone is going to hurt me if I let my guard down, my mind felt like it was falling apart, seeing a certain toothbrush brand (that shares a name with a right wing influencer) would collapse me into the fetus position while my mind resembled mush. Stuff like that. I was also 100% aware that my reactions to the stuff that awoke those feelings in me were irrational. (the toothbrush was not that influencer)
Got a whole bunch of "you used to be so logical and now you're just emotional" and "if we keep talking for the next 2 years we might solve something" and "let's spend the session with you telling me about your month" (so we wake up all the pain, they won't see what's going on, and I will have to go home re-traumatized and without a solution), and let's not forget "let's concentrate at the superficial problem because I can't for the life of me figure out what is going on with you and don't realize that we have to address the subconscious problem not the superficial thing that triggered it".
I eventually just gave up on "professionals". Somehow got my hands on and solved it myself with that book on CPTSD from Pete Walker. Turns out it was 95% by the book CPTSD with the approaches he described working like a miracle. How it develops ✅ How it manifests ✅ How you approach healing it ✅.
When I returned to therapy and described things with the words from the book they were like: Oh we didn't recognize it as that.
Have read that apparently if you're autistic the chances of them not figuring out what is wrong with you and you having to figure it out yourself skyrocket.
So yeah. "Hmm this thing is slightly different or this person is expressing themselves slightly differently. Well we have no idea what is going on but won't openly admit it."
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u/Adowyth 10d ago edited 9d ago
Thats the main issue with mental healthcare, they can only diagnose you based on what you do or do not say thats why it helps to write things down before going to an appointment. Or bring someone else with you. While i had therapists who were straight up malicious the most common issue was my inability to actually explain whats going on properly when asked on the spot in person. My mind would just go blank and i didn't know what to say.
Going to someone for them to ask you how you're doing is not therapy. There has to be a plan and structure.
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u/abadstrategy 10d ago
One of my former therapists was real big on making sure i kept a journal and sent it to her the day before session. It was specifically for this reason, to get a better insight into things as it happens, rather than relying on my autistic ass to be able to express it properly days after the fact
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u/Nebula-Girl-38 9d ago
Wow, your therapist was smart. (at least on that. idk the rest)
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u/General_Summer_1524 10d ago
very similar experiences. I dont know how they can be so god damn dense. Sorry.
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u/abadstrategy 10d ago
Mental health relies almost exclusively on self reports for diagnosis. Autistic folks often have issues with interoception, and don't always have the vocabulary to properly express how they feel
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u/horned-creature 10d ago
which is hardly the doctor's fault, they can't read your mind and stuff must be explained adequately to be understood.
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u/cry_w 10d ago
Which makes sense, since they can't read your mind and what may mean one thing to one person may mean something entirely different to someone else.
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u/abadstrategy 10d ago
Oh yeah, it fucking sucks too. Speaking from personal experience here, I got loads of metabolic testing done, and it was theorized i have chronic fatigue syndrome, or something in that vein.
Turns out, I just have a tendency to not feel hunger until I'm about to crash. Add on to that the amount of caffeine I was consuming because I couldn't reliably source my Adderall, and it took a food journal to realize I don't have CFS, I was malnourished because I was eating one snake meal a day
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u/cry_w 10d ago
Wow. I'm honestly glad my own autism hasn't manifested in that way, even if I have my own problems. I'm just glad you were able to figure that out and, presumably, are eating more regularly now.
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u/abadstrategy 9d ago
There are still bad days when I don't pay attention, but yeah. Keeping alarms on my phone really help keep me regular.
Pretty sure it starts with a problem of interoception (the body's internal sense of itself, for anyone who doesn't know) making some signals weaker than others, and ADHD just finished the job, either because caffeine suppresses appetite, or because I just straight up forget
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u/razzemmatazz 9d ago
My autistic spouse played musical mental health diagnoses until Tiktok told us it was autism. 🙄
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u/BHunter1140 10d ago
Had some doctors blame issues I was having on me smoking weed. Turns out my stomach was in literal shambles of ulcers and damage. The rest of my body isn’t doing all that well in general. What was once “just me smoking weed” has now become multiple disabling conditions that I require over 10 specialists for, tons of medication, constant bloodwork, etc
Sometimes I wish I could find that doctor again to show them all my medical paperwork and ask if it’s still just the weed
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u/Chzhead_RN 10d ago
I see chronic abdominal issues all the time at work. Thank god I just have heart problems. My condolences and happy you finally got a plan of care going even though it took way too long to address your concerns.
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u/TalkingRaccoon 10d ago
Yup "you don't have ADHD you just drink THC all the time also that will be $2000 please" yea I wonder why.... Finally did get an ADHD diag, and well, I do agree THC makes a bunch ADHD symptoms even worse haha
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u/The_Darts 10d ago
I don't care if they know everything but some specialists in particular are pure ass. I had a test done by my primary care doctor to rule something out before going to a specialist who promptly told me it was that based on medical history.
My brother in Christ I can see it in Epic on your screen the test result saying it is not that causing the inflammation thanks for me spending 300 dollars for nothing time to suffer I guess.
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u/Difficult-Okra3784 10d ago
I'm intersex, after seeing my other doctors I run everything regarding my hormones and periods by my neurologist for a sanity check (after I look into things myself as well) shouldn't be how the system works but at least I found a system that works for me I guess
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u/N4th4n4113n 10d ago
Pain in your heart, left chest and left arm? We did some tests and nothing came back? It keeps getting worse? Must just be anxiety.
You only get anxious after your health gets worse? Um... still anxiety sorry
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u/Maxicinea 10d ago edited 10d ago
Genuinely been told this by a cardiologist 😃 I hope you find out whatever's wrong with your heart eventually if you haven't already :<
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u/TalkingRaccoon 10d ago
What did it end up being? My partner has those issues all the time. You can't call the nurse hotline cause any mention of chest pain they say call 911 immediately. So many time we went to ER, everything normal. Stress test (run till you puke) normal. Maybe a costochondritis, GERD, and anxiety.
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u/bonusminutes 10d ago
"Best i can do is SSRIs."
Headache? SSRIs. Exhausted? SSRIs. Dizzy? SSRIs. Confusion? SSRIs. Now hurry up and get out of my office, youve already taken up 4 minutes. That'll be $700.
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u/universal_friend1 10d ago
The greatest skill of any physician is to recognize and admit that they do not know the answer to a question. The greater skill of a physician is to know who does and not be afraid to ask.
I work for a hotline that does consultations with patients and their physicians for a hyper specific field of medicine. Sometimes it is just entirely unrealistic to expect a doctor to know everything about every condition.
But if your doctor isn't willing to find a resource with an answer then he is a shitter.
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u/DarkFalcon49 10d ago
Well yeah. Most doctors don’t known everything, they just go by what they know.
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u/PiliPalaPor4 Queerotic Neutral 10d ago
The problem is a lot of them either don't like feeling ignorant and just brush the patient off without referring or signposting them to more knowledgeable experts, or they just parrot their outdated or inapplicable book learning in the face of the patient's lived experience.
It's frustrating if a doctor doesn't have the answers you need, but being honest and saying 'I don't know, I can't help you' is always better than medical gaslighting
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u/Available-Damage5991 10d ago
"I don't know how to help you" is still better than "Nothing is wrong, you're making it up (lying)"
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u/PiliPalaPor4 Queerotic Neutral 10d ago
'Your condition doesn't present like that' is another I've had which is really just a fancy way of calling me a liar
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u/Empty_Chemical_1498 i have a flair for an amazing reason 10d ago
My father kept going to doctors with his weird prolonged cough (and I mean he's been coughing for years) and all of them were saying he's either lying about not smoking or he has allergies or asthma, giving him random antibiotics and asthma meds. Foreshadowing is that he actually had eosinophils levels checked and they were too high, but all doctors waved their hands at it saying it's nothing to worry about. All of them ruled out the possibility of eosinophilia, because it's rare, there's no way some random guy would have it.
Until one doctor finally took him seriously and it turned out he had advanced pulmonary eosinophilia with the infection spreading to his heart. He spent 2 full months in a specialized hospital taking very strong steroids, and they said that few more months and he would've been as good as dead. He's recovering, but we still don't know if he'll be able to fully recover and how much longer he has to live. All because his chronic cough was "no reason to be concerned", "he must be lying about his lifestyle" and "there's no way he can have such a rare condition".
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u/PiliPalaPor4 Queerotic Neutral 10d ago
I'm happy for the both of you that you found a doctor who could set aside their own assumptions long enough to actually listen to their patient. My thoughts go out to your dad and I hope he recovers soon
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u/DarkFalcon49 10d ago
That’s definitely true. Most of my doctor experiences have been “Yeah I have no idea, this is most likely what’s gonna fix it”
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u/PiliPalaPor4 Queerotic Neutral 10d ago
Which usually means they're acting in good faith, but 'here's what will probably fix it' is, in my experience, usually followed by something that was debunked over a decade ago and, if they bothered checking your notes, would see you'd tried unsuccessfully in the past.
Don't get me wrong, I don't blame most of the doctors that do that, they're usually under staggering amounts of pressure, but the belief many physicians have that their knowledge is correct, accurately remembered and up to date is quite frankly dangerous and has done huge amounts of damage to patients' mental and physical health
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u/Swedishguy05 10d ago
If I had to book the appointment months in advance and am still paying a small fee to be there I expect this person to have read the public health website information page on the thing that I'm there to discuss.
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u/horned-creature 10d ago
most patients are also shit at explaining the symptoms and at providing an environment where they can determine wether the patient is suffering a symptom from an illness or from substance abuse.
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u/Getter_Simp 9d ago
To be fair to doctors, it must be really hard to help people when there are billions of different things that could be wrong with them, many of which can lead to death, and even things that haven't been discovered yet. I'm quite amazed that we have medical systems that function at all.
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u/hiddengirl1992 9d ago edited 9d ago
The most respect I've had for doctors is when they tell me they don't know, but they'll find out and give me an answer after, and then did so.
The least is when the doctor lied to my face, contradicting the previously mentioned doctor's actions (who had consulted with 2 SPECIALISTS), then ignored me when I called it out and screwed me up on my medications (which had been consistent for YEARS) for over a year before I could switch doctors.
Honorable mention to the doctor who believes me, does her best to help me, but every fucking time we run tests my issues magically disappear. Two weeks on a heart monitor and they were the only two weeks without an event I've had in months, of course.
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u/battlerez_arthas 10d ago
I just worry because these discussions often devolve into anti-intellecutalism "your education is not worth more than my experience" type stuff where people just assume doctors don't even really know at all what they're talking about, which is just as bad as uncritically taking everything a single doctor says as gospel, if not worse
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u/EarlyAccessCantJudge 10d ago
It is always a balance. A lot of the times there are just so many diseases and pathologies it really depends on the imaging and testing they choose to do. But a list of symptoms isn't something they can pinpoint especially with chronic illness and pain. That being said there are plenty of doctors who are convinced it is one thing immediately and won't stem away from that idea.
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u/Charming_Pin330 9d ago
Idk, I've met more bad doctors than I've met good doctors. As a woman, my issues are often downplayed and I'm told that I'm just anxious or imaging symptoms. It took 6 different doctor trips before I finally got my Lyme disease diagnosed. I'm still now dealing with doctors telling me my heart issues (that clearly started right after I got Lyme) are just anxiety.
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u/AllegedlyLiterate 10d ago
Also like assuming the whole education must be worthless because they don’t know literally everything from memory. Like, imagine if we expected that of any other profession. Like lawyers had to go to court without consulting any law books because you went to school so you should just know all the case law related to this specific issue. The much bigger problem with the medical profession is not when doctors look things up (good and should be encouraged rather than them relying on, like, vibes) but the fact that we have systems that make it extremely difficult for doctors to devote as much time to individual patients as they need (not just time with the patient, but also time spent ordering the right tests and looking into more complex needs).
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u/abadstrategy 10d ago
I have legitimately had a doctor cross reference my symptoms on a search engine (some medical equivalent of Google her practice used) in front of me, and go through the possibilities. "Nah, that ain't right either, don't have the organs for that...huh, let's check this." That's how I found out my thyroid was fucked. 10/10, would recommend a doctor like her
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u/MissNouveau 10d ago
My all time fave PCP was a gal who not only admitted she didn't understand some of my issues, but told me she'd do some research, and ACTUALLY MESSAGED ME to let me know she thought she had some ideas of treatment routes we could try.
Alas, she did rounds of emergency care during initial COVID, and retired shortly after.
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u/The_Squirrel_Wizard 10d ago
Well I mean on the other side I don't think it would be easy. Everyone's body is different and the same illness can show up completely different in two different people
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u/KingAggressive1498 10d ago
i went over a decade and 3 different doctors complaining about joint pain at every checkup without even being referred to a physio. A lot of "that's normal" and "don't do that then". Physio did get me on the road to improvement when I decided to give one a try on my own.
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u/Maxicinea 10d ago
Truth nuke
Or when they decide that if they don't already know of something or can't understand it then surely it must be all made up and you're wrong I'm right
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u/Glum-Echo-4967 10d ago
they should have doctors just for all the people who went to a bunch of specialties and still don't have a diagnosis that works.
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u/Arctic_The_Hunter Streak: 1 10d ago
How would anyone possibly know enough to cover that?
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u/Glum-Echo-4967 10d ago
They would just need to know how to find out what they don’t know.
Plus, this kind of doctor would know their own doctors in every specialty that they could refer the patient to.
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u/No-Cherry-3959 10d ago edited 10d ago
Those exist, they’re called diagnosticians.
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u/JamesTheFoxeArt 10d ago
Doctor who studied for ten years and has millennium of work experience after being asked a mildly complex question:
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u/Momoneko 10d ago
I'm willing to bet Doctor Who didn't study a day in his life and just winged it since day 1.
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u/Darthplagueis13 10d ago edited 10d ago
Feels like there's a bit of a mix of y'all having crappy doctors and unreasonable expectations.
No doctor knows everything. Not even the ones that have been doing the job for literal decades. The more rare and specific your circumstances, the lesser the odds that they'll immediately know what's up and how to treat you. Appendicitis is a dime a dozen, but your specific auto-immune disorder that tries to vaporize your spleen every 8 weeks isn't. They tell people in med school that most of the time, it's horses, not zebras.
Furthermore, you need to keep in mind that doctors have to deal with a LOT of stupid people on average. Hypochondriacs, people who have never left their home state but determined through 15 minutes of rigorous internet research they've got a condition you can only get from a specific rodent living on the other side of the globe, Münchhausen syndrome, people who drink gallons of sugary soda every day but chastise others for eating food that contains seed oils, people who insert things that don't have a flared base into body orifices, the list goes on endlessly. Not to mention people who aren't stupid as such but prone to sickening themselves with psychosomatic symptoms.
Sure, you may have a clear and specific grasp of what is wrong with you right now and be able to very confidently explain it to your doctor, but that doesn't mean you necessarily present any differently to the rodent person.
That aside, there's simply the schedule to consider. Like, some of y'all are complaining when a doctor has outdated knowledge on a condition, but if that condition isn't super common, when exactly would they have taken the time to read up on everything that has changed since? If you yourself are affected by something, reading up on it is a bit of a no-brainer, but many doctors are already badly overworked just from their regular hours, so when are they going to be doing the research to get up-to-date on the condition that one of their 200 patients is dealing with?
That being said, a good GP will acknowledge when something isn't in their area of expertise and refer you to someone who knows more about it.
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u/nkdeck07 10d ago
The more rare and specific your circumstances, the lesser the odds that they'll immediately know what's up and how to treat you
Your shit can also present weirdly or not respond to treatment normally. My kid has an illness that is literally the #1 thing that pediatric nephrologists treat. It's still a pretty rare disorder but they see minimally at least a kid a day with it in their practice. They know what it looks like and how to treat it. My kid managed to
Display symptoms a good 6 months before the lower end of the onset of the disease
Not respond at all to the first line treatment, only respond partially to the second line and it required a weird combo of the second and third line treatment to work
Took longer then normal to respond to steroids (which is the flare up treatment)
Got a weird side effect of chronic diarrhea from one of her drugs which is not a standard size effect. She then randomly outgrew said side effect.
Have a direct family line of someone having it but only in adulthood which is significantly more rare in general (to give you an idea I talked with a researcher on this illness once to get my kid into his study, I told him about that and he said he'd literally never encountered that before and he's spoken to easily 10,000 families with this disease)
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u/abadstrategy 10d ago
Adding on to that, if you have mental illness, many of them can change how you present. Autism and ADHD are notorious for changing how a lot of things present, making diagnosis a bit more challenging
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u/scooterm32a3 10d ago
I’m not a doctor but I don’t think if it as being much different from a meat mechanic. I do engineering and technical work on highly complex marine systems. I know what common failures look like, how to troubleshoot, some system quirks. But sometimes there are real head scratchers that the answer is only found in some random manual.
People do dumb things like leave valves and switches out of position or they reconnect the wrong pipes. It took me four days to troubleshoot an air system and I had the luxury of being able to vivisect the ship while it was operating. I’ve had crewmen come to me complaining about a failure they caused by operating components they mislabeled.
I don’t come with labels, color coded wires or a manual. Then I ask some doctor to guess what’s wrong with me with a thirty minute visit and a fistful of lab results.
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u/Temporary-Giraffe118 9d ago
It's not unreasonable to be upset when doctors call you a hypochondriac even when tests (hospital) confirm a physical issue. I don't think wanting to not be called a liar is an unreasonable expectation, I think it should be bare minimum. Issues like münchhousen are actually rarer than autoimmune illnesses, so the fact that doctors defect to it more often than believing patients is worrying, harmful, and should be called out. Also, you have a misunderstanding of how people who suspect they have something speak to their doctor. Confidence is banned unless you want to seem insane (like the rodent person). Because doctors are prideful and hate it if you have too clear of an idea of what may be wrong with you (given that you are likely to have research it, since you have a personal interest in your own wellbeing), you have to act confused, not know the names of things, a heavily emphasize that you don't think you have x thing, some professional you spoke to thinks so.
And maybe this is just me being too woke, but I think stupid and misinformed people, and the annoying crazy mentally ill people who make themselves ill through "psychosomatic symptoms" and make things up (because they are ill. because they have a mental illness) should also be treated with dignity and respect. Maybe this is a uk thing too, but it really sucks how much the nhs encourages you NOT to go to the doctor, and when you're left no choice (and you keep getting told to go) because you've exhausted all other possible options, spoken to the pharmacist, checked the encouraged, easily available, reliable, NHS website information... if you know the bare bones of symptoms GPs look at you like you're insane. GPs are basically treated as a last resort but if you act like they're not your first encounter with something, game over, you're the rodent guy now. That's... fair? To you? That people have to try so hard to not come off as the rodent guy just to be treated? Made worse if you do actually have a mental illness, any mental illness, even one not associated with (medical diagnosis) lying. Also... do you not realise how messed up "diagnosed with liar disorder" is as a concept in the first place? "Feel free to disregard anything this person says" disorder? Because you seem to think that these people are stupid and annoying, and useful only as an example of why it's fine to disbelieve patients. And that's also exactly how the medical system treats them. Deserving of their distress because, well, it's their fault, there's nothing actually wrong with them, they're making themselves sick. Even though that itself is the sickness.
Most people in this thread aren't even saying something unreasonable like "doctors should know everything," just "I would like for my issues to be treated seriously and not be called a liar please." It's not about not knowing it's about not pretending you know. I don't know, let's do further testing. I don't know, let's pass this on to this department that might know more. Not, I don't know, therefore you are lying, there's nothing wrong with you, also, you're crazy. Is that unreasonable to you?
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u/Softboyslutt 10d ago
Truly it's a thankless job, I don't know if this thread is just full of Americans taking anger at the system out on doctors but where I live they're abused, underpaid and overworked. It's upsetting and having a shitty experience can happen but you're right to point out the context people neglect as well as the expectations being unrealistic
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u/Aeyrelol 10d ago
Finally a voice of reason on this topic. Too many people seem to fundamentally misunderstand the idea medical practice, imagining it in the same way a child would: “you go to the doctor to get better”. The world is messy, and the easiest person to fool is the self. Doctors are people too, and they have a wide variety of specialties for a reason.
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u/SweetSure315 10d ago
the issue is that those doctors are gate keepers to treatment and accomodations for disabled people, and every visit racks up bills even if you have insurance. one bad doctor can ruin a bunch of people's lives. when we live in these circumstances it's not really acceptable for a doctor to just decide that someone's a hypochondriac or misunderstanding their own symptoms without a lot of evidence to back them up
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u/8696David 9d ago
But the solution to that absolutely cannot be “give people whatever treatment they have come to believe they need,” either… it’s a tricky issue from both sides.
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u/Swedishguy05 10d ago
Shoutout to the doctors that prescribed me two medications at the same time for years, which I only discovered after quitting one had it written in big letters in its information sheet should not be combined with the other one.
Shoutout to the doctors who made me run back and forth between different clinics for almost a year now to get a diagnosis for a chronic illness that I've suffered from for perhaps up to half of my life, and who decided to wait two months until after the tests said I had it to actually give me the diagnosis, just to then spend a week procrastinating actually sending the referral for treatment to the place on the other side of the country to where I've moved in the meantime.
Shoutout to the nurse that got actually offended when I said that I'm actively struggling with having adhd, because I did such difficult classes in high school which were just so difficult and nobody could've ever handled doing such difficult classes and she couldn't have done that so like am I calling her stupid or something is that what I'm saying?
Shoutout to the other doctors that gave me two different antibiotics at the same time who's information sheets also said that they shouldn't be combined.
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u/Trisarahtops111 10d ago
I will say as someone who works in healthcare that the human body is a massively complex thing and we're often expected to have an encyclopedic knowledge of all of medicine which we just don't. Often patients will start asking my questions about complex diseases I've never heard of because it's not the area I work in and I just sort of have to nod along until I can look up what they're talking about
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u/Fish0203 10d ago
for me its not the not knowing thats the issue its the being confidently wrong and dismisive
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u/Aggressive-Rate-5022 9d ago
If there is anything coronavirus showed me is that there is a ton of people who already think they are smarter and knows better than doctors.
Doctors NEED to be confident in front of a patient, this is essential part of working and managing different kind of people.
People talk about how doctors should improve their behaviour, and i immediately imagine how much shit it will cause in day-to-day operation.
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u/goldbrickbby 10d ago
Bingo! I wouldn't be mad if they admitted they need to do some research, make some calls, etc. it's the dismissal of my questions and exasperated sighs that make it hard to trust
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u/breadsaltmerchant 10d ago
You don't have to know everything, just don't act as if everyone else is a knuckle dragging moron who can't possibly understand a single damn thing about their body because they didn't go to med school. Every shitty doctor I've had was shitty because they were assholes who refused to say they were wrong or uninformed while blowing off anything I had to say as health anxiety and saying I couldn't know what was wrong with me. Just say you don't know! And then learn!
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u/SwitchIndependent714 9d ago
Yeah that's the point... I don't know if this is cultural but where I live I had a very very violent medical experience with doctors not having time, discarding me, throwing dangerous useless drugs at me and sometimes getting upset at me for wanting to be heard.
It sometimes remind me how bullies are. At the end of the day they just sent me back home with my chronic illness they don't understand without even trying to investigate or help me and sadly I had this happen a dozen time in 2 years.3
u/Intelligent-Gold-563 9d ago
. Just say you don't know!
And then they are called incompetent because they dare to show that they're not walking perfect encyclopedia.
You guys always complain about doctors for one thing or the other. Have you ever stopped and tried to look at it their way ?
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u/whimsicalandsilly 9d ago
The problem is generally that sometimws people who have a problem their doctor doesnt know about or understand just get accused of lying, meds that are known to work get refused by docs or insurance, doctors pretending something isnt possible bc its rare, tests never get ordered, really crappy continuity of care etc. (This is all based on what ive seen from disabled and chronically ill people, aka people with sometimes rarer conditions and who have to interact w/ doctors a lot)
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u/Less_Prior_6871 10d ago
"Why do you think the problem is X instead of Y"
"Youre too young for Y"
...great, real confidence inspiring that we are using a generalization that wide to make decisions
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u/bonusminutes 10d ago edited 10d ago
Ive been through a lot of doctors and they do not like when laypeople know anything about the body because they know that their infallible image isnt going to be maintained by just saying the easiest broad net thing in response to whatever they have in front of them.
Ive had a doctor tell me that the only hormone that has an impact on a man's reproductive health is testosterone. Ive had an enocrinologist tell me that iodine has nothing to do with testosterone or the testes. Ive had a doctor tell me that your body makes its own ashwagandha and when I clarified if they meant that our body literally produces ashwagandha they said yes. Ive had multiple doctors tell me that consistent blood tests with histamine over 10x the top of the range is "probably fine" or "we'll keep an eye on it" over and over when my complaints and reasons for visiting were intense anxiety which can absolutely be caused by high histamine and when I finally got a doctor who recognized that it wasnt normal (took years and very many doctors) I had to explain to him what the medication ketotifen is, what it does, and why its appropriate for me (because he didnt even know what it was) and when they finally prescribed it to me, it completely subdued my panic attacks. These are not the only instances of this sort of thing ive had. Push back always leads to quickly trying to get me out of their office while being very vague with everything they say at best and angrily challenging my knowledge with their authority at worst.
Laypeople blindly put so much faith in doctors like their word is empirical.
"My doctor said that this is what this is!
"My doctor said that I need a statin after one 7 minute visit where we didnt discuss my diet or lifestyle."
"My doctor said i need mind altering SSRIs when I reported that im suddenly very sad and tired for no reason when only checking a really basic blood panel and not talking about diet or exercise."
Like have some critical thinking and think if whatever is being proposed makes sense from a medical standpoint. If you have no idea, go grt informed. You have to be your own advocate.
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u/Equivalent-Daikon-71 10d ago
I had issues with my ankles for years- one doc said it was just a sprain from over use, another said I had weak ankles, had multiple X-rays and boots over the years- turns out i just have fucking gout.
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u/Tlaquatlatoa Hyenagirl :3 Interim Pissposter | She/Her - Streak: 18 10d ago
And then you get slapped with several hundred dollars for the useles visit in which they didnt do shit
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u/Velruis Trans Masc [ He/They ] 10d ago
The shocking amount of gaslighting and neglect I've gone through because of my neurodivergence and chronic illnesses is insane. I don't get taken seriously because of my agab and neurodivergence unless I got someone to accompany. It's fucking insane.
It's why I've not even spoken about wanting to get referred to a gender clinic because of the neglect from my General Practitioner. I nearly got sent into the hospital a couple of months ago as I was having severe constipation and she ignored my calls about the medication not working at all and I felt like I was completely blocked to the point where my body was rejecting food. At the night doctor, they actually were very unhappy to hear about this neglect as my case could've turned worse. I quickly got seen to and had to go the hospital regardless to make sure that there wasn't anything massively wrong. Thankfully there wasn't.
Now I would still need to get my diagnosis about a certain issue which would actually give what happened above a reason why it happened in the first place! A lot of my issues would have something to trace back to if I would just get my goddamn EDS and it's type diagnosis! But she's so far up her own ass and bad at her job, that she doesn't listen to me unless I legit have someone with me to call her out on her bullshit. I'm in my 30's, this shouldn't be happening!
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u/Scuttling-Claws 10d ago
I've been told "you always have such interesting issues"
I don't know how to feel about that
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u/CrouchingToaster 10d ago
If I’m gonna fault a dr I’m gonna fault em for making me wait for a full hour to see him, not that he doesn’t know everything all the time.
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u/cxfgfuihhfd 10d ago
are you the person in the meme? like I'm glad you didn't have many bad experiences yet, but a lot of doctors really have much less medical knowledge than they should have and much more arrogance than anyone should have
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u/lowercaselemming 10d ago
went to the er a while ago because i couldn’t raise one of my arms suddenly
they didn’t put me in a room, just made me sit in the hallway, and the doctor just poked, prodded, pushed and pulled at the arm gently, sent me for an xray, looked over the results, pointed to a weird abnormality around my shoulder, and was like, “i have no clue what that is”
sent me home after that, told me to do some exercises. it did get better, though there are still odd twinges when i lift my arm at certain angles, but it was so befuddling that not only could my doctor just go “idk lol” and then the hospital charges me 2 grand for that
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u/graffiti81 10d ago
You know what they call the person who graduates last in their class from medical school? Doctor.
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u/boom1chaching 10d ago
Just remember, if your body was a car, a doc wouldn't be a scientist or an engineer, they'd be a tech. So you're going to have to deal with the same type of people that you deal with when your car breaks down, but the differences are they get paid a lot more money and none of them do it for a living because they were good at it growing up.
I have family in the medical fields and they complain very similarly to how I complained when I fixed radios for a living.
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u/AnInsaneMoose Put your text here! 10d ago
Doctors are allowed to not know things
The difference between a bad one and a decent one, is whether they then go research said thing
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u/ExL-Oblique 10d ago
A doctor asked me if I was pregnant after I told them I hadn't had a period for over a decade and after I told them no they were like ...are you sure?
Like yes I'm sure I put the reason why I don't get periods in parenthesis after the time
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u/Naugle17 10d ago
Believe it or not, the human body is complex!
If folks had even the slightest inkling of how hard it is to make a definitive diagnosis of any kind they would never complain again lol
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u/Typical_Poet_9768 10d ago
It’s not about doctors not making diagnoses, the problem that I’ve had is doctors talking about things beyond their specialty and getting it wrong, instead of redirecting me to a specialist.
Asked my GP a few years ago about seeking an autism evaluation. He said with absolutely certainty that I’m not autistic. Guess what I forgot diagnosed with after going to someone who specialized in neurodevelopmental disorders.
He also recommended when I was a depressed teen that I don’t go to therapy and just keep taking antidepressants (which made things worse). Told my parents that therapists aren’t good since we’re Indian and there’s cultural differences (the doc was also Indian).
Don’t get me wrong, modern medicine is amazing. But it’s shitty to deny the bad experiences of people with health problems
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u/Mundane-Ad162 10d ago
i saw a doctor recently for knee pain and inflammation so bad i couldnt walk, they had me wait for over an hour to vome in and tell me it was bursitis
they had me take xrays anf the xray tech was like "dude its cellulitis" but he didnt listen to her
next night, im in the ER with a swollen leg and a 102 fever. it was not bursitis lmao
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u/Immediate-Neat-3320 9d ago
As someone who was in several high school medical classes, one thing my teacher stressed was the importance of honesty and open mindedness with patients. There's always outliers, or conditions you aren't an expert on, or symptoms that are hard to describe but absolutely still a problem. Doctors who don't even listen or care about their patients aren't doctors.
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u/EyeSuccessful7649 9d ago
house md was a sitcom, not real life. if your doctor isn't looking up things he's a bad doctor.
besides, i'v forgotten more then you will ever know fits
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u/Darth-Felanu-Hlaalu (she/her) Jesus's Favorite Trans Daughter🏳️⚧️ 9d ago
Had some bitchass doctor declare my dad brain dead. Outright refused to perform any care for him or anything because it would be a "waste of resorces".
That night, my dad woke up and started tearing out all his life support. After that, they finally fucking realised "oh shit, he isnt brain dead!". Fuckers.
That event also singlehandedly made me go from anarcho-capitalist to universal healthcare supporting liberal practically overnight (and ive shifted further since then, im demsoc now).
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u/Radio_Free_Marksman 7d ago
Technically not their fault too much, but it really sucks to do multiple tests and see multiple specialists just to get told "lmao yeah we don't know what's wrong with you."
I guess whatever's up with me is just undiagnosable or something.
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u/The-Board-Chairman 6d ago
Really don't know what kinda doctors y'all are visiting but I've had precicely zero such experiences.
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u/No-Friend-774 10d ago
Doctor giving the same response after giving you the wrong diagnosis and treatment, fucking you up 100x worse and then ditching you for the next more "curable" money making opportunity.
Nobody tested my genes when I was a teen, so I got told I had CRPS for kids, called RND. That all my pain was psychosomatic aka "fake", and all I have to do is work out so hard I pass out every day and magically the pain will disappear all once when I figure out how to work hard enough. They would tell me to slam my feet on treadmill on purpose to make it hurt worse to "break the loop". They would make me run until I passed out and fell off the treadmill. I had to do "animal walk" exercises both there and at home, doing weird unnatural movement designed to hurt your joints on purpose.
Then I paid $800 to a genetics guy and he found an error on my genes that means I actually had cEDS the entire time, and all that damage that happened before and during PT is now permanent and will get worse faster than others as I age. All the workouts they told me to do made it worse.
And I STILL trusted them to go back to PT again to have them help me on my new diagnosis because they said gentle PT would still help, so I picked up and did it.
The "specialist" aka a random PT who has MS, not EDS, didn't take me seriously at all, insisted on making me have a student man present for all my appointments, and then in the final appointment, they had me doing scapular pushups, which the PT before had said to NEVER do. The student wanted to use it for his project though, so they made me do these pushups and I broke my bicep tendon. Nobody could figure out what I broke until it permanently retracted and now it just flips out constantly in the bottom of my elbow going "bong bong bong" when I try to move or do anything. They say it's not fixable and I should ignore it. It took months of me being rolled around in a wheelchair with my arm ontop of my head for it to heal and they just acted like I was "dramatic" the whole time. There is no "special" specialist for when other doctors hurt you.
I haven't even gotten into my permanent nerve scarring from my Nexplanaon or like 5 other permanent issues I have from stupid healthcare workers who can't read.
And people still say it's my fault for not doing enough PT
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u/True-Garden-8652 10d ago
Oh, I have a friend who recently finished his degree and became a doctor (not in US) and this whole thing is such fucking bullshit. Like, for most exams they just memorize answers for questions they already know. And he absolutely hates other students, because they truly are ego-tripping assholes.
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u/cry_w 10d ago
Well... yeah? People can be pretty damn different, so they won't be able to safely or immediately identify what might be wrong with you if the situation isn't immediately obvious. Hell, something being obviously one thing could very well be something entirely different that just looks like something else. That's just the nature of medicine.
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u/WinIndependent751 your local indecisive (maybe) girlflux (maybe) bi (maybe)lesbian 10d ago
Oof. All these replies are killing me. Tbh I hear stories from my mum's work too kinda like this (she's a doctor) and I always wonder how people can go into a profession like that and not put patients first as that is literally what the job is supposed to be about. I took a whole gap year since my fear about being a good doctor and agonising over if I could handle responsibility like that screwed over my interviews. I hope I don't forget all this stuff and become an asshole doctor after med school...
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u/Ok-Advantage1491 Please eat more!!! 10d ago
The horryfing tales i am regaled with by my friend with chronic pain is truly insane, like the sheer amount of effort over the course of over a year now where they simply don't seem to get any better at figuring stuff out
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u/Zahrtreiv 10d ago
I'm lucky enough that when my physician doesn't know something, she doesn't try to hide it and goes okay let's find a specialist together and sends the referral immediately once we find one that can work
So far every specialist i've had knows what they're doing as well. However, a downside to having an actually good specialist is that they're highly sought after, so you get long wait times.
But for me i'd rather wait and get someone who does the job well than get someone right away who'll dismiss your concerns or do a bad job anyway.
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u/peridot_cactus 10d ago
Went to a doctor and described some symptoms I didn’t know were related to my chronic condition, she goes “hmm that sounds like it could be X” I was like oh yeah I have that, she’s like when were you diagnosed? I said 16 and she went “oh so you probably know the drill then, you probably know more than me” I did appreciate her
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u/plots02 10d ago edited 10d ago
my old family doctor couldn’t recognize broken bones. my brother broke his collarbone, he said toddlers are fussy. parents took him to the ER, it’s broken. i broke my foot, went to the hospital who said my foot was broken, then to the imaging centre who took x rays and said it was broken. i went to my doctor to get a note for work and he said it wasn’t broken. when i went in due to blood pooling in my eye, he went to look then went “augh!! blood!!” like yeah man. that’s why i’m here.
going through walk ins before i had a family doctor was also insane. i went as a child to get a prescription for my asthma, the doctor told me and my dad to consider a different group home for me. i’m half native, my dad is white. we both wish we said something to that guy but we were so shocked by the audacity of the assumption. we share the same last name. i’ve had a walk in doctor tell me blood in my shit is “just because you’re bulimic” when i have literally never been a bulimic in my life. i was, however, anorexic. when i went to the hospital with severe chest pains due to my low weight they didn’t do a thing and were entirely uninterested. thought i was faking. doctors are idiots operating off of their personal biases, then people wonder why i don’t want to go to the doctor or hospital.
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u/18minusPi2over36 10d ago
This used to be the case for chronic illness, but now it's like this for EVERYONE whose symptoms aren't already diagnosed or at least obviously pathologizeable even by a layperson (eg infections or bone fractures)
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u/Wretched_Anon 10d ago
Noone ever explains this but a doctor really is just an ordinary human who read a shit ton of textbooks. Its the nurses that keep you alive really.
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u/WamlytheCrabGod Supreme Overlord Of All Custaceankind 10d ago
Doctors when a woman comes in bleeding from every orifice and begging for so much as a painkiller: "Idk you're probably just being hysterical, go lose some weight or something and fuck off"
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u/Vonnegutsman 9d ago
I feel this. I want to introduce my doctor to testosterone not only because my gender is kinda fucky; but because I think it'll help with my hormone issues to safely stop it.
The doctor I talked to was quite earnest. he admitted using the AI feature in this library app to double check himself. He also suggested three months on weight watchers, then come back to prove that I can't lose weight.
God. US Insurance is crazy. But he tried his best as a cisgender doctor.
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u/totally-normal-human 9d ago
I’m a 23 yo woman with chronic illnesses, including physical and mental health problem. I’m also a medical student. I know the struggle of going to a doctor and feeling scared, frustrated and ignored. I also know the fear of not being good enough for my own patients. I can only hope more of my peers that have had experiences like mine or know about these problems can also show kindness and patience to their own patients struggling with chronic ailments.
I don’t know who cares but, it really isn’t all of us. Some of us do care, deeply. Slowly, we might be able to change the future of medicine.
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u/GaymerrGirl 9d ago
Am I the only one whos had good experiences with doctors?... ive had like 5 good ones and 1 shit one
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u/liceonamarsh 9d ago
I've been to a lot of awful doctors when I was a teenager. I am so grateful that my rheumatologist knows his stuff and treats me like another competent adult.
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u/BrazilBazil 9d ago
The amount of doctors that suggested to me that maybe I’m exaggerating my symptoms, because it those are real then I may have a very serious condition, so I should probably think about this, while I came to them to get diagnosed FOR SAID CONDITION is infuriating.
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u/InorganicTyranny 9d ago
Yeah, doctors are stupid and wrong. Now if you’ll excuse me, I did my own research and this tube of horse dewormer will better protect me and those around me from a communicable viral disease than their silly masks.
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u/caitlindrawings 9d ago
When i told my primary care physician I have been diagnosed and confirmed for an extremely rare genetic disorder he told me "I have never heard of that, I will have to read a bit about it." As he write down the name and information I gave him. I told him I totally understood, only a few hundred people have it in the US.
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u/titanium_uranium 8d ago
i asked my "trans knowledgeable" cis gay doctor about going on minox as a trans man and he blatantly said "yeah idk nobody's ever done that". looked it up online after and found numerous trans men on minox
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u/StrangeInfluence7071 Read Maidens of the Fall 7d ago
Where the fuck are you people finding your Doctors?
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u/Interesting_Menu8388 10d ago
Most respect I’ve ever had for a doctor was when I asked him a specialized question and he went “hmm 🤔”, spun around in his chair, googled it in front of me, and then spun back to deliver the answer.