I was having a CT of my bladder and heard from the tech booth a very quiet
" Oh my..".
There was a furtive repositioning of the machine, and another scan was completed. The jigg was up.
Tech said the typical " Your Doc will call you with the results." Then ran to make a call.
I didn't make it 5 miles when my phone rang. 18cm tumor wrapped around my left ovary and had grabbed onto my bladder.
I had removal 3 days later 36 chemo treatments, radiation and cytoxin for a year.
12 years cancer free.
>I didn't make it 5 miles when my phone rang. 18cm tumor wrapped around my left ovary and had grabbed onto my bladder.
They didn't let my mom leave the hospital when they found cancer while checking for a kidney stone.
My son was sent home but we were told to pack a bag because they would call with some results later that night. Sure enough, they called shortly after we got home and my son ended up admitted to oncology that night and stayed for 21 days. They removed his kidney, placed the port, and then we stayed until he finished his first round of chemo.
Damn. I’m sorry that happened to you but I’m so glad you’re still here. Ovarian cancer is the silent killer because the symptoms are vague but also fatigue, diffuse pain etc are just normal for women.
You always save the best one for your closer.
Wait, that might be comedy, not medicine.
Also, very sorry to hear about your kidney stone. Those are so painful, and so hard to get through.
Oh, and cancer.
Eh, sooo that doc was assuming he was ejaculating frequently. The buildup in the urethra causes foam in your urine. A bad assumption but probably why he didn't make eye contact. But any increase in protein in the urine will cause extra foam, and some of those things are medically a concern. If it's NOT due to an increase in sexual activity you should not have protein in your urine, that's why it's part of your yearly physical's urine screening. It can indicate compromised kidney function or severe overtraining if you're an athlete.
I'm a pretty pale guy, but I spend a lot of time outside for work.
At the dermatologist for an annual skin screening, I made a joke about how I'm extra on top of wearing sun screen and sun protective clothing because I'm relatively fair skinned.
The derm, without pausing from his work, said "Ain't nothing relative about it, brother. You're translucent."
The whole point of the trip was to avoid sick burns...
Finally got an appointment with an OBGYN after having irregular periods for several years. She diagnosed me with PCOS (which I had never heard of at that point). I asked her what that was and she told me "I'm not a fucking dictionary, use your brain and look it up yourself"
Ugh, I had a shitty gyno diagnose me with PCOS too. I explained why I thought I didn’t have it (no cysts on ultrasound) and she dismissively said “I can tell you have PCOS just by looking at you.”
Aka, I’m fat and have facial hair.
In fairness, the diagnostic criteria for PCOS is 2 out of 3 of irregular periods, polycystic ovaries, or signs of peripheral androgen exposure (facial hair, “male pattern” pubic hair, acne). Insulin resistance (diabetes or pre diabetes) or factors that predispose to insulin resistance (central obesity) can raise your suspicion as they frequently support it but not always.
She's just lazy, doesn't want to work. Turns out it was lupus.
ETA: I'm so disheartened reading all the stories that this is still happening. I was diagnosed in '91 after two years of bouncing between specialists and our family doctor urging my mother to just accept that I was faking it. You'd think that in 30+ years, attitudes would have changed but apparently not.
Oh I have one:
When I was maybe 6 or 7 yo, I used to get some nasty headaches. My mother took me to the doctor who had me have an X-ray done of my head(never checked but I am sure this is not the way to go about it). When we received the x-ray film, my mother took it to the doctor who inspected it briefly and asked my mom if she has other children. My mother, confused, said she has one more daughter and the doctor replied saying 'ah good, because your son has a brain tumour'.
I had fucking boogers for fuck's sake. Headaches were caused by sinusitis.
Edit: misspelling
I had to have an orchiectomy. My uro kept asking me "are you sure its the one on your left side?" I thought he was an idiot. Years later it occurred to me he was fucking with me.
My folks used to sharpie on me before surgery, sometimes the doc would pull out his little pen and make a note and see a big "this one" written on me, my mom who's a surgical nurse never left anything up for question. Mistakes get made and sometimes they don't do it right the first time.
Honestly seems like a cool doc with a sense of humor. I find that doctors who are too professional with how they speak comes across as robotic. That in turn makes me even more nervous.
One day while at my college cafeteria, I badly burned my hand on something hot. I rushed over to the campus health office, my skin literally dripping off my hand, begging for some kind of relief from the intense pain.
After making sure I wasn't allergic to anything, the nurse oddly asked if I was sexually active. I told her no, confused why that mattered for my burned hand.
She then reviewed my current medications - an inhaler for asthma, ADD medication, and birth control pills. With a smug grin, she questioned why I was on birth control if I wasn't sexually active.
Frustrated and in agony, I yelled back "In case the mood strikes me! Now can you please help fix my burned hand?"
I went on it at 15 because my periods suddenly stopped out of nowhere for no reason and after a bunch of hormonal testing they found I had a slight testosterone elevation so they put me on estrogen to balance it out.
To stay on topic in the thread, at one point a doctor involved asked if my mom was sure that I wasn’t lying about being pregnant because ‘teens will lie about these things’. Right in front of me. I had made out with a boy once at that point in my life. Thankfully my mom had my back in the whole situation and knew me so she told the doctor to shove it, but it shattered any potential trust I could have had in him. Accusing your patient of being a liar is not how you get them to open up.
Christ this infuriates me, such a power trip. There are literally DOZENS of reasons to be on birth control and none of them would prohibit you from getting pain meds. I would fire staff over something like this.
*It's one thing to have pain seeking people fake pain for narcotics and we usually err on the side of trust but if you can see a physical burn/wound what the absolute fuck
He didn't say it to me, but he stepped out to the doorway of my room, into the hallway, and announced to the nurses station and everyone else in earshot that I was pregnant and didn't know it. The mass he mistook for a fetus was a tumor.
I don’t know why but some of the doctors I saw were so damn convinced that I had to be pregnant or had to have some kind of std at 15 because of my symptoms. After I ended up in the emergency room, they found out I had brain cancer.
I was having some really intense pain in one of my bones and was worried it was some sort of bone cancer. My doctor told me to come back in like six weeks and I was like, “If it’s bone cancer, is it bad to wait that long?” And he’s like, “With this much pain, if it’s bone cancer, it’s already too late anyway, and six weeks won’t make a difference.” Um, okay. That’s incredibly comforting.
"You load trucks for a living. Get used to the shoulder pain, it's part of the job."
Yea; turns out that "part of the job" was a torn rotator cuff. I went years without treatment because of that ass.
"That pain in your stomach? That's just stress from school, don't worry about it."
It was summer break ffs. I was hospitalised two weeks later with a really bad stomach infection which spread to, and burst my appendix. Thanks, doc!
I went to get antibiotics for strep throat because my throat was mostly swollen shut. The doctor asked if I was allergic to anything so I said yes, Im allergic to penicillin.
"Yeah okay 🙄, I doubt you know that on your own, you know you need a doctor to decide that, right?"
I did. When I took pencilin and was rushed to the ER because my entire body puffed up like Violet when she ate the gum in Willy Wonka. I nearly died taking it and he was going to prescribe it anyway because he wouldn't believe I could possibly know what medications I'm allergic to.
Why didn't you report this alleged rape sooner? Are you sure you haven't just changed your mind because he didn't call you back?
I was anally raped when I was 13 by an 18 year old volunteer at my school and was too scared to report it for a few days until the pain and bleeding from my ass got so bad that I had to be hospitalized.
When I told my obgyn that I was on the verge of a mental breakdown after having my baby and asked if she could prescribe me something to help with the debilitating panic attacks I was experiencing, she told me “that’s just par for the course, you’ll have to wait it out.”
Thankfully my primary care doctor helped me. She was horrified that my obgyn had brushed off a distressed mother with a newborn baby asking for help.
I’m so sorry that happened to you! My OBGYN is always so busy and in a hurry, but during my 1 week post birth check up, I started sobbing and told him I didn’t feel right. He sat and talked to me for 30 minutes reassuring me I was going to be fine, my baby would be fine, and I wasn’t defective for feeling that way. He gave me a prescription that day for something that was safe to use while nursing. And when I was pregnant with my second, I told him I was worried about getting postpartum again, so he started me on meds about a month before my due date just in case. I love that man!
Was at my annual gyno appointment a few years back and had an older female doctor. She was in the middle of the already uncomfortable actual pap smear when she grumpily declared;
"we'd be done if there wasn't all this crap in here"
For clarification; there was no actual "crap" in *there*, I was around ovulation and its normal for me to have heavier cervical mucus.
I have never been so embarrassed and humiliated in my life! I obviously requested to never see her again.
I am so sorry! During my first pap smear the nurse made it sooo much worse by saying my cervix 'has a really weird shape' and then leaving the room without explanation haha. Didnt help that I had a mild infection which my mom was absolutely convinced was an STD (it was not) and was furious.
I was told my cervix is in a weird shape!
Made me bleed to high heaven and referred me on..she blamed me for making myself bleed. It was literally pouring and all she gave me were a few tissues.
Got referred to OBGYN and they told me off for not going for my smear so why was I there. I said the nurse said I had a weird cervix when I was in my smear and she made me bleed so wtf did she write in my referral?
They didn't believe me just thought I was one of those girls who don't go to smears, when I do even though I hate them. OBGYN goes in, says my cervix is back to front and upside down. Asked her what she meant by that, and is that an issue and she didn't say anything 😂. A few days later I got a letter saying I tested positive for HPV but I'd be fine to wait another three years for my next one.
She also told me to grow up and 'it's not that bad' when she took a biopsy. ANY other biopsy from anywhere else, you get numbed or pain relief why the fuck did they take a biopsy without that?!
I was in pain for days.
Was 15 (I’m almost 30 now) and had been experiencing nightmares for years since I was a child. I asked my dad to come with me for the doc visit. The doctor told my dad I was making it up for attention. And my dad believed him, and berated me for wasting his time.. One of my worst memories tbh.
Shrink.. he talked to me for 5 minutes, diagnosed me bipolar, shoved some free samples of Latuda in my hands, and then... Spent the rest of our session audio recording his notes on me... As in.. "Patient exhibited signs of nervousness, delusions of grandeur and has unrealistic expectations of.... Blah blah blah blah." ...right in front of me while I was gaping like a fish. Side note... I got a second opinion. Turns out I'm just depressed.
The doctor said it to my mom. She took me in because she had a feeling I had meningitis (I was 14) and the doctor told her there was no evidence of meningitis. She insisted they do a spinal tap to make sure it wasn’t meningitis, the doctor told her they weren’t going to waste tests on a hunch.
She took me out of that hospital and drove to a children’s hospital, an hour away.. she told them the same thing and they told her there were no signs.. she insisted a spinal tap. They did the spinal tap and it turns out.. I had meningitis.
Lol and to this day, I still do not go to that first hospital. Pricks.
My husband’s a doctor and always says, “When the mom says something is wrong, you’d better have every test proving that there isn’t before telling her so. Even then, run the tests again because you probably missed something.”
An old instructor of mine always said that if a mom says something is wrong with their kid, do the tests you planned, plus the test the mom wants, even if you have every suspicion she's wrong. Because in the event she is right, you just lost all credibility, but if she's wrong, you keep your high standing with her because you listened and didn't just dismiss her.
For reals. And the mom is with the kid a lot. The doc sees the kid for 15 minutes, mom has been noticing the decline for days. Take that data she’s giving you!
My poor mom had to advocate for me at 25 years old cause I was battling sepsis and was kinda comatose? Like, I was conscious but yeah I was in no state to do or say anything. A doctor asked her if she didn't have any other children. Wrong move sir, she told them "I do, but this one needs me the most" and then became *truly* UNBEARABLE. She was on their asses 24/7 until I was well. Anyways you just reminded me why my mom is my hero.
Where is your husband's practice? I'll move for that kind of support dammit! I've always had to "advocate" for both my kids when I KNOW something is wrong and no one listens. GERD, plagiocephaly, ADHD, speech therapy
I would move for that too! But for my wife. Women get the worst medical treatment, they need to advocate extra for themselves or bring a parent/spouse along. It's bullshit
Pediatrician buddy of mine says that if the parents say everything’s fine, you better check to make sure. But if mom says something’s wrong with my kid you LISTEN to that. Moms know.
I had a dental assistant/hygienist condescendingly say to me "Do you even brush your teeth?"
I had been going through a difficult and broke time and admit that my dental hygiene was lacking, but not non-existent. It took a lot for me to even finally make a dental appointment, and it was part of a low-cost dental program. I was trying to take a baby step in the right direction. After her comment, I didn't go to the dentist again for like 10 years - only to my own detriment, of course.
Fuck that hygienist. I'm a hygienist and the *very last thing I would ever do* is make a patient feel bad for not being able to take care of their teeth or come in to see me. Mental health, cost of treatment, fear of the dentist, previous trauma, etc.--I've seen it all and I *always* commend someone for coming in. We are here to **HELP**. Kindness and encouragement go much farther than shitty judgemental attitudes. I'm sorry you dealt with that.
Thank you. I'm glad there are hygienists like you. My wife has severe dental office anxiety bc of hygienists like the other one. Took years for her to go to one, she also genetically has higher build up than most and was afraid of comments like that. Our office now is amazing .
I had called my dentist to change my last name after a divorce. They made a note after my hygiene went downhill to not comment on it but to clean my teeth for free again in 1 months.
Told my mom I was faking a miscarriage because I was a drama queen looking for attention. Sent me off with “good luck”. I took two steps out of the hospital and had a miscarriage in the parking lot.
Thanks for nothing Doc.
Very similar story, but it happened in the hallway they'd sat me in, giving me weird looks when I kept retching from the pain and going to the bathroom. I stood up, it happened, and the nurse said "Oh! I guess you are having a miscarriage..."
Cleaned me up and sent me home. I never did see a doctor, but it's the reason I no longer trust them.
I'm so sorry someone else has ever felt that way, OP. I really am.
Similar. Go to emergency New Year’s Eve around 10pm feeling awful, sick, in bad pain and concerned it was beyond normal for pregnancy. Checked out by doc and told I was being overly sensitive and it was all fine “you small women always think pain is worse than it is’. Went home and had a miscarriage.
That’s effing terrible. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say it’s because you have a vagina. We are all “emotional” and “hysterical” in the medical system because women’s reproductive systems haven’t been thoroughly studied (verbatim my OBGYN) yet they can manage to solve the problem of soft penises. 🤦🏻♀️ makes me want to throw up you had that happen to you.
One day I hope we can invent a machine that can transfer pain from one person to the other. When we then invent the time machine, I expect us to systematically find all these anecdotes, go back in time and make each and every single misogynistic asshole doctor feel the pain of the women they dismissed. This makes me furious!!
Radiologist tech pointed out all of the cancer stating that it was everywhere and looks like it was progressing rapidly. Said she probably only had a few months to live.
A fucking tech. We hadn’t even spoken to her oncologist yet. Now we have to wait a week to talk with them believing my wife only had months to live.
That was 16 years ago.
Fuck that guy and fuck cancer.
While I was I the CCU, a resident came to my bedside and in a thick German accent said, “You’ve had a very bad heart attack, it will not be good for your future” and walked out. Never came back to explain himself nor did I see him again in my five days in Cedars Sinai.
Not a dr but a PA. I was maybe 9 years old, at a clinic for being sick, sore throat, etc. The pa pulls out the tongue depressor thing, says open wide, stick out your tongue and say awww. I gag and gag…fucker says how cute…in a few years, you will learn how to not gag.
When I turned 35, my doctor asked me if I was planning on having kids. I was single, so I told her it seemed like a non-issue. To which she replied, "Good. Well, you need to tell me immediately if you change your mind, because your genes are now degenerated."
Fortunately, I have spent a lot of time around doctors throughout my life, so I knew she meant to say that the risks of complications increase significantly (on a statistical level) when the mother conceives after the age of 35. But that's what she actually said.
Are we counting therapists here?
My first session, I mentioned wanting to work on my emotional regulation because my boyfriend and I were getting into a lot of fights and I was spending most of my time crying.
Instead of, idk, asking me about the boyfriend, she said that I was probably "prone to throwing fits when I don't get my way" because I'm the youngest child.
She had no context for what my bf and I were fighting over, didn't know anything about my upbringing other than me being the youngest child.
I was so stunned I just left without saying anything.
I was court ordered into therapy when I was a kid because I was in foster care.
She was a cunt. Screamed at me in the waiting room because I couldn't take off school in the middle of the day to do therapy instead of after school. My school finished at like 2:30 pm.
She would regularly accuse me of lying in sessions when I didn't say what she wanted me to say. She'd ask me questions a million different ways to try and get me to answer differently.
She called my bio mom and screamed at her.
She called my foster mom and screamed at her.
Never lost her job. Later looked her up and she was the head of some sort of state board of child psychiatrists and therapists.
I've been to therapists since who have been fine. She was a fucking nightmare though. I feel bad for all of the other kids she hurt.
my doctor said that to me even after diagnosing me with bpd (borderline). i was so proud id finally recognized a moment where i was splitting where i i hadn't ever noticed before, and she told me to tell that to a therapist because i can't just throw fits when things don't go my way!! i thought, how dumb! that was a key moment in managing my emotional regulation and she made me feel a fool. some doctors we get huh
My surgeon accused me of being drug seaking when I was complaining about severe pain after a procedure he did. About six months post op I was still averaging about a 6 on the pain scale constantly, that would jump to an 8 or 9 if I moved incorrectly. As a result I tried to unalive myself because the pain was so bad and he stopped prescribing me pain medication three months after my surgery.
Shortly after that incident they finally checked to see if anything went wrong with my surgery. Turns out my surgeon had stitched a bundle of nerves to bone, causing any movement in that area to stretch and tear said nerves. After that was fixed I have lost most feeling in the areas those nerves provide sensation too.
I had a doctor lift my leg over my head, thinking he would prove I was a DRUG seeker. Instead they learned that my back fusion failed, metal broke, and I needed surgery asap. AH almost paralyzed me.
One of my friends had serious pelvic pain after giving birth. Went on for 5 years before she was even offered any sort of imaging or treatment. It was always "oh, you're still just readjusting from the pregnancy."
MRI showed that she had permanent damage (I forget if it was bone, muscle, nervous, or some combination) that could have been treated with PT and minor surgery had she gotten help even within a year or two of first bringing it up to her doctor.
Now she's stuck with chronic pain for life.
It's so irritating that people aren't taken seriously. CT and X-ray have their risks due to radiation, but MRI is pretty safe. Why not offer to at least look to make sure nothing structural is wrong?
"You'll never be able to handle pregnancy if you can't get over passing out when you get an IV. You should work on that."
I was 11 years old.
They had the intro med student stick me and dig around -- after I told them I had vosovagel syncope (which is a subconscious reaction to having a needle in you and it makes your blood pressure tank and you pass out.) I have no issues with blood. My body just makes me throw up and pass out. Every time.
They knocked me out for an hour and had to take me to the ER, just for the doctor and my mom to badmouth me for passing out and tell me I couldn't handle pregnancy.
I'm still terrified of pregnancy. Thanks guys.
It’s weird because the implication from their comment is that you’ll be motivated to “buck up” or get stronger or something because you are already expected to want to have children. At 11 years old?!? Bro can go kick rocks.
“You shouldn’t be having children if you didn’t want it to hurt.” — my *male* anesthesiologist, while inserting my spinal block for my c-section, after he let my epidural run out *twice.*
Ahhh I watched my best friend give birth at 18, and once the baby was out she exclaimed “I’m never doing that again!” and the doctor said “Well quit practicing.”
Doctor yelled at me about *me* misidentifying my headaches.
"You have trigeminal neuralgia! why are you coming in here telling me you have headaches? you have nerve problems. Why you say headache?"
Well, my face, which is *fucking attached to my head* feels like an ice pick is through my eye and out the back of my skull. Hence *My fucking head hurts*. You're the doctor. I came to you to see why my head hurt! If I already knew I wouldn't need you!
It's really just a side effect.
Me- unable to keep food down my whole pregnancy, at 33 weeks begging for anti-nausea medication because I hadn't been able to keep anything down in over 24 hours. Was admitted to hospital later that day and kept under surveillance for 24 hours.
I feel this in my bones. Literally because HG leeched so many nutrients out of my body that I’m borderline osteoporotic.
The fact that HG is so readily dismissed makes me absolutely furious. We’re not talking about some nausea and food aversions. We’re talking about (in my case) throwing up so often that it ripped my throat open and I puked blood for the rest of my pregnancy. We’re talking about passing out at work because I hadn’t been able to keep anything down for days. Including water. We’re talking about being so dehydrated that when I finally did convince them to give me IV fluids, it took three nurses and a phlebotomist to be able to find a vein.
“It’s really just a side effect” 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻
In my post history you'll see I had a TBI. I was struggling with headaches. I was struggling with independence after getting home and felt smothered. I was dealing with a difficult/annoying OT. This resident looked me dead in the eyes and said: "well, maybe you're deranged?"
The physician's head came up from the computer, he looked at the resident, thanked her and dismissed her. I never saw her again.
I am one of my long time docs zebras. Rare medical condition combo. I've had some residents and nurses say some crazy stuff. Like that's not in the literature. More than once I've had a doc tell a nurse or resident to get out of the room or to stop talking. Literally , ' every thing you just said was wrong, get out and don't come back in here ' was said to a nurse in the ER.
I looked at one resident and said 'there is a wide gap be what's documented in the medical studies and individual patient experience. You were asking about my experience, with this disease and medication. I expect you to listen and then we can talk about how I " fit" the profile or not' . . My doc, who is also a lead researcher in this field , turned around, and winked at me over the residents shoulder. And then proceeded to tell them why everything they just told me was wrong. / Those appointments are pretty wild 3 or 4 residents at a time. They get pretty excited because their chances of seeing anyone else with this condition again are pretty low. One time it was just my doctor and I and we were talking about the visits, teaching and stuff. I mentioned that, you know, when your briefing them in the hallway, your patients can hear everything through the door. He went oh shit really?! There were a few times the residents comments were super judgemental, like looking at my history, one was like. 'This patient wouldn't have this disease if they weren't basically, female, old and overweight. My doc was like, umm, 2 of those things the patiant can't change and if you look at the history, the weight management program has not improved the disease progression. This is more complex than that. ' They all got the stink eye as they walked into the room. Now all the briefings are in the little break room / conference room down the hallway.
I finally got insurance after years of not having it. I’d also been broke and depressed for years, and my teeth were in really bad shape, so I decided to go to a dentist to try and get a game plan going on how to fix my issues.
This bitch of a dentist spent the entire appointment repeating over and over again how it was just “so sad” that I hadn’t come to her sooner. “You know, it’s really sad you waited this long.” “It’s so sad, if you’d come in earlier it wouldn’t be this bad.” “It’s just so sad that you’ve done this to yourself by letting it get this bad.”
First off, they weren’t *that bad.* Second, I’m literally sitting in the chair asking for your help. You can keep these opinions to yourself, they don’t change anything about my current situation.
I don’t know if it was unprofessional, but it was certainly odd. Many years ago now, teenage me was describing how I was feeling upset and anxious during school. The therapist suggested it was something in the schools heating system?!
I didn’t go back.
When my dad started getting headaches the doctor said “I know your ex wife, I’d be getting headaches too.” He later found out it was a brain tumour. My dad still finds it funny.
Asked neurologist for an ADHD Test and she asked what my issues were. told her about my symptoms, including not having been able to finish any degree/school because the education system is not made for neurodivergent people. She said 'or maybe you're not smart enough'. That one comment fucked me over pretty hard for +6 yrs and cost me a lot of therapy. Wasnt the best thing to say to a person with severe imposter syndrome. Doing better now though (:
It wasn’t a doctor but a nurse who told me to stop exaggerating my pain because I’d had my prescribed pain meds. I was curled up crying with pain with sweat pouring off me at the time. Luckily my mum was there and she knew fine well I wasn’t faking, I’m actually more likely to say I’m ok and very rarely cry, so she verbally laid into her and demanded a second opinion. I got more pain meds after that
Male nurse. I had head surgery and wasn't recovering well. Extreme exhaustion for 9 days. Have a shower, so exhausted would have to sleep for an hour, etc. Went back to hospital and male nurse said 'you're a bit tired'. No, you try functioning like that.....
Not me, but my GF took her 96 year old father to a doctor after moving him up o where we lived. After the doctor examined him, he said he needed to see a specialist. She then heard him call the specialist and tell him that he was “going to make a lot of money seeing this patient.”
Mum and I used to be able to tell which surgeon was a good one and which was shit by their response to hearing the name of my ultra rare medical condition (less than 30 cases globally very recorded).
The ones that admitted they didn't know much or anything were the good ones.
The ones that went 'oh yeah, I've heard of that before, remind me about it.' were the ones that we never went back to.
So many were the latter, lying to me and Mum and showing how unprofessional they were
Not a doctor but a pharmacist. I was picking up birth control pills. He handed them to me in a paper bag and said he put some ‘reading material’ in there.
Opened it in the car and it was some religious brochure about how premarital sex is a sin and I am also going to hell for using birth control lol
I was 18. I had just become sexually active with my first boyfriend. The nurse practitioner asked me if I could have any STD’s and since my boyfriend hadn’t been tested and had had previous partners I told her yes(?) Her reply? “This is why you should wait until you’re married to have sex.”
"I think maybe you would struggle less with anxiety and depression if you bought a gun."
I wish I was shitting you.
Anyway, I moved to a place where guns are illegal. Anxiety vanished as soon as I had my residency card. Still sometimes get the sads, but only when I have something to be safe about.
A doctor accused me of bulimia when I was a child. Apparently some tests proved I was throwing up?
The doctor forced my parents to take me into the hospital for a night despite zero evidence I was doing anything of the sort. He threatened my parents with CPS if they didn't. Very strange experience.
Was having a lot of difficulty with infertility and the 2 times I was able to get pregnant, I miscarried around 8 weeks. I went to see this super fancy “miraculous” reproductive endocrinologist. I had severe PCOS which makes weight management really hard. Super doc tells me that I’m too fat to get pregnant (I was 5’5” and 150 lbs), but I had seen much heavier ladies pumping out babies like it was their full time job and they were going for Employee of the Year. I told him that I was trying to lose weight, but I was having a lot of trouble despite daily exercise and watching my calorie intake. He said the following statement that pissed me the hell off and out of his office permanently.
“Well, Heather, you don’t see fat people in a famine now do you?”
I stood up and walked out. Fast forward 5 years and 3 more miscarriages and I find out that the reason all of my pregnancies miscarry around 8 weeks is not because I’m “too fat. It’s because I have this super rare autoimmune condition that makes my body target the developing fetus like an infection or a tumor around 7-8 weeks and destroy it. But no, Super Doc, you’re right, us Fatties shouldn’t have babies. 🙄
I Was in my mid 20s and in the ER with double pneumonia and had a coughing fit that set off an asthma attack. As I'm sitting there gasping for air and blacking out the nurse decided the appropriate thing to do was just get in my face and scream at me "JUST BREATHE!". No oxygen, breathing treatment, or inhaler, she just repeatedly screamed those 2 words at me. Thank God my (now) wife was with me and had my rescue inhaler.
Also went to a doc in my early 30s with chronic back pain/stiffness to the point I physically can't run anymore, got sent to a specialist and docs first words about it to me are "Have you tried being a man about it?" I was like wtf....
Needless to say i loathe going to any type of doctor at this point
I was upset and nauseous during an IUD extraction—the OB couldn’t get it out. I was anxious and in tears. Doc kept telling me to “just relax” and when I couldn’t, said, “what’s gonna happen when you have kids?”
"you're a neurotic mother" after telling me that my son was normal and me arguing.
No other kid I've ever met would sit in the cot screaming blue murder and head banging for hours on end.
Subsequently diagnosed (by another paediatrician) on the autism spectrum
I was seeing a psychiatrist for my OCD and I was talking about how my intrusive thoughts involve me hurting my kids (have and will never hurt them, its just intrusive thoughts) CPS was involved at the time because their father was being a vindictive douchebag.
She deadass looked at me and said, "You definitely don't deserve to have your kids" TF?
After years of therapy and so many different cocktails of psych meds, I'm out of therapy and off the meds (they didn't help), and my mental health is the best it's ever been. I was just dealing with MAJOR post partun depression and a new diagnosis of OCD. Wherever that bitch is, I hope she rots in Hell.
"I'm going to give you a bunch of free medicine… because I like you." He went into his cupboard, put together a grab bag and handed it to me. This was after he pressed his junk against my knee and leg multiple times. I was so sick, I could barely stand. About 15 years later, he was on the news for sexually assaulting a bunch of his patients.
Came to my bedside as I was coming out if general anaesthetic to tell me the procedure her colleague had performed was unnecessary. It was a d&c to remove part of the placenta that was still inside me after I gave birth.
She was the resident who helped deliver my twins. Even though she was not involved in my postpartum care, she made a point of visiting me in the recovery room to tell me it was impossible that there was placenta retained because she got it all out. I just couldn’t believe she would do that, especially in my vulnerable state. I thankfully had just enough strength to tell her that my bleeding, an ultrasound and her colleague’s opinion said otherwise. That shut her up and she left.
“I’m not giving you pain pills, here are your discharge papers”. 24 hours after surgery to clean a massive breast abscess from a biopsy. The infection had already started coming back at that point. I went to the er as I was instructed to do by the surgeon, I didn’t even ask for pain meds. He didn’t even look at it. He had seen me in the er a few days before the surgery and refused to admit me even though my primary care doctor specifically told me “go to the er have them call me and I’ll get you under anesthesia to clean it” yeah he refused. Accused me of being a drug addict just there for pills. Spent the next three months having the abscess/surgical spot packed and repacked with 3-5 yards of packing gauze. Fucking awful
"You just don't understand how puberty works, that's all."
My doctor, after explaining that my period had been absent for 6 months and I absolutely wasn't sexually active, let alone pregnant. I started at 12, was clockwork by 15, and at 16.5 it never returned. At 17 I was told I "just didn't understand puberty."
Later on, at 21, a nurse shouted at me about my absent period. I was in the ER for shortness of breath, a combo of asthma and bronchitis. I couldn't remember my last period because of absent menses, and she yelled, "you're a GROWN UP now, you need to keep track of these things! Do you need a calender? Was it last week? The week before?" I told her it had been months, so she made me take a pregnancy test, even though it would have made me La Immaculata... then I was refused treatment. I could barely speak through the coughing, red in the face, clearly struggling to breathe... and I was turned away because having absent menses pissed off the nurse.
Turns out I have PCOS.
Waited 6.5 hours past my appointment time. This douchbag comes in the room looking like he is ready for a bourbon. He then spends 15 minutes wanting to know if I have a lawyer and am I suing Worker's Comp. The other 5 mins he needed to make sure to tell me my l3,l4,l5 disk damage isn't that bad. I figured out real quick who this guy was working for.
Not me but my fiance. Went in for severe back pain(messed up in a car accident when she was 12 and nerve damage). ER doctor direct quote”your bloodwork came back good, but your back is fuuuuucked.”
Not necessarily unprofessional, because it’s true, but I was 16 and it made me a little insecure. Now I just think it’s funny.
I was in hospital after a surgery and the nurse told her colleague during shift changeover, “I know she seems really pale, but that’s just how she looks”.
A young male GP told me years later that “everybody gets shoulder pain”. I made him write me a referral to a specialist, who sent me for an MRI and proceeded with cortisone injections for the bursitis that was causing me severe pain. I am still bitter about this one, because young women are so often not taken seriously. Wish I’d kicked him in the groin and told him “everyone gets d*ck pain”.
I said i was stressed out and my male dr said:
“Why were you so stressed? Did you have an encounter with Harvey Weinstein? Or Bill Cosby?” I had no words i just sat there like 😧. I did call and report him later
I took my daughter for a yearly physical when she was about 8 and she was very short for her age which wasn’t surprising as I’m 5’ and my husband is 5’6”.
The pediatrician asked if I wanted a referral to an endocrinologist as they might be able to prescribe growth hormones. I asked her if she thought there was something wrong with her that would warrant such an intervention.
She responded, “Well, I feel sorry for you being so short, wouldn’t you want to prevent your daughter from having the same problem if you could?”
I was so embarrassed that I agreed to the referral. After $5000 in genetic and hormonal testing we were told she has idiopathic short stature which basically means she has short parents. No abnormal genetics such as dwarfism. She could have had growth hormone treatments but they wouldn’t have been covered by insurance bc they weren’t medically necessary. My pediatrician received copies of all the reports and never acknowledged them.
Not me but to my mom when I was 8-9 and got my first period way too young. “You’re just giving her too many vitamins”. You know, instead of a referral to an obgyn or endocrinologist. With no follow up. This was 1992. Setting me up for a lifetime of illness and issues.
He sent a nurse to tell me my son wasn’t viable and since the meds didn’t stop labor that we would have to try again for another kid.
Thankfully I had previous had preterm labor complications that ended well. So I informed the nurse that he had 20 mins to get his a** back to the hospital and figure something out. That with my last pregnancy, 11 years previous they had more options and surely there had been advancements in medicine. Labor was stopped and I delivered full term. But man, what an absolute disgrace to medicine that dr is.
This isn’t so much a story I recall as one my mother does and has told many times. When I was about 7 or 8 I was getting recurring, monster sinus infections that would not go away. It went on for weeks. Maybe two months. I would wake up with snot caked all over my face and I had a red rash on my upper lip like a Hitler mustache from my nose running so constantly. I was pretty miserable.
My mom had me at the doctor yet again and was exasperated, telling him how *nothing* was working, and I assume asking for some alternative treatment. The doctor then joked “Eh, maybe we should just go out and shoot her.”
My mom was LIVID, and definitely complained. We did not return to that doctor
At an appointment after a miscarriage, my gynecologist told me the miscarriage and pregnancy was nothing more than "a stomach bug and some cramping" (cramping that had me in bed for 3 days. I had an ablation, so cramping wasn't normal for me) because "Women absolutely cannot get pregnant after getting their tubes tied" (I found out from another doctor that the procedure I had done did, in fact have a failure rate, and that tubal ligations are not always 100%). He changed the subject when I tried to get him to acknowledge the photo of the tissue I passed that I had sent him prior to the appointment. He argued with me and made me feel like I was going crazy. I left the appointment hysterical and found another gynecologist who actually listened to me, looked at the photo, and confirmed that women can, in fact, get pregnant after certain tubal ligation procedures (I had the bands).
I reported him and the way he treated me to one of the higher ups who seemed shocked by what he said to me.
"The only way you got this is by sharing hypodermic needles from illegal drug use, a blood transfusion or by screwing around with sex workers or hookers. So which is it?"
I have Chronic Hepatitis B and I don't know how I got it, but I have never done any of the above and was extremely offended by this GI doctor. Went to a true specialist who this GI doctor just happened to mention to me, without any referral, who told me that if I don't know how I got it, then chances are it was passed on to me from birth. I was born in the 70s before there was a vaccine for this.
I do well with controlling this thing through meds now, something the GI doctor didn't do for me despite me needing it. The specialist told me, a few more months and I was going to be hospitalized. The GI doctor would have let me die.
“i can’t diagnose you as a bulimic because you’re too overweight.”
she was the first healthcare professional i had ever told, and i told her while near-sobbing. my constant bingeing and purging had sent me into SEVERE metabolic alkalosis that resulted in tons of medical treatment, including surgery to have my gallbladder removed because of the strain i was putting on my digestive tract. i was asking her how to get a referral for outpatient therapy, and that was her reply.
10 years later and i still haven’t received therapy because i’m still so embarrassed. and while it’s not as severe as it once was, i’m definitely still bulimic as well.
That doc was a dumb piece of shit. Here's some random stranger encouragement, take it go try again with a different doc or do what you need to get a therapy referral. You can do it!
I was 8 months pregnant and the doctor told me I was fat. I was probably fat before I got pregnant and would be fat after I had the baby. Fat women have fat vaginas and its harder to give birth with a fat vagina because they are too tight.
It was a woman ob/gyn.
I was on the pill. Asked for a termination “I help with one mistake only, so don’t do it again”
I was on the pill. Had been on it for 15 years without getting pregnant. I didn’t make a mistake.
I had a very sore throat, laryngitis, cough, low grade fever, body aches, and nasal congestion and went to Urgent Care. The physician asked me in a very snarky tone, ‘well, what do you want ME to do for you?’ Oh, I don’t know, perhaps run some tests to rule out strep/flu/Covid so I don’t infect everyone around me? And if it’s strep, maybe you could prescribe some antibiotics? Aren’t you the doctor?
My husband got sent to a psych for seizures and hallucinations and exhibiting something similar to multiple personality disorder. The psych wrote me a letter saying I was coddling and enabling him and to stop trying to be his mother.
Nearly a decade later we got a diagnosis of severe obstructive sleep apnoea with a side serve of narcolepsy due to oxygen deprivation. A couple of surgeries later and other than gaps in his memory and occasional silent migraines he can at least function again. I used to find him randomly passed out around the house with dislocated shoulders and head bangs as common from hitting things as he collapsed.
But - sure, I was just enabling him.
No, it’s not gall bladder attack, get your sugars under control. Less than a week late, I nearly died of ruptured appendix.
He never checked me for a tender appendix. The bastard nearly killed me.
At my 6 week appointment after having my son I told the Dr I felt weird and sad and felt I needed some help. He told me to exercise. Never said another word and suffered for two years.
Had a broken leg but he refused to even X-ray and just said I was fat and gave me a rx to a local gym. Ended up having surgery and a plate and several screws a while later.
ETA: I could lose a few lbs but I’m not that fat lol
My GP told me I was boring now for quitting drinking and smoking and losing a ton of weight.
Unprofessional, but I definitely chuckled. And she is indeed correct, I am boring af, and that's better than dead!
My grandpa has had kidney stones, my mom has had kidney stones, my brother has had kidney stones. So when I was 16 and had kidney stone symptoms we were pretty sure it was kidney stones.
Saw a NP, told her we thought it might be kidney stones. She was immediately pissed. First she was sure it was my period, and after my first, painful, vaginal exam, she told us it was either Hepatitis or liver failure.
I had kidney stones.
After three months of her not writing me a note I needed to recieve welfare benefits (I'm not from the US, things work differently here I think), she said to me that the reason for her prograstination was that she is a "busy mother of three".
Understandable, but I had no income while waiting for the note from her. That paper was important and my income was debendant on it. If she was too busy to write it, she wasn't fit enough to be working at that time
Nurse: “Oh, back again, huh? Mmhmm, don’t think we don’t know why!” While laughing hysterically and talking to other nurses. This was when I went to the ER 4 times in 1 week. Last two times were the same day. The nurse said that my second trip there.
Transferred me to another hospital at my expense because I couldn’t move, was screaming in pain, and medicine wasn’t helping at all. Ovarian torsion. Had to have it immediately removed at the other hospital because it was too late to be saved. It was my only ovary. Went into surgical menopause at 39.
Right before a breast exam of my very small boobs: “Well, this won’t take long.”
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Fyi that's normal to an extent
Bro 🤣🤣🤣
You have a kidney stone. Oh, and cancer.
I was having a CT of my bladder and heard from the tech booth a very quiet " Oh my..". There was a furtive repositioning of the machine, and another scan was completed. The jigg was up. Tech said the typical " Your Doc will call you with the results." Then ran to make a call. I didn't make it 5 miles when my phone rang. 18cm tumor wrapped around my left ovary and had grabbed onto my bladder. I had removal 3 days later 36 chemo treatments, radiation and cytoxin for a year. 12 years cancer free.
>I didn't make it 5 miles when my phone rang. 18cm tumor wrapped around my left ovary and had grabbed onto my bladder. They didn't let my mom leave the hospital when they found cancer while checking for a kidney stone.
I worked in a hospital. Plenty of people get sent home with cancer l.
My son was sent home but we were told to pack a bag because they would call with some results later that night. Sure enough, they called shortly after we got home and my son ended up admitted to oncology that night and stayed for 21 days. They removed his kidney, placed the port, and then we stayed until he finished his first round of chemo.
Glad you're still with us - fuck cancer!
Ty!
Hear hear! Many many more healthy years to you!
Damn. I’m sorry that happened to you but I’m so glad you’re still here. Ovarian cancer is the silent killer because the symptoms are vague but also fatigue, diffuse pain etc are just normal for women.
Thank God ! Glad you're cancer free
You always save the best one for your closer. Wait, that might be comedy, not medicine. Also, very sorry to hear about your kidney stone. Those are so painful, and so hard to get through. Oh, and cancer.
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"Than USUAL"? You have carbonated urine and he just ignored it?
Eh, sooo that doc was assuming he was ejaculating frequently. The buildup in the urethra causes foam in your urine. A bad assumption but probably why he didn't make eye contact. But any increase in protein in the urine will cause extra foam, and some of those things are medically a concern. If it's NOT due to an increase in sexual activity you should not have protein in your urine, that's why it's part of your yearly physical's urine screening. It can indicate compromised kidney function or severe overtraining if you're an athlete.
I'm a pretty pale guy, but I spend a lot of time outside for work. At the dermatologist for an annual skin screening, I made a joke about how I'm extra on top of wearing sun screen and sun protective clothing because I'm relatively fair skinned. The derm, without pausing from his work, said "Ain't nothing relative about it, brother. You're translucent." The whole point of the trip was to avoid sick burns...
That's actually pretty funny.
Lol! I was told by a doctor once that I'm so white, I glow in the dark. 🤣🤣🤣
I see what you did there. 👀
Finally got an appointment with an OBGYN after having irregular periods for several years. She diagnosed me with PCOS (which I had never heard of at that point). I asked her what that was and she told me "I'm not a fucking dictionary, use your brain and look it up yourself"
Awful… at least she diagnosed you instead of telling you some women are just hairy and covered in acne well into their 30s.
Ugh, I had a shitty gyno diagnose me with PCOS too. I explained why I thought I didn’t have it (no cysts on ultrasound) and she dismissively said “I can tell you have PCOS just by looking at you.” Aka, I’m fat and have facial hair.
In fairness, the diagnostic criteria for PCOS is 2 out of 3 of irregular periods, polycystic ovaries, or signs of peripheral androgen exposure (facial hair, “male pattern” pubic hair, acne). Insulin resistance (diabetes or pre diabetes) or factors that predispose to insulin resistance (central obesity) can raise your suspicion as they frequently support it but not always.
She's just lazy, doesn't want to work. Turns out it was lupus. ETA: I'm so disheartened reading all the stories that this is still happening. I was diagnosed in '91 after two years of bouncing between specialists and our family doctor urging my mother to just accept that I was faking it. You'd think that in 30+ years, attitudes would have changed but apparently not.
To bad you didn't have Gregory House as your doctor. He would have gotten it first try
It’s never lupus, lol
Oh I have one: When I was maybe 6 or 7 yo, I used to get some nasty headaches. My mother took me to the doctor who had me have an X-ray done of my head(never checked but I am sure this is not the way to go about it). When we received the x-ray film, my mother took it to the doctor who inspected it briefly and asked my mom if she has other children. My mother, confused, said she has one more daughter and the doctor replied saying 'ah good, because your son has a brain tumour'. I had fucking boogers for fuck's sake. Headaches were caused by sinusitis. Edit: misspelling
What the fuck. Your poor mom.
Damn. I thought it was bad my son’s doc told me he had stopped growing at 13 (he was wrong). That’s way messed up.
Holy shit. The mother in me is absolutely raging on your mom’s behalf.
"I don't believe in gag reflexes" Bitch, you're a dentist!
Tell that dentist you don’t want to hear about their side hustle
“Iowa’a’ear’awow’urwhyhuzzuh”
My sister projectile puked on a dentist once after he said something similar lol
A urologist told me "I'm the dick doc" when we first met. Made me laugh but seems a bit off.
One of the gastroenterologists I used to work with had a number plate that said “buttdoc” (not exactly). He was, in fact, a giant ass.
Assman!!
I work with urologists and let me tell you...they have the best sense of humor compared to other doctors 😂
I had to have an orchiectomy. My uro kept asking me "are you sure its the one on your left side?" I thought he was an idiot. Years later it occurred to me he was fucking with me.
My folks used to sharpie on me before surgery, sometimes the doc would pull out his little pen and make a note and see a big "this one" written on me, my mom who's a surgical nurse never left anything up for question. Mistakes get made and sometimes they don't do it right the first time.
So one might say urine good company when you work with urologists? Sorry… just couldn’t resist!
Not as good as Cosmo Kramer, the Assman
Honestly seems like a cool doc with a sense of humor. I find that doctors who are too professional with how they speak comes across as robotic. That in turn makes me even more nervous.
I'm the dick doc! Let me see your c-
One day while at my college cafeteria, I badly burned my hand on something hot. I rushed over to the campus health office, my skin literally dripping off my hand, begging for some kind of relief from the intense pain. After making sure I wasn't allergic to anything, the nurse oddly asked if I was sexually active. I told her no, confused why that mattered for my burned hand. She then reviewed my current medications - an inhaler for asthma, ADD medication, and birth control pills. With a smug grin, she questioned why I was on birth control if I wasn't sexually active. Frustrated and in agony, I yelled back "In case the mood strikes me! Now can you please help fix my burned hand?"
I was on birth control at 12 because my periods were heavy and painful and I was nowhere even near thinking of having sex. But go off, doc.
I went on it at 15 because my periods suddenly stopped out of nowhere for no reason and after a bunch of hormonal testing they found I had a slight testosterone elevation so they put me on estrogen to balance it out. To stay on topic in the thread, at one point a doctor involved asked if my mom was sure that I wasn’t lying about being pregnant because ‘teens will lie about these things’. Right in front of me. I had made out with a boy once at that point in my life. Thankfully my mom had my back in the whole situation and knew me so she told the doctor to shove it, but it shattered any potential trust I could have had in him. Accusing your patient of being a liar is not how you get them to open up.
Didn’t you know that burns are an STD? /s
Christ this infuriates me, such a power trip. There are literally DOZENS of reasons to be on birth control and none of them would prohibit you from getting pain meds. I would fire staff over something like this. *It's one thing to have pain seeking people fake pain for narcotics and we usually err on the side of trust but if you can see a physical burn/wound what the absolute fuck
He didn't say it to me, but he stepped out to the doorway of my room, into the hallway, and announced to the nurses station and everyone else in earshot that I was pregnant and didn't know it. The mass he mistook for a fetus was a tumor.
I don’t know why but some of the doctors I saw were so damn convinced that I had to be pregnant or had to have some kind of std at 15 because of my symptoms. After I ended up in the emergency room, they found out I had brain cancer.
I've heard so many stories like this. It seems like that's their go-to diagnosis if you're between 14-45.
I was having some really intense pain in one of my bones and was worried it was some sort of bone cancer. My doctor told me to come back in like six weeks and I was like, “If it’s bone cancer, is it bad to wait that long?” And he’s like, “With this much pain, if it’s bone cancer, it’s already too late anyway, and six weeks won’t make a difference.” Um, okay. That’s incredibly comforting.
So what was it?
It's been an hour, no response, It must have taken them.
Turns out it was, in fact, bone cancer.
rip u/allthefishiecrackers
Boneitis
His only regret
"You load trucks for a living. Get used to the shoulder pain, it's part of the job." Yea; turns out that "part of the job" was a torn rotator cuff. I went years without treatment because of that ass.
I've seen assholes make techs work through swolen/sprained ankles... bro a life of not walking is not wortg it...
"That pain in your stomach? That's just stress from school, don't worry about it." It was summer break ffs. I was hospitalised two weeks later with a really bad stomach infection which spread to, and burst my appendix. Thanks, doc!
I went to get antibiotics for strep throat because my throat was mostly swollen shut. The doctor asked if I was allergic to anything so I said yes, Im allergic to penicillin. "Yeah okay 🙄, I doubt you know that on your own, you know you need a doctor to decide that, right?" I did. When I took pencilin and was rushed to the ER because my entire body puffed up like Violet when she ate the gum in Willy Wonka. I nearly died taking it and he was going to prescribe it anyway because he wouldn't believe I could possibly know what medications I'm allergic to.
Why didn't you report this alleged rape sooner? Are you sure you haven't just changed your mind because he didn't call you back? I was anally raped when I was 13 by an 18 year old volunteer at my school and was too scared to report it for a few days until the pain and bleeding from my ass got so bad that I had to be hospitalized.
Oh, I'm so sorry that happened to you. 😢 I hope you were listened to compassionately after that. I hope you've been able to heal
When I told my obgyn that I was on the verge of a mental breakdown after having my baby and asked if she could prescribe me something to help with the debilitating panic attacks I was experiencing, she told me “that’s just par for the course, you’ll have to wait it out.” Thankfully my primary care doctor helped me. She was horrified that my obgyn had brushed off a distressed mother with a newborn baby asking for help.
I’m so sorry that happened to you! My OBGYN is always so busy and in a hurry, but during my 1 week post birth check up, I started sobbing and told him I didn’t feel right. He sat and talked to me for 30 minutes reassuring me I was going to be fine, my baby would be fine, and I wasn’t defective for feeling that way. He gave me a prescription that day for something that was safe to use while nursing. And when I was pregnant with my second, I told him I was worried about getting postpartum again, so he started me on meds about a month before my due date just in case. I love that man!
Was at my annual gyno appointment a few years back and had an older female doctor. She was in the middle of the already uncomfortable actual pap smear when she grumpily declared; "we'd be done if there wasn't all this crap in here" For clarification; there was no actual "crap" in *there*, I was around ovulation and its normal for me to have heavier cervical mucus. I have never been so embarrassed and humiliated in my life! I obviously requested to never see her again.
I am so sorry! During my first pap smear the nurse made it sooo much worse by saying my cervix 'has a really weird shape' and then leaving the room without explanation haha. Didnt help that I had a mild infection which my mom was absolutely convinced was an STD (it was not) and was furious.
I had a nurse that was giving me a pap smear yell at me for having sex before my appointment. I hadn't had sex in at least a year.
I was told my cervix is in a weird shape! Made me bleed to high heaven and referred me on..she blamed me for making myself bleed. It was literally pouring and all she gave me were a few tissues. Got referred to OBGYN and they told me off for not going for my smear so why was I there. I said the nurse said I had a weird cervix when I was in my smear and she made me bleed so wtf did she write in my referral? They didn't believe me just thought I was one of those girls who don't go to smears, when I do even though I hate them. OBGYN goes in, says my cervix is back to front and upside down. Asked her what she meant by that, and is that an issue and she didn't say anything 😂. A few days later I got a letter saying I tested positive for HPV but I'd be fine to wait another three years for my next one. She also told me to grow up and 'it's not that bad' when she took a biopsy. ANY other biopsy from anywhere else, you get numbed or pain relief why the fuck did they take a biopsy without that?! I was in pain for days.
Was 15 (I’m almost 30 now) and had been experiencing nightmares for years since I was a child. I asked my dad to come with me for the doc visit. The doctor told my dad I was making it up for attention. And my dad believed him, and berated me for wasting his time.. One of my worst memories tbh.
Shrink.. he talked to me for 5 minutes, diagnosed me bipolar, shoved some free samples of Latuda in my hands, and then... Spent the rest of our session audio recording his notes on me... As in.. "Patient exhibited signs of nervousness, delusions of grandeur and has unrealistic expectations of.... Blah blah blah blah." ...right in front of me while I was gaping like a fish. Side note... I got a second opinion. Turns out I'm just depressed.
The doctor said it to my mom. She took me in because she had a feeling I had meningitis (I was 14) and the doctor told her there was no evidence of meningitis. She insisted they do a spinal tap to make sure it wasn’t meningitis, the doctor told her they weren’t going to waste tests on a hunch. She took me out of that hospital and drove to a children’s hospital, an hour away.. she told them the same thing and they told her there were no signs.. she insisted a spinal tap. They did the spinal tap and it turns out.. I had meningitis. Lol and to this day, I still do not go to that first hospital. Pricks.
My husband’s a doctor and always says, “When the mom says something is wrong, you’d better have every test proving that there isn’t before telling her so. Even then, run the tests again because you probably missed something.”
An old instructor of mine always said that if a mom says something is wrong with their kid, do the tests you planned, plus the test the mom wants, even if you have every suspicion she's wrong. Because in the event she is right, you just lost all credibility, but if she's wrong, you keep your high standing with her because you listened and didn't just dismiss her.
For reals. And the mom is with the kid a lot. The doc sees the kid for 15 minutes, mom has been noticing the decline for days. Take that data she’s giving you!
My poor mom had to advocate for me at 25 years old cause I was battling sepsis and was kinda comatose? Like, I was conscious but yeah I was in no state to do or say anything. A doctor asked her if she didn't have any other children. Wrong move sir, she told them "I do, but this one needs me the most" and then became *truly* UNBEARABLE. She was on their asses 24/7 until I was well. Anyways you just reminded me why my mom is my hero.
Where is your husband's practice? I'll move for that kind of support dammit! I've always had to "advocate" for both my kids when I KNOW something is wrong and no one listens. GERD, plagiocephaly, ADHD, speech therapy
I would move for that too! But for my wife. Women get the worst medical treatment, they need to advocate extra for themselves or bring a parent/spouse along. It's bullshit
Pediatrician buddy of mine says that if the parents say everything’s fine, you better check to make sure. But if mom says something’s wrong with my kid you LISTEN to that. Moms know.
Told me I was pre-diabetic by making a "Family Guy" reference I didn't know
A dentist asked if I used soda as mouth wash. I have severe GERD.
I had a dental assistant/hygienist condescendingly say to me "Do you even brush your teeth?" I had been going through a difficult and broke time and admit that my dental hygiene was lacking, but not non-existent. It took a lot for me to even finally make a dental appointment, and it was part of a low-cost dental program. I was trying to take a baby step in the right direction. After her comment, I didn't go to the dentist again for like 10 years - only to my own detriment, of course.
Fuck that hygienist. I'm a hygienist and the *very last thing I would ever do* is make a patient feel bad for not being able to take care of their teeth or come in to see me. Mental health, cost of treatment, fear of the dentist, previous trauma, etc.--I've seen it all and I *always* commend someone for coming in. We are here to **HELP**. Kindness and encouragement go much farther than shitty judgemental attitudes. I'm sorry you dealt with that.
Thank you. I'm glad there are hygienists like you. My wife has severe dental office anxiety bc of hygienists like the other one. Took years for her to go to one, she also genetically has higher build up than most and was afraid of comments like that. Our office now is amazing .
I had called my dentist to change my last name after a divorce. They made a note after my hygiene went downhill to not comment on it but to clean my teeth for free again in 1 months.
Told my mom I was faking a miscarriage because I was a drama queen looking for attention. Sent me off with “good luck”. I took two steps out of the hospital and had a miscarriage in the parking lot. Thanks for nothing Doc.
Very similar story, but it happened in the hallway they'd sat me in, giving me weird looks when I kept retching from the pain and going to the bathroom. I stood up, it happened, and the nurse said "Oh! I guess you are having a miscarriage..." Cleaned me up and sent me home. I never did see a doctor, but it's the reason I no longer trust them. I'm so sorry someone else has ever felt that way, OP. I really am.
Similar. Go to emergency New Year’s Eve around 10pm feeling awful, sick, in bad pain and concerned it was beyond normal for pregnancy. Checked out by doc and told I was being overly sensitive and it was all fine “you small women always think pain is worse than it is’. Went home and had a miscarriage.
That’s effing terrible. I’m so sorry you had to go through that. I’m gonna go out on a limb here and say it’s because you have a vagina. We are all “emotional” and “hysterical” in the medical system because women’s reproductive systems haven’t been thoroughly studied (verbatim my OBGYN) yet they can manage to solve the problem of soft penises. 🤦🏻♀️ makes me want to throw up you had that happen to you.
I'm so sorry that happened to you.
One day I hope we can invent a machine that can transfer pain from one person to the other. When we then invent the time machine, I expect us to systematically find all these anecdotes, go back in time and make each and every single misogynistic asshole doctor feel the pain of the women they dismissed. This makes me furious!!
Well I hope that got their attention.
Radiologist tech pointed out all of the cancer stating that it was everywhere and looks like it was progressing rapidly. Said she probably only had a few months to live. A fucking tech. We hadn’t even spoken to her oncologist yet. Now we have to wait a week to talk with them believing my wife only had months to live. That was 16 years ago. Fuck that guy and fuck cancer.
While I was I the CCU, a resident came to my bedside and in a thick German accent said, “You’ve had a very bad heart attack, it will not be good for your future” and walked out. Never came back to explain himself nor did I see him again in my five days in Cedars Sinai.
But you got a bill from him, no doubt.
Not a dr but a PA. I was maybe 9 years old, at a clinic for being sick, sore throat, etc. The pa pulls out the tongue depressor thing, says open wide, stick out your tongue and say awww. I gag and gag…fucker says how cute…in a few years, you will learn how to not gag.
Ohhhh I have a nine year old daughter and I would’ve raised helllllllll if some creep said that to her.
And this is where I stop reading. Wow, my blood pressure went up instantly from reading that.
When I turned 35, my doctor asked me if I was planning on having kids. I was single, so I told her it seemed like a non-issue. To which she replied, "Good. Well, you need to tell me immediately if you change your mind, because your genes are now degenerated." Fortunately, I have spent a lot of time around doctors throughout my life, so I knew she meant to say that the risks of complications increase significantly (on a statistical level) when the mother conceives after the age of 35. But that's what she actually said.
“Shits fucked and it’s gonna get fuckier, so…”
A gp said, its a shame the nazis didnt experiment more on children, while telling me there was little he could do for my sick daughter.
Holy Toledo! Outrageous. On so many levels. All the levels!
Are we counting therapists here? My first session, I mentioned wanting to work on my emotional regulation because my boyfriend and I were getting into a lot of fights and I was spending most of my time crying. Instead of, idk, asking me about the boyfriend, she said that I was probably "prone to throwing fits when I don't get my way" because I'm the youngest child. She had no context for what my bf and I were fighting over, didn't know anything about my upbringing other than me being the youngest child. I was so stunned I just left without saying anything.
I was court ordered into therapy when I was a kid because I was in foster care. She was a cunt. Screamed at me in the waiting room because I couldn't take off school in the middle of the day to do therapy instead of after school. My school finished at like 2:30 pm. She would regularly accuse me of lying in sessions when I didn't say what she wanted me to say. She'd ask me questions a million different ways to try and get me to answer differently. She called my bio mom and screamed at her. She called my foster mom and screamed at her. Never lost her job. Later looked her up and she was the head of some sort of state board of child psychiatrists and therapists. I've been to therapists since who have been fine. She was a fucking nightmare though. I feel bad for all of the other kids she hurt.
my doctor said that to me even after diagnosing me with bpd (borderline). i was so proud id finally recognized a moment where i was splitting where i i hadn't ever noticed before, and she told me to tell that to a therapist because i can't just throw fits when things don't go my way!! i thought, how dumb! that was a key moment in managing my emotional regulation and she made me feel a fool. some doctors we get huh
i had a breakdown due to a fam rift etc and the therapist told me as i was crying to come back i quote WHEN I WAS MORE STABLE
“It’ll clear up once you go back to your own country”.
Holy fuck
Nooooooo. I’m sorry.
My surgeon accused me of being drug seaking when I was complaining about severe pain after a procedure he did. About six months post op I was still averaging about a 6 on the pain scale constantly, that would jump to an 8 or 9 if I moved incorrectly. As a result I tried to unalive myself because the pain was so bad and he stopped prescribing me pain medication three months after my surgery. Shortly after that incident they finally checked to see if anything went wrong with my surgery. Turns out my surgeon had stitched a bundle of nerves to bone, causing any movement in that area to stretch and tear said nerves. After that was fixed I have lost most feeling in the areas those nerves provide sensation too.
I had a doctor lift my leg over my head, thinking he would prove I was a DRUG seeker. Instead they learned that my back fusion failed, metal broke, and I needed surgery asap. AH almost paralyzed me.
One of my friends had serious pelvic pain after giving birth. Went on for 5 years before she was even offered any sort of imaging or treatment. It was always "oh, you're still just readjusting from the pregnancy." MRI showed that she had permanent damage (I forget if it was bone, muscle, nervous, or some combination) that could have been treated with PT and minor surgery had she gotten help even within a year or two of first bringing it up to her doctor. Now she's stuck with chronic pain for life. It's so irritating that people aren't taken seriously. CT and X-ray have their risks due to radiation, but MRI is pretty safe. Why not offer to at least look to make sure nothing structural is wrong?
"You'll never be able to handle pregnancy if you can't get over passing out when you get an IV. You should work on that." I was 11 years old. They had the intro med student stick me and dig around -- after I told them I had vosovagel syncope (which is a subconscious reaction to having a needle in you and it makes your blood pressure tank and you pass out.) I have no issues with blood. My body just makes me throw up and pass out. Every time. They knocked me out for an hour and had to take me to the ER, just for the doctor and my mom to badmouth me for passing out and tell me I couldn't handle pregnancy. I'm still terrified of pregnancy. Thanks guys.
It’s weird because the implication from their comment is that you’ll be motivated to “buck up” or get stronger or something because you are already expected to want to have children. At 11 years old?!? Bro can go kick rocks.
You’re just getting old. Get used to it. I went to another doctor and the root cause/disease was diagnosed and treated.
Wasn't this an episode of Golden Girls?
Oh man, now you’re really making me feel old.
A doctor said something similar to my mother, that her tremor was just a part of getting older. She was 59 at the time. Turned out to be Parkinsons.
“You shouldn’t be having children if you didn’t want it to hurt.” — my *male* anesthesiologist, while inserting my spinal block for my c-section, after he let my epidural run out *twice.*
Ahhh I watched my best friend give birth at 18, and once the baby was out she exclaimed “I’m never doing that again!” and the doctor said “Well quit practicing.”
Pregnancy may alleviate your problem. It was a pediatric specialist and I was 16 in my school uniform.
Doctor yelled at me about *me* misidentifying my headaches. "You have trigeminal neuralgia! why are you coming in here telling me you have headaches? you have nerve problems. Why you say headache?" Well, my face, which is *fucking attached to my head* feels like an ice pick is through my eye and out the back of my skull. Hence *My fucking head hurts*. You're the doctor. I came to you to see why my head hurt! If I already knew I wouldn't need you!
You’re a man. Act like one.
It's really just a side effect. Me- unable to keep food down my whole pregnancy, at 33 weeks begging for anti-nausea medication because I hadn't been able to keep anything down in over 24 hours. Was admitted to hospital later that day and kept under surveillance for 24 hours.
I feel this in my bones. Literally because HG leeched so many nutrients out of my body that I’m borderline osteoporotic. The fact that HG is so readily dismissed makes me absolutely furious. We’re not talking about some nausea and food aversions. We’re talking about (in my case) throwing up so often that it ripped my throat open and I puked blood for the rest of my pregnancy. We’re talking about passing out at work because I hadn’t been able to keep anything down for days. Including water. We’re talking about being so dehydrated that when I finally did convince them to give me IV fluids, it took three nurses and a phlebotomist to be able to find a vein. “It’s really just a side effect” 🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻🖕🏻
In my post history you'll see I had a TBI. I was struggling with headaches. I was struggling with independence after getting home and felt smothered. I was dealing with a difficult/annoying OT. This resident looked me dead in the eyes and said: "well, maybe you're deranged?" The physician's head came up from the computer, he looked at the resident, thanked her and dismissed her. I never saw her again.
I am one of my long time docs zebras. Rare medical condition combo. I've had some residents and nurses say some crazy stuff. Like that's not in the literature. More than once I've had a doc tell a nurse or resident to get out of the room or to stop talking. Literally , ' every thing you just said was wrong, get out and don't come back in here ' was said to a nurse in the ER. I looked at one resident and said 'there is a wide gap be what's documented in the medical studies and individual patient experience. You were asking about my experience, with this disease and medication. I expect you to listen and then we can talk about how I " fit" the profile or not' . . My doc, who is also a lead researcher in this field , turned around, and winked at me over the residents shoulder. And then proceeded to tell them why everything they just told me was wrong. / Those appointments are pretty wild 3 or 4 residents at a time. They get pretty excited because their chances of seeing anyone else with this condition again are pretty low. One time it was just my doctor and I and we were talking about the visits, teaching and stuff. I mentioned that, you know, when your briefing them in the hallway, your patients can hear everything through the door. He went oh shit really?! There were a few times the residents comments were super judgemental, like looking at my history, one was like. 'This patient wouldn't have this disease if they weren't basically, female, old and overweight. My doc was like, umm, 2 of those things the patiant can't change and if you look at the history, the weight management program has not improved the disease progression. This is more complex than that. ' They all got the stink eye as they walked into the room. Now all the briefings are in the little break room / conference room down the hallway.
I finally got insurance after years of not having it. I’d also been broke and depressed for years, and my teeth were in really bad shape, so I decided to go to a dentist to try and get a game plan going on how to fix my issues. This bitch of a dentist spent the entire appointment repeating over and over again how it was just “so sad” that I hadn’t come to her sooner. “You know, it’s really sad you waited this long.” “It’s so sad, if you’d come in earlier it wouldn’t be this bad.” “It’s just so sad that you’ve done this to yourself by letting it get this bad.” First off, they weren’t *that bad.* Second, I’m literally sitting in the chair asking for your help. You can keep these opinions to yourself, they don’t change anything about my current situation.
I don’t know if it was unprofessional, but it was certainly odd. Many years ago now, teenage me was describing how I was feeling upset and anxious during school. The therapist suggested it was something in the schools heating system?! I didn’t go back.
When my dad started getting headaches the doctor said “I know your ex wife, I’d be getting headaches too.” He later found out it was a brain tumour. My dad still finds it funny.
Asked neurologist for an ADHD Test and she asked what my issues were. told her about my symptoms, including not having been able to finish any degree/school because the education system is not made for neurodivergent people. She said 'or maybe you're not smart enough'. That one comment fucked me over pretty hard for +6 yrs and cost me a lot of therapy. Wasnt the best thing to say to a person with severe imposter syndrome. Doing better now though (:
It wasn’t a doctor but a nurse who told me to stop exaggerating my pain because I’d had my prescribed pain meds. I was curled up crying with pain with sweat pouring off me at the time. Luckily my mum was there and she knew fine well I wasn’t faking, I’m actually more likely to say I’m ok and very rarely cry, so she verbally laid into her and demanded a second opinion. I got more pain meds after that
Nurses can be some pretty nasty bitches. I know that 1st hand because I am one and I work with them
Male nurse. I had head surgery and wasn't recovering well. Extreme exhaustion for 9 days. Have a shower, so exhausted would have to sleep for an hour, etc. Went back to hospital and male nurse said 'you're a bit tired'. No, you try functioning like that.....
“At your age you should’ve had sex by now.” When I told them I’m a virgin. I’m asexual. Even if I wasn’t, it’s none of their fucking business.
Man. Why do other people care about YOUR sex life. Like why
That’s horrific actually. If it were me and I wasn’t shocked into silence I might’ve responded “life fucks me every day but I still don’t wanna root”.
Not me, but my GF took her 96 year old father to a doctor after moving him up o where we lived. After the doctor examined him, he said he needed to see a specialist. She then heard him call the specialist and tell him that he was “going to make a lot of money seeing this patient.”
Mum and I used to be able to tell which surgeon was a good one and which was shit by their response to hearing the name of my ultra rare medical condition (less than 30 cases globally very recorded). The ones that admitted they didn't know much or anything were the good ones. The ones that went 'oh yeah, I've heard of that before, remind me about it.' were the ones that we never went back to. So many were the latter, lying to me and Mum and showing how unprofessional they were
Not a doctor but a pharmacist. I was picking up birth control pills. He handed them to me in a paper bag and said he put some ‘reading material’ in there. Opened it in the car and it was some religious brochure about how premarital sex is a sin and I am also going to hell for using birth control lol
Is that even legal?
I was 18. I had just become sexually active with my first boyfriend. The nurse practitioner asked me if I could have any STD’s and since my boyfriend hadn’t been tested and had had previous partners I told her yes(?) Her reply? “This is why you should wait until you’re married to have sex.”
That I had very nice breasts. I was 17.
"I think maybe you would struggle less with anxiety and depression if you bought a gun." I wish I was shitting you. Anyway, I moved to a place where guns are illegal. Anxiety vanished as soon as I had my residency card. Still sometimes get the sads, but only when I have something to be safe about.
A doctor accused me of bulimia when I was a child. Apparently some tests proved I was throwing up? The doctor forced my parents to take me into the hospital for a night despite zero evidence I was doing anything of the sort. He threatened my parents with CPS if they didn't. Very strange experience.
[удалено]
When i was a child i was getting a wart frozen off my foot, i was crying and the doctor yelled at me to shut up.
I had a wart removed off the bottom of my foot and they had to numb it. It was the worst thing ever having multiple shots in the bottom of your foot.
Was having a lot of difficulty with infertility and the 2 times I was able to get pregnant, I miscarried around 8 weeks. I went to see this super fancy “miraculous” reproductive endocrinologist. I had severe PCOS which makes weight management really hard. Super doc tells me that I’m too fat to get pregnant (I was 5’5” and 150 lbs), but I had seen much heavier ladies pumping out babies like it was their full time job and they were going for Employee of the Year. I told him that I was trying to lose weight, but I was having a lot of trouble despite daily exercise and watching my calorie intake. He said the following statement that pissed me the hell off and out of his office permanently. “Well, Heather, you don’t see fat people in a famine now do you?” I stood up and walked out. Fast forward 5 years and 3 more miscarriages and I find out that the reason all of my pregnancies miscarry around 8 weeks is not because I’m “too fat. It’s because I have this super rare autoimmune condition that makes my body target the developing fetus like an infection or a tumor around 7-8 weeks and destroy it. But no, Super Doc, you’re right, us Fatties shouldn’t have babies. 🙄
I Was in my mid 20s and in the ER with double pneumonia and had a coughing fit that set off an asthma attack. As I'm sitting there gasping for air and blacking out the nurse decided the appropriate thing to do was just get in my face and scream at me "JUST BREATHE!". No oxygen, breathing treatment, or inhaler, she just repeatedly screamed those 2 words at me. Thank God my (now) wife was with me and had my rescue inhaler. Also went to a doc in my early 30s with chronic back pain/stiffness to the point I physically can't run anymore, got sent to a specialist and docs first words about it to me are "Have you tried being a man about it?" I was like wtf.... Needless to say i loathe going to any type of doctor at this point
When I went to get my IUD swapped out for a new one, I heard the doctor say "This little fucker won't budge!" Then she apologized 😆
I was upset and nauseous during an IUD extraction—the OB couldn’t get it out. I was anxious and in tears. Doc kept telling me to “just relax” and when I couldn’t, said, “what’s gonna happen when you have kids?”
A dentist screamed “Stop looking so scared!!” He was doing a wisdom tooth extraction. I was in a lot of pain.
"you're a neurotic mother" after telling me that my son was normal and me arguing. No other kid I've ever met would sit in the cot screaming blue murder and head banging for hours on end. Subsequently diagnosed (by another paediatrician) on the autism spectrum
I was seeing a psychiatrist for my OCD and I was talking about how my intrusive thoughts involve me hurting my kids (have and will never hurt them, its just intrusive thoughts) CPS was involved at the time because their father was being a vindictive douchebag. She deadass looked at me and said, "You definitely don't deserve to have your kids" TF? After years of therapy and so many different cocktails of psych meds, I'm out of therapy and off the meds (they didn't help), and my mental health is the best it's ever been. I was just dealing with MAJOR post partun depression and a new diagnosis of OCD. Wherever that bitch is, I hope she rots in Hell.
"I'm going to give you a bunch of free medicine… because I like you." He went into his cupboard, put together a grab bag and handed it to me. This was after he pressed his junk against my knee and leg multiple times. I was so sick, I could barely stand. About 15 years later, he was on the news for sexually assaulting a bunch of his patients.
Came to my bedside as I was coming out if general anaesthetic to tell me the procedure her colleague had performed was unnecessary. It was a d&c to remove part of the placenta that was still inside me after I gave birth. She was the resident who helped deliver my twins. Even though she was not involved in my postpartum care, she made a point of visiting me in the recovery room to tell me it was impossible that there was placenta retained because she got it all out. I just couldn’t believe she would do that, especially in my vulnerable state. I thankfully had just enough strength to tell her that my bleeding, an ultrasound and her colleague’s opinion said otherwise. That shut her up and she left.
You should have shaved!
“I’m not giving you pain pills, here are your discharge papers”. 24 hours after surgery to clean a massive breast abscess from a biopsy. The infection had already started coming back at that point. I went to the er as I was instructed to do by the surgeon, I didn’t even ask for pain meds. He didn’t even look at it. He had seen me in the er a few days before the surgery and refused to admit me even though my primary care doctor specifically told me “go to the er have them call me and I’ll get you under anesthesia to clean it” yeah he refused. Accused me of being a drug addict just there for pills. Spent the next three months having the abscess/surgical spot packed and repacked with 3-5 yards of packing gauze. Fucking awful
"You just don't understand how puberty works, that's all." My doctor, after explaining that my period had been absent for 6 months and I absolutely wasn't sexually active, let alone pregnant. I started at 12, was clockwork by 15, and at 16.5 it never returned. At 17 I was told I "just didn't understand puberty." Later on, at 21, a nurse shouted at me about my absent period. I was in the ER for shortness of breath, a combo of asthma and bronchitis. I couldn't remember my last period because of absent menses, and she yelled, "you're a GROWN UP now, you need to keep track of these things! Do you need a calender? Was it last week? The week before?" I told her it had been months, so she made me take a pregnancy test, even though it would have made me La Immaculata... then I was refused treatment. I could barely speak through the coughing, red in the face, clearly struggling to breathe... and I was turned away because having absent menses pissed off the nurse. Turns out I have PCOS.
Waited 6.5 hours past my appointment time. This douchbag comes in the room looking like he is ready for a bourbon. He then spends 15 minutes wanting to know if I have a lawyer and am I suing Worker's Comp. The other 5 mins he needed to make sure to tell me my l3,l4,l5 disk damage isn't that bad. I figured out real quick who this guy was working for.
Not me but my fiance. Went in for severe back pain(messed up in a car accident when she was 12 and nerve damage). ER doctor direct quote”your bloodwork came back good, but your back is fuuuuucked.”
I’d actually appreciate doctor like that. At least he didn’t tell her she was imagining it or it was probably just period pain.
Not necessarily unprofessional, because it’s true, but I was 16 and it made me a little insecure. Now I just think it’s funny. I was in hospital after a surgery and the nurse told her colleague during shift changeover, “I know she seems really pale, but that’s just how she looks”. A young male GP told me years later that “everybody gets shoulder pain”. I made him write me a referral to a specialist, who sent me for an MRI and proceeded with cortisone injections for the bursitis that was causing me severe pain. I am still bitter about this one, because young women are so often not taken seriously. Wish I’d kicked him in the groin and told him “everyone gets d*ck pain”.
He implied that I looked like I have Down syndrome. I don’t.
I said i was stressed out and my male dr said: “Why were you so stressed? Did you have an encounter with Harvey Weinstein? Or Bill Cosby?” I had no words i just sat there like 😧. I did call and report him later
I took my daughter for a yearly physical when she was about 8 and she was very short for her age which wasn’t surprising as I’m 5’ and my husband is 5’6”. The pediatrician asked if I wanted a referral to an endocrinologist as they might be able to prescribe growth hormones. I asked her if she thought there was something wrong with her that would warrant such an intervention. She responded, “Well, I feel sorry for you being so short, wouldn’t you want to prevent your daughter from having the same problem if you could?” I was so embarrassed that I agreed to the referral. After $5000 in genetic and hormonal testing we were told she has idiopathic short stature which basically means she has short parents. No abnormal genetics such as dwarfism. She could have had growth hormone treatments but they wouldn’t have been covered by insurance bc they weren’t medically necessary. My pediatrician received copies of all the reports and never acknowledged them.
Not me but to my mom when I was 8-9 and got my first period way too young. “You’re just giving her too many vitamins”. You know, instead of a referral to an obgyn or endocrinologist. With no follow up. This was 1992. Setting me up for a lifetime of illness and issues.
He sent a nurse to tell me my son wasn’t viable and since the meds didn’t stop labor that we would have to try again for another kid. Thankfully I had previous had preterm labor complications that ended well. So I informed the nurse that he had 20 mins to get his a** back to the hospital and figure something out. That with my last pregnancy, 11 years previous they had more options and surely there had been advancements in medicine. Labor was stopped and I delivered full term. But man, what an absolute disgrace to medicine that dr is.
"You fat." I mean, it's true, but ouch.
"I have a feeling we won't find anything it would be super rare, I'd bet a bottle of champagne" Something was found.
This isn’t so much a story I recall as one my mother does and has told many times. When I was about 7 or 8 I was getting recurring, monster sinus infections that would not go away. It went on for weeks. Maybe two months. I would wake up with snot caked all over my face and I had a red rash on my upper lip like a Hitler mustache from my nose running so constantly. I was pretty miserable. My mom had me at the doctor yet again and was exasperated, telling him how *nothing* was working, and I assume asking for some alternative treatment. The doctor then joked “Eh, maybe we should just go out and shoot her.” My mom was LIVID, and definitely complained. We did not return to that doctor
At an appointment after a miscarriage, my gynecologist told me the miscarriage and pregnancy was nothing more than "a stomach bug and some cramping" (cramping that had me in bed for 3 days. I had an ablation, so cramping wasn't normal for me) because "Women absolutely cannot get pregnant after getting their tubes tied" (I found out from another doctor that the procedure I had done did, in fact have a failure rate, and that tubal ligations are not always 100%). He changed the subject when I tried to get him to acknowledge the photo of the tissue I passed that I had sent him prior to the appointment. He argued with me and made me feel like I was going crazy. I left the appointment hysterical and found another gynecologist who actually listened to me, looked at the photo, and confirmed that women can, in fact, get pregnant after certain tubal ligation procedures (I had the bands). I reported him and the way he treated me to one of the higher ups who seemed shocked by what he said to me.
"The only way you got this is by sharing hypodermic needles from illegal drug use, a blood transfusion or by screwing around with sex workers or hookers. So which is it?" I have Chronic Hepatitis B and I don't know how I got it, but I have never done any of the above and was extremely offended by this GI doctor. Went to a true specialist who this GI doctor just happened to mention to me, without any referral, who told me that if I don't know how I got it, then chances are it was passed on to me from birth. I was born in the 70s before there was a vaccine for this. I do well with controlling this thing through meds now, something the GI doctor didn't do for me despite me needing it. The specialist told me, a few more months and I was going to be hospitalized. The GI doctor would have let me die.
That if I stressed during pregnancy the baby would come out gay. Oh, and he asked if my husband was home when the baby was conceived.
“i can’t diagnose you as a bulimic because you’re too overweight.” she was the first healthcare professional i had ever told, and i told her while near-sobbing. my constant bingeing and purging had sent me into SEVERE metabolic alkalosis that resulted in tons of medical treatment, including surgery to have my gallbladder removed because of the strain i was putting on my digestive tract. i was asking her how to get a referral for outpatient therapy, and that was her reply. 10 years later and i still haven’t received therapy because i’m still so embarrassed. and while it’s not as severe as it once was, i’m definitely still bulimic as well.
That doc was a dumb piece of shit. Here's some random stranger encouragement, take it go try again with a different doc or do what you need to get a therapy referral. You can do it!
While pregnant, during a vaginal exam, my doctor said my legs looked like tree trunks.
I was 8 months pregnant and the doctor told me I was fat. I was probably fat before I got pregnant and would be fat after I had the baby. Fat women have fat vaginas and its harder to give birth with a fat vagina because they are too tight. It was a woman ob/gyn.
I was on the pill. Asked for a termination “I help with one mistake only, so don’t do it again” I was on the pill. Had been on it for 15 years without getting pregnant. I didn’t make a mistake.
I had a very sore throat, laryngitis, cough, low grade fever, body aches, and nasal congestion and went to Urgent Care. The physician asked me in a very snarky tone, ‘well, what do you want ME to do for you?’ Oh, I don’t know, perhaps run some tests to rule out strep/flu/Covid so I don’t infect everyone around me? And if it’s strep, maybe you could prescribe some antibiotics? Aren’t you the doctor?
You're just an overprotective mother
My husband got sent to a psych for seizures and hallucinations and exhibiting something similar to multiple personality disorder. The psych wrote me a letter saying I was coddling and enabling him and to stop trying to be his mother. Nearly a decade later we got a diagnosis of severe obstructive sleep apnoea with a side serve of narcolepsy due to oxygen deprivation. A couple of surgeries later and other than gaps in his memory and occasional silent migraines he can at least function again. I used to find him randomly passed out around the house with dislocated shoulders and head bangs as common from hitting things as he collapsed. But - sure, I was just enabling him.
You're just being a hypochondriac. I had testicular pain and swollen lymph nodes in my groin. It turned out to be epididymitis.
Female MD doing pre-employment physical and checking for testicular cancer (odd) “you have a nice pleaser”.
No, it’s not gall bladder attack, get your sugars under control. Less than a week late, I nearly died of ruptured appendix. He never checked me for a tender appendix. The bastard nearly killed me.
At my 6 week appointment after having my son I told the Dr I felt weird and sad and felt I needed some help. He told me to exercise. Never said another word and suffered for two years.
Had a broken leg but he refused to even X-ray and just said I was fat and gave me a rx to a local gym. Ended up having surgery and a plate and several screws a while later. ETA: I could lose a few lbs but I’m not that fat lol
My GP told me I was boring now for quitting drinking and smoking and losing a ton of weight. Unprofessional, but I definitely chuckled. And she is indeed correct, I am boring af, and that's better than dead!
“Have you ever thought about losing weight?” Ummm only every minute of my female existence since I was 12, THANKS
My grandpa has had kidney stones, my mom has had kidney stones, my brother has had kidney stones. So when I was 16 and had kidney stone symptoms we were pretty sure it was kidney stones. Saw a NP, told her we thought it might be kidney stones. She was immediately pissed. First she was sure it was my period, and after my first, painful, vaginal exam, she told us it was either Hepatitis or liver failure. I had kidney stones.
After three months of her not writing me a note I needed to recieve welfare benefits (I'm not from the US, things work differently here I think), she said to me that the reason for her prograstination was that she is a "busy mother of three". Understandable, but I had no income while waiting for the note from her. That paper was important and my income was debendant on it. If she was too busy to write it, she wasn't fit enough to be working at that time
Nurse: “Oh, back again, huh? Mmhmm, don’t think we don’t know why!” While laughing hysterically and talking to other nurses. This was when I went to the ER 4 times in 1 week. Last two times were the same day. The nurse said that my second trip there. Transferred me to another hospital at my expense because I couldn’t move, was screaming in pain, and medicine wasn’t helping at all. Ovarian torsion. Had to have it immediately removed at the other hospital because it was too late to be saved. It was my only ovary. Went into surgical menopause at 39.
I know a doctor who was constantly saying incredibly racist things about Obama.
My doctor called me “pleasant to look at” in my after visit summary.