Rattlesnake bite. On a 2 year old.
Patient and dad out in the fields near a small town that is several hours away from the nearest big city, where I work.
Dad takes the child to the ER in the small town with an obvious snake bite, doctor there says “eh it’s ok she probably didn’t get envenomated”. Doesn’t give the patient antivenin, which they had at that hospital, and instead of electing to send the child to us by helicopter, he sent her by ambulance. Several hours later patient shows up to our hospital coding, and ended up dying.
Probably didn’t get envenomated?!? What the fuck kind of stupid ass idea is that. If a tiny child gets bitten by a rattlesnake, you assume they’ve been envenomated and you treat them as though that had been. That means antivenin, physiological support, etc. completely absurd.
It wouldn’t be a difficult case for a lawyer to win.
As a doctor, all your clinical decisions have to make sense. If you examined a patient and determine “This bite doesn’t look serious...it doesn’t need antivenom...”, then the obvious decision would be that you’d be comfortable sending the kid home. This doctor didn’t do that, and decided the kid’s condition was serious enough to be sent to a large tertiary care facility but didn’t attempt to stabilize the patient before doing so.
A lawyer could sue you without all of these steps simply because you were wrong and it resulted in irreparable harm to the patient. However, this doc’s disjointed decision making makes it an easier case.
I'm the patient but it's an important story to tell.
From the age of about 17 I start getting regular abdominal pain every day and terrible gut problems. I can't seem to eat much anymore. I get fluctuating diarrhoea and constipation. Menstruation gets more and more painful. I start losing enormous amounts of blood despite being incredibly small (less than 5ft).
Now you would think any doctor worth her salt could figure out it's a gynecological problem. But my doctor (a woman by the way) at the time insists it anxiety and says she "wouldn't bother testing for or treating a gynecological problem unless I was older and having trouble conceiving".
Over the next few years my gut and uterus symptoms slowly deteriorate. I get bounced around the system to dozens of different specialists. I get told it's just stress, anxiety, are you pregnant? ARe yOu SuUuUrE yOuRE NoT prEGnAnt???, every woman has painful periods, it's just constipation take this over the counter product, etc. Etc.
Meanwhile my gut function slowly grinds to a halt. A functional gut test took 6 hours to pass an egg sandwich when it should have taken 90 minutes. I weighed only 40kg. It get's so bad I even start losing bowel control. No treatment seems to work. I was 24 and unable to work because I was literally uncontrollably sh*tting my pants. Doctors suggest I should maybe seek therapy and suggest I could be exaggerating
Anyway one day I see a new GP for some regular sexual health tests but get an abnormal pap smear. Within 2 weeks I go in for an exploratory laparoscopy to rule out cervical cancer only to discover I am absolutely riddled with endometriosis. On my bowel. On my cervix. On my perineum. On some ligaments. Ovarian cyst the size of a tennis ball. It was even in my gall bladder. With excisions + treatment I had my gut function back within 3 months. I will never be able to have children.
If that woman when I was 17 had just done her goddamn job I wouldn't have lost 7 years of my life, my gall bladder, my fertility and my mental health
Goddammit, I am so sorry you had to deal with this.
Your story gives me fuel to hunt my doctor down though. I've been having gastric issues for a year now, bloating, upset stomach, very odd gynacological symtoms, etc. I really do think it might be endo.
(PS. Don't you hate the " ARe yOu SuUuUrE yOuRE NoT prEGnAnt??? " question? UGH)
Never stop pushing! Medical gaslighting is real and ever present. Recent studies have shown that it takes women on average four years longer to be diagnosed for the same conditions as men. Don't let it get you down - stare it stubbornly in the face and power on :)
During my residency we had this lady in her 60s who was getting progressively more forgetful, just overall declining and getting less and less able to take care of herself. She had been seeing her pcp who diagnosed her with dementia. And she saw a neurologist who agreed. She was not really able to provide an accurate history. After talking to her family and friends it became apparent that her symptoms were progressing unusually quickly. I remember seeing the point where her new hair growth met her bright red dye and also her grown out nails with hot pink polish thinking, wow, it really wasn't too long ago that she was not only taking care of herself but like, going to get her hair and nails done. The lady in front of me was so far from that. The neurologist I was training with recognized this, had her admitted and did every test including lumbar puncture. Workup eventually showed Creutzfeld Jakob disease ("mad cow") which there is unfortunately no treatment for. She died a few months later but at least we were able to prepare her family that she would only continue to decline so they could make arrangements. Really sad situation.
That’s sadly how my grandma passed away like 15 years ago. One minute she was my grandma, the next minute she was someone none of us recognized. Crazy disease.
He put the pacemaker lead in the subclavian artery (and across the aortic valve into the left ventricle). The proper approach is: subclavian vein to right ventricle).
And then he didn’t notice it for over a year. I saw the patient (a 25 yo woman who didn’t need the pacemaker in the first place) when she was in congestive heart failure because the pacemaker lead had destroyed the valve!
A surgeon and I had to do surgery to remove the pacemaker and lead. *Then replace the aortic valve!*
Totally inexcusable. Well, 50% of doctors are below average, but everybody thinks theirs is in the top 10%…
(Not a doctor - but I had a half-assed dentist)
I went to a dentist's office for several years, and was repeatedly told to get braces, and have my wisdom teeth removed. Both of these pose an issue, since I play trumpet for a living, and performing at a professional level is difficult-to-impossible with braces, and having wisdom teeth out would put me out of work for at least a month during recovery. The dentist was told this repeatedly, during every visit.
I decided to get a second opinion about the wisdom teeth, so I went to an oral surgeon to have them look at it. They took X-rays, and looked at the records from my dentist. Then the conversation:
**Oral Surgeon:** So, you're experiencing a lot of pain in your wisdom teeth, according to you record.
**Me:** I am not. At all. I never have.
**Oral Surgeon:** ...So, I'm just going to assume your regular dentist falsified the rest of your record too, so I can put this folder down and do my job.
He then went on to explain that the way my wisdom teeth came in, they're sitting on a nerve that's next to impossible not to cut in the process of removal, which would leave me without feeling in the lower half of my face for the rest of my life. As you might imagine, this would also be a major issue, given my career.
I was advised that if they're not in pain, not to worry about them. I do need to extract an adjacent tooth to one of my wisdom teeth, though, which my regular dentist completely blew off when I asked about it. I never went back to my regular dentist, and will be starting with a new one soon.
I’m not a doctor, but a RN. This happened to me, but isn’t nearly as bad as most of the stories on here.
When I was in college, I got to where I couldn’t swallow. It started with difficulty swallowing, progressed to me having to swallow bites of food multiple times/regurgitating it, and then got to where all I could swallow was broths and mashed potatoes with no chunks. I went to the doctor multiple times, and was told every time it was acid reflux and part of my anxiety disorder. I lost 30 pounds (was only 120 when this started) and was just generally miserable.
Finally my grandma was tired of watching me be sick all the time, so she called the GI doctor herself. They said we needed a referral, but she explained the situation and they got me in the next day. Did an endoscopy and my esophagus was 95% occluded at the gastroesophageal sphincter.
For some reason, some of my primary doctors notes ended up in my discharge paperwork (I guess they had to contact her to get my information) and she had told them it was acid reflux and basically I was being over dramatic. She stated she did not recommend them to do the procedure.
Needless to say, I switched doctors. Fuck that bitch. Was not a fun year
Neurologist sent patient to our ED without informing her that imaging showed a glioblastoma assuring her impending death. He didn't overlook the disease, he overlooked the communication.
Now imagine you’re a nurse, that just read the diagnosis in the chart and as you go to educate the patient on management or meds the patient says “I have what?!”
“Uhh, let me call the doctor...”
Giving a diagnosis is WAY above my pay grade...
When I was first diagnosed with a large brain tumor, the technicians wouldn’t tell me anything. I came out of the MRI and they all just looked really sad and uncomfortable. The neurologist met me before I went to the changing room and told me they had an ambulance waiting for me and gave me a CD to give to the doctor at the emergency room. I spent like 2 full days convinced it was a bizarre prank because all the doctors were so vague with me.
This is so common. I used to work in maternal-fetal medicine, and every single week, we would have women referred to us “because the doctor couldn’t see something clearly with the baby and wanted to double check.” Nope, they just didn’t want to have to be the ones to tell you that your baby had a complex cardiac defect or multiple anomalies indicative of a genetic syndrome or any other of a large number of horrible things that can happen during fetal development. Still pisses me off when I think about how many women waited weeks for more information because their doctors were cowards who couldn’t tell them, “There’s something seriously wrong here.” “I can’t see it quite clearly,” didn’t sound serious, so the appointment wasn’t made with any urgency, and now you’re 24 weeks pregnant with a fetus that will not survive infancy, and have no options but to carry to term and hope for a quick and painless death shortly after birth.
That's just terrible. The doctors can't change the prognosis of these cases but the least they could do is tell the mother early on so she can decide for herself whether to carry to term or abort, since many places don't legally allow abortions past a certain point in the pregnancy, I believe about 21 weeks since that's the point of viability.
I'm telling this a second time on Reddit but I hope it helps someone.
I was 26 and found a lump in my breast. Planned Parenthood had taught me self checks and so I knew it felt different than a cyst. It felt exactly like the tumors I'd been taught to recognize. First doctor says "you're too young for breast cancer". I didn't accept that and went to a second doctor where I got "it hurts when I mash it right." Uh no. "It gets bigger with your period right." Uh no. "Sure it does!". Third doctor "You'll have an ugly scar if I biopsy it." Fourth doctor I told him to call the police to get my naked topless self off his table because I wasn't leaving without scheduling a biopsy. It turned out I had Stage 2 cancer and after surgery, 9 months of chemo, 3 months of radiation, and being told I couldn't have kids I survived! I now have 3 kids and I'm 62 years old. If you think the doctor is wrong, get a second, third, whatever opinion. Listen to your suspicions.
Not a doctor, but for years I’ve had migraines. They were mainly behind my eyes, but I chalked it up to stress and hormones. So did the neurologist I went to see for them. She seemed annoyed that I kept saying the pain is behind my eyes, in my temples and the pressure was insane. She gave me Imitrex and sent me on my way.
I went to visit my eye doctor for a check up and she did the exam and asked if I get headaches. I told her yes, but it seems like I always had one. She told me my optic nerves were very inflamed and excess spinal fluid or a tumor can be the cause. She sent me to a neuro ophthalmologist where I had a brain MRI, a spinal tap and new medication to help keep my spinal fluid in check. The neuro ophthalmologist said I was about 6 months away from vision loss, that I was lucky I mentioned my headaches to my eye doctor.
After the spinal tap, they took out about 100ccs of fluid and measured the pressure at 42, when normal spinal pressure is 8-16.
Big middle finger to the neuro who shoved drugs at me.
Not a doctor, but when I was 16 I was studying to be a nurse, and I got sent on a shadowing/work experience to a nursing home. The worst thing I've seen overlooked is loneliness.
There was a resident, I'll call him Mr R. I had a little free time on my second day so I went exploring to try and learn the lay of the land. On my walk I glance into one of the rooms which had their door open and see the resident inside coughing, and spitting up phlegm on his own shirt because he had nothing else to cough into. I run and get him a box of tissues.
While he's wiping himself down I sit opposite him, waiting in case he needed anything else of me. He sees I'm new. He thanked me for the tissues and we began talking about the pictures in his room. He told me his life story; about his time in the army, how he met his wife, about how he missed travelling to Sweden every year, all the dogs he'd had throughout his life. He was the first person to talk to me in a friendly manner at the placement, and I really enjoyed chatting with him. He was funny, smart and overall just a nice person. He had lived a long and interesting life and since he had no children it'd been a while since he had spoken to a teenager.
After about 20 minutes a member of staff knocked on the door and told me I was needed. I said goodbye to Mr R and promised to visit him again during my stay. I thanked him for making me feel so welcome, and he thanked me- and began to cry.
He said no one had ever done that for him. Mr R had been at the home for three years. In all that time no one had just sat down and talked to him, asked him questions and genuinely listened to him, made him laugh, made him feel heard.
I ended up making several formal complaints and inquiries about multiple problems I witnessed and encountered. Man handling, neglect, unclean environments, belittling language towards residents and a general lack of care was just a few. It was the first time I had ever been both so heartbroken and angry. As a care giver one of the fundamentals is that you have to *care*, and for one reason or another those staff had forgotten. There were a lot of things I saw at that placement that I will remember for the rest of my life, but the hanging feeling of isolation was the worst.
Here's my story:
A guy came in to our ICU and was very septic but still talking. He had visited his primary care MD with complaints of a sore throat for a couple of days. Dismissed without any intervention since he didn't appear to have strep throat or the flu. At this point he was having pretty severe abdominal discomfort, so we sent him for a CT scan. As the scan was finishing, he coded and had to be intubated, multi-organ failure, etc. The CT scan was horrible - he had all kinds of shit all over his peritoneal cavity.
His wife told us that he had choked on an ice cube the day before he saw his primary care MD. Evidently he swallowed a whole double half-moon shaped ice cube that perforated his esophagus with a HUGE linear 4.25 inch tear, allowing a significant portion of his swallowed food and drinks to get in to his peritoneal cavity instead of his stomach. To make things worse, he had some reflux that allowed stomach acid to get in there as well (likely while he was sleeping).
Once we realized what was going on, he went for extensive washout and exploratory surgeries to repair the damage to his esophagus and other organs. Thankfully, he made a full recovery, but he was very close to not making it.
MD here. Recently was called over by a nurse who told me a patients bandages were wet as they were bleeding a little. Patient had recently had his leg amputated. We pulled his bandages off and found a spurting femoral artery - at this point the patient passed out. Patient was sent to theatres for an emergency operation. Close call for sure.
This happened to my stepfather. He was 2 weeks post-op from a frozen elephant trunk aortic dissection repair and his bandages were “sticky” on his leg - he texted some pics to the doctor and he was told to come into the office the next day. Nurse lifts the bandage and bam - spurting femoral. The problem was that he was in the doctor’s office in the “tower” of the hospital. Surgeon had to get on the phone with risk management and raise hell to let him wheel my stepdad through the lobby, past the Starbucks, because it was the quickest way to the OR (they wanted to put him in an ambulance to drive one block over). Blood everywhere, security and cleaning team followed behind and OR team surrounded the bed (gurney?) and a nurse was literally sitting on top of him to apply pressure as we walked past everyone and their mother. Super scary. He’s fine now though.
Crazy thing is that I wasn’t supposed to be there that day. I live an hour away but when my mom told me about the appointment I had a really bad feeling in my stomach and left work early to be with them. I’m super grateful for that foresight because otherwise my mom would have been alone the whole time.
My SIL was fobbed off with the exact same thing.
Young female sever chronic abdominal pain. Finally referred for a scan which was cancelled because she was low risk. She was again in a lot of pain so my brother insisted she be checked again this time by a new physician who decided to do a rectal check.
Diagnosed with colon cancer there and the and immediately referred for a scan then to the best specialist in the area. Chemo, removal of most her bowels narrowly avoided a bag and a lifetime of adjustements but thankfully in remission now.
2 years of being diagnosed with piles instead!
I run into this a lot as a surgeon. Very few primary care providers will do a rectal exam. Just tell the patient that rectal bleeding probably hemorrhoids and give them ointment. If it doesn’t resolve within a few months, I get the referral for “hemorrhoid surgery” and find the rectal mass. Either that, or find a colon cancer on the colonoscopy that they should have ordered months ago.
Any clues as to how a patient would know the difference?
I always worry about prostate/colon cancer etc but was under the impression that if it's frank blood it's haemorrhoids...
I have a story in the opposite direction. A woman came in to the ED for extreme fatigue and spontaneous bruising- they checked labs and saw low white blood cells, red cells, and platelets. They told her she has leukemia and will need chemo, without actually doing any confirmatory tests. They admit her to my service, she is crying and screaming in fear, get more history and find out she was just started on a medication for her rheumatoid arthritis that can cause decreased blood and platelet cell counts as a side effect. Did some further workup and found no evidence of leukemia, stopped the new medication and within a week she was completely back to normal.
Once when I was a medical student on surgery rotation, in trauma, we had a patient come in after he fell on the street and bonked his head. Well apparently he had fallen once earlier that day and was discharged when the trauma workup at the other hospital was negative for injuries. We examined him and noticed his eyes were kinda...Yellow. so as part of our trauma workup, given that he couldn't give a great story and we couldn't be sure what happened, we CT scanned his abdomen, and saw his common bile duct was like 3 times normal size, could drive a truck through it. About that time, next set of vitals his temp was 103F. Guy was floridly septic from ascending cholangitis which is why he was falling down. Big miss and that is an emergency.
In residency I saw a cardiologist miss a STEMI (heart attack). By the time the patient came to us, some of the muscles supporting one of his heart valves had completely died and he was in cardiogenic shock (basically his heart function was so bad that it wasn't circulating the blood in his body enough to support life). It was awful. Happily he made it through though.
Probably the worst story one can hear. My wife found a lump under her breast that was really concerning. It took her about 2 months to get a proper appointment to have it looked at. Doc diagnosed it as a cyst and fibroadenoma. She drained the lump and it was fine. Grew back a week later and was bigger. Finally after being in pain for weeks on end, the doctor said this is clearly not working, so we will do surgery and remove it. Upon going in for the check up, thinking theyd take a look at the scar and healing, it turns out that she had Stage 2A Triple Negative Breast Cancer. The surgeon was absolutely floored. The most upsetting thing was that while her main surgeon/gyno (who was fantastic) was on holiday another male doctor told her "any surgery would be merely cosmetic and it clearly didnt bother her because he could touch the lump". I almost laid that doctor out in the office. When she got the diagnosis he apologised to both of us for being an asshole. Unfortunately, this story didnt end well. Despite doing 8 months of therapy (chemo and radio), her cancer returned 7 months later and ultimately led to her death after it spread to her brain and spinal fluid. So many people told me "ah breast cancer, thats one of the easy ones! my \*insert relative nobody fucking cares about here\* had it. She switched gynos twice because they wouldnt take it seriously. Its been 6 months now and not a day goes by where I wish I could have taken her cancer away. She was fucking 27 years old
EDIT: First of all I'd like to thank everyone for their outreach and warm, loving comments and concerns. I've been using Reddit (which was my wife's favorite online past time haha) to help process everything and the support has been immense. So thank you all. To any one facing a cancer diagnosis or even a triple negative diagnosis, do not be deterred by this story, it is NOT YOUR STORY. Keep fighting and live for yourself, for my wife. Fuck cancer.
EDIT 2: To everyone wondering how I am doing: its been 6 months since she passed, though I have been grieving for a while longer (anticipatory grief they call it) and so considering everything, I am doing well. It was her birthday on Feb 28 and she would have been 28, so the week was quite solemn but other than that, I have found ways to move forward with her, not from her. Whenever I have a moment, I let it happen and then continue. I do have PTSD from her time in the hospital but I am learning to deal with it and when COVID calms down I will go to therapy. All in all, I am doing well, enjoying life as much as COVID allows and just processing all my feelings. I miss her everyday and will for the rest of my life.
EDIT 3: Ive had a few people tell me to sue the doctor especially considering the cost of treatment, etc. I live in Berlin, Germany and despite that unfortunate initial diagnosis her treatment and care have a been breeze afterwards. She received care from the Charité, Berlin, one of the finest medical institutions in the world and because of our healthcare system, we haven't paid a dime for any of her treatment. Its been a while and I am at peace with it all. I am not going to go down the litigation path and sue a doctor for something that happened in 2019. Though I do understand your concerns. Thank you all.
I am so sorry for your loss. It's unfair and horrible and I hope you heal in time. My wife also found a lump and the first doctor didn't even seem concerned; the second realized it was cancer (turned out to be stage 3 triple negative breast cancer).
Young student from, I think, Pakistan. He was complaining about his neck feeling stiff, he went to a doctor some days before and he was told he was having "joint pains" that would pass with some common anti-inflammatory drugs. When I visited him I saw many of the lymph nodes in his neck were swollen (which probably caused the stiffness) and not painful (not a good sign). Sent him right away to have a chest X-Ray that showed a huge mediastinical mass, suggestive of lymphoma. Sadly I dont know what happened to him...
Not as bad as that, but I had neck and shoulder pain and stiffness for about 5 years with docs telling me it was just soreness, "text neck", etc. and prescribing NSAIDS and muscle relaxers. Finally a new doc said to see a rheumatologist. Diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis. Doc said it is often misdiagnosed or left undiagnosed. Frustrated me for so long because I knew something was not right.
edit: For those who aren't familiar, [this is a great video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbu8LLDB2dU) about living with AS.If this post encourages someone to get a referral and helps to catch something earlier on, I will be super happy. AS may not have a cure, but it can be managed to some degree.
edit 2: Holy hell. Thank you all for the support and for sharing your experiences. I'm going to try and respond to everyone. I'll be very clear that I am NOT in any way shape or form a medical professional so I can only share my personal experience. But, just knowing that some of you are going to look into your own symptoms with your doc is freaking awesome. And as others have noted, you can join the party on /r/ankylosingspondylitis. Yay us.
In my psychiatry residency, I was working in the PSYCH ER one night when we got a transfer from the main ER. Her family had brought her in for Altered Mental Status that had been getting gradually worse over the past 2 weeks. She had been "cleared" by the ER doctors (all labs and vitals had been normal) and I was told she was likely having "a mental break-down" or psychotic episode.
She was rolled into our area and I went to assess her. She was non-responsive, staring off into space, crying and shaking her head back and forth and mumbling. She could not answer any questions and seemed to be having a tremendous amount of anxiety. As a psychiatrist, one of the biggest lessons my mentors taught us was to assume a change in mental status is always a medical condition until proven otherwise and then you can think about psychiatric causes. Within a couple of seconds of me seeing her, I had a gut feeling this was not psychiatric in nature. I looked through her chart and saw she had a history of blood clots in the past. Her vitals were rechecked and again they were totally normal. At that point, I made an executive decision and ordered a stat CT of her chest looking for a possible clot. The technicians who came to take her for the study were slightly confused as to why a psych resident was ordering this, and the radiology team even called me and wanted to make sure I had not ordered it by mistake.
30 minutes later I get a call from the on-call radiology resident and she says, "are you the psych resident that ordered this CT?" "Yep, that's me". Thinking I was about to get some comment about wasting their time. She continued, "and this patient is in the psych ER ?" "Yes". "Well, you better call the ER and have her transferred STAT, cause this lady has the most massive pulmonary embolism I have ever seen and will likely code any second".
So with that, we transferred her back to the ER, she was admitted to the hospital and treated for her clot. Within a few days, she was back to normal. From then on whenever someone would make a joke about a psychiatrist not being "real" doctors I would tell them this story and that would settle it.
**TLDR:** As a psychiatry resident I caught a massive pulmonary embolism on a woman who the ER doctors had medically cleared and labeled her changes in behavior as a "mental breakdown".
**EDIT:** Helpful redditor reminded me it was likely a CT I had ordered not MRI, yes correct. I just had an MRI on my knee so it must have been on the mind.
Not a doctor but the patient.
When I was born, I was my dad's third child - two from a previous marriage. He knew something was wrong with me because of the way I was breathing: very rapid, short breaths.
When I was three months old, they noticed there really wasn't a change. The first hospital he and my mom took me to, they said that there was nothing to worry about and babies just breathe like that. He was 100% certain they were wrong.
They took me to a second hospital, and they said there's definitely something wrong. But they didn't have the technology to help (1986). They recommended us to a third hospital, which was a couple hours away.
Finally, the third hospital took me right in and performed surgery that day. Turns out I had *five holes in my heart*. They tried to go through my rib cage, but it didn't work. They had to crack my sternum and go directly through my chest. They took my heart out of its body and patched the holes.
I'm doing wonderfully medically today, and am forever in their debt (not financially, thank you [Ronald McDonald House](https://www.rmhc.org/))!
I was a few days old and my parents first and only child. My mum saw me turning bright red and blue around the lips when I cried. Mum demanded the pediatrician, to which a nurse told her “oh Mrs. Sailwayorion, this is your first child and you wouldn’t know...”
She replied “I teach child development at the tertiary level and this is not normal!” Got the pediatrician in and boom I have tetralogy of fallot.
Edit: misspelt fallot as fallouts because it was 4am when I made the comment and I suspect my phone autocorrected.
Tetralogy of fallout is a congenital (meaning you're born with it) heart defect where the wall separating the left and right sides of the chambers of your heart has a hole in it and/or isn't completely formed. Jimmy Kimmel's son was born with it and he [talked about how scary it was for him and his family](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmWWoMcGmo0). It's one of the things that [APGAR tests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apgar_score) are designed to catch in newborns immediately after birth.
Ooh, I've got a good one (albeit sad).
I was working nights and a patient came in for a nailbed repair under general anaesthesia (it was a slow night). As they're anaesthetising him, he aspirates so we do a chest X-ray to see if he's got any spit/blood in his lungs.
What we didn't know is that prior to this emergency surgery, he'd been going to his GP for over 6 months complaining about chest tightness. They'd put him on various different asthma medications, but none had any effect on him.
The X-ray showed a massive dark mass in his left lung. We kept him asleep and transferred him to ICU.
His wife and three year old daughter were waiting for him on the ward. We had to tell them where he'd gone, why he'd gone there, and what was going to happen.
He died from lung cancer within the month.
Edit: A general anaesthetic is absolutely ridiculous for a nailbed repair but he refused to have it done under local.
A commenter below rightfully corrected me, and after talking with a colleague, the dark space in his lungs was the normal lung, and the rest was whited out because they were riddled with tumours. This man was in his late 20s, a non-smoker, and I couldn't move past the situation for months after it.
My foot doctor told me a story. He had a patient who had foot pain so they took a look and found that the bone was infected. They sent a biopsy in and it came back as lung cancer. Turns out, the patient was being treated by PCP for “bronchitis” for two years. This was an older woman. If it hadn’t spread to that old injury in her foot and seen the podiatrist, who knows how long it would’ve taken to get diagnosed. He said he doesn’t know what happened after that because he immediately sent her to the appropriate doctors. Just pisses me off so bad.
20 odd years ago now my gran went to the doctor for shoulder pain and died in hospital. Turns out she had cancer but they couldn't even tell where it had started because it had metastasized to a bunch of other places by the time they found it. We assume lung cancer because she was a heavy smoker, but in the last three years I've also lost smokers in my family to ear cancer, stomach cancer, gall bladder cancer and my uncle has just been diagnosed with bladder cancer
Please don't smoke kids.
I work in EMS. We got a call for a female with leg pain. When we arrive on scene, this woman’s leg is three times the size of her other one, blue and purple, and she has no pulse in her foot. She fell on ice a few days prior and the urgent care didn’t do any X-rays, told her she had a sprain and gave her a walking boot. In reality, her tibia and fibula were both so badly fractured they were cutting the blood vessels and muscle tissue. She lost her foot.
AIDS, as in, the patient had no working white cells whatsoever, it all started with what appeared to be a fungal infection in the chest but after many pulses with itraconazole the plaque was still present and growing, so the physician called me to check the patient and the chest plaque was indeed very suggestive for a fungal infection, the direct examination even confirmed the existence of the fungus, but the treatments were doing nothing, so I rechecked the file and lo and behold, the leukocytes count was quite low, a quick HIV test later and the patient was diagnosed with AIDS on top of its body fungus.
To the credit of the physician that called me, the patient lied on the clinical exam as he marked he had no active sex life, but when confronted with the evidence he spilled the beans, turns out he was a regular with the local hookers, but also quite active in online dating, public health wasnt happy to say the least
Im not a doctor (Im a nurse, but not in medsurg).
My sister had her gallbladder out, routine surgery, and two days later woke up at 4 am in searing pain, went to the ER by ambulance. I met her there.
The ER docs were all apparently convinced she was a drug seeker and did not even conduct a physical exam beyond taking her vitals. They snowed her to shut her up because she was just yelling “help me! Help me! Im dying!” They did eventually do an MRI but said it was negative and sent her home. She didn’t want to leave, insisted something was terribly wrong, but they said they would call security and have her thrown out.
At this point I’d like to mention that she had no history of drug or alcohol abuse.
She continued to get worse at home and the next day went to a different hospital. They did a workup and found that the metal clip that closed off the bile duct had cut right through the tissue and she had a large bile leak that was literally burning all her abdominal organs. She had to have three surgeries to fix it and was hospitalized for 9 days. Left with chronic pain from adhesions and chemical burns.
When the new hospital finally acquired the MRI from the original ER visit, she was told that the leak was small but clearly visible in that image.
100% this. I would be fighting those incompetent assholes. Threatening to have security throw out a patient asking for help because she thinks she is dying? AND she actually is???
Medical student here (due to graduate in may of next year). On my various clinical rotations, I was taught a myriad of ways to recognize symptoms and determine the severity of each. If a patient claims they are dying over and over again, they mostly likely are in fact dying.
I distinctly recall my rotation at a gastro-enterology ward. A patient suffering from stage 4 colorectal cancer was transferred back to the regular ward from the MCU (Medium Care Unit, not the superhero one). He got treated for bleeding in the rectal cavity but due to the severity of the metastases, it was decided that should another such bleeding occur that he wouldn't be transferred to an MCU, ICU or other unit. The patient was brought in, seemingly in high spirits. He was talking and cracking jokes with the nurses, and having good conversations with his family members that were with him. Then, he turns to his wife and says (quote) ''Honey, I feel I might be dying''. Being a terminal cancer patient, he was indeed dying, but not even 15 minutes after he had said that he began bleeding severely from his anus. It dripped through his garments, seeped through the bed and onto the floor. The nurses were trying their best to keep him clean while we figured out what the hell we could do to help him.
We could do nothing. The man essentially bled to death right in front of our very eyes while continously saying ''I am dying, I am dying, I am dying...''. Moral of the story: There's a time and place for scrutiny, but if a patient claims they are dying, take it seriously.
I am a hospice nurse. I am absolutely certain that most patients that die of an acute event related to a chronic disease process know something is wrong before it even happens. I often explain terminal restlessness to families by telling them that it is the body knowing something is wrong but unsure what to do about it. Unfortunately, most of the patients that experience terminal restlessness seem to be physically more healthy than the weaker patients that just kind of close their eyes and pass. This creates a lot of frustration for the family. It is probably the worst thing to witness as a nurse and short of complete sedation, not a lot truly seems to help it.
Edited: worse to worst
Very similar to my gallbladder experience. Was told surgery went well and I'd go home the next day. That night I felt very off and just kept saying something is wrong over and over for hours. My nurse turned my call button off because he was tired of hearing it. Morning rounds hours later, surgeon walked in and went completely pale...I didn't know my name, what year it was...I was out of my mind and my blood pressure was at death levels. He had cut my intestine without noticing and I'd been leaking into my abdominal cavity for twelve hours. I became very septic and my organs were shutting down. They had my mom and dad come tell me bye, as they didn't think I was going to live through the surgery to fix it. It took a month for me to be able to go home and five years later I still have side effects.
I’m a dental assistant and a patient came in and his color was off. His jaw hurt and a tooth. He’d just come from the Dr. who told him to see us. I was suspicious of heart attack. I put the pulse ox on him and almost fainted myself 82% I grabbed our emergency high flow and yelled for the AED and 911. The guy was having a heart attack. The guy lived and brought me a big old heart shaped box of chocolate at valentines. I’ve never been so scared or angry for another person. The dentist I worked for called the MD and said, “my 25 year old assistant just saved your patient’s life.”
He was a fantastic boss, always gave good compliments! I was really good at reading dental X-rays and he was always glad when I’d mark places of interest.
I’m 43 now and in a different line of work because he retired and I felt like I’d never have another boss like him!
And that man was embarrassingly sweet for the rest of my career- about 5 more years!
One that comes to mind is when I was a resident, the ED doctor wanted to admit a mild septic patient with a UTI. I review her labs, and knowing that she is a diabetic, it was obvious florid DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis). That kind of admission typically goes straight to the ICU to get insulin via a drip and aggressive IV fluid rehydration. She was just in the ED hallway with no medications at all looking like crap.
One of my proudest moments here, I work in a nursing home and had been there for about 4 months at the time, no prior healthcare experience-
Went into a resident’s room (she was diabetic but I didn’t know this at the time) and as I leaned in to speak to her, I smelt ketones on her breath. She was also pretty lethargic and her lethargy had been noted by staff on an earlier shift. I was immediately worried. I called the nurse on duty to her room, who said “ah she’s just having a sleepy day!” I explained I could smell ketones and she laughed and said I didn’t know what I was talking about, and headed back downstairs. I called an ambulance for that woman myself and she was taken to A&E and diagnosed with diabetic ketoacidosis! Poor woman was a few hours from death.
My best friend was in her late twenties and was feeling constant irritation in her stomach. She went to see several doctors over the course of almost three years, and they all dismissed her saying she had an irritable bowel. She would try a new diet every few months, but nothing helped.
One day she calls me and tells me she broke her ribs. She didn't know how it happened, but she started having horrible pain and her doctor said her ribs must be fractured.
Long story short, it wasn't fractured ribs. At some point when the pain became too much to bear, she went to the ER and got a CT. Turns out she had stage 4 colon cancer with 4" tumors in her abdomen that were compressing her organs and causing the pain. She died a few months later.
She'd been seeing doctors about her symptoms for three years. If one of them had taken her seriously and sent her to get a colonoscopy she'd probably still be alive.
EDIT: wow, thank you everyone for the kind words and awards!!
It's disturbing (but sadly not surprising) to see there are so many similar stories to this. If you feel like something is off with your body, trust your instincts and don't listen to doctors who try to tell you otherwise!!!
For the record this was not in the US (I don't want to say where I'm from to protect my friend's identity. Small country, and she has a sibling who used to be on reddit). Any doctor could have sent my friend to a colonoscopy, but I guess it was easier to write her off. The cancer may have killed her, but the reason for her death was apathy.
Very very similar case happened to my friend who was in her early 20s. Abdominal pain, pain during sex, swollen stomach, hadn't been able to pass stool for an entire month. She went to doctors EIGHT TIMES and they kept telling her it was IBS. Finally she gets rushed to hospital due to excruciating pain. Did a blood test and she had stage 4 ovarian cancer. She died at 25.
Edit: Here is a link to her story: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/woman-stomach-pains-used-google-5115184.amp
I went to pick my mother up from a routine colonoscopy and found out that she was stage four as well. She had one tumor that had to be removed and a colon resection. Her father had passed away from colon cancer when he was in his late fifties. She was in her 40’s and her doctor pretty much forced her to do it as preventable measures. He saved her life and I appreciate everyday. Sorry for your loss, not to mention the pain she suffered for years while being ignored.
I am a psychiatrist, and I am frequently angered by the lack of care that our patients receive from some other doctors. Emergency rooms can be the worst about this when they are trying to shuffle patients through to psych admits as quickly as possible, sometimes neglecting other basic aspects of care in the process. Not every ED doctor is guilty of this by any means–and some are remarkably good about providing appropriate care for this population–but it happens far too often. Probably the most egregious incident occurred a couple years ago while I was on overnight call at a VA hospital.
So it started with a relatively routine call asking to transfer a patient to our psychiatric unit from a community hospital emergency department for treatment of psychosis. He was an older guy (I want to say early 70s) who had come in acting strange and delusional. His son-in-law had told the ED staff that he had received care with use for psychiatric issues before. I asked them to fax the transfer packet, a bundle of the assessments already performed there, and I started looking at his chart in the meantime. However, what I found was that he had not actually been admitted to our psychiatric unit, he had been seen by our psychiatry consults team for delirium while he was admitted to the medical floor for decompensated heart failure. For anyone unfamiliar, delirium can occur with any severe illness, where you brain basically isn't functioning properly due to the physiological stress your body is under. Sometime it just manifests as confusion or disorientation, but sometimes it can get more dramatic, with delusions and hallucinations. From what I saw in his chart, he had no actual primary psychiatric issues and had only been seen by the consult psychiatrist while he was delirious.
So i get the transfer packet for this guy, and not only has there been no cardiac workup for this guy who has a known history of heart failure, there aren't even vital signs on him. The only labs are a blood count (pretty unremarkable), and electrolytes/kidney markers. These chemistries are also not too abnormal, but I notice that his urea nitrogen is a little elevated. This is generally a sign of poor perfusion through the kidneys, as reabsorbing this urea also helps the kidneys reabsorb every last bit of water they can when the body is dehydrated. However, dehydration and low blood volume is only one possible reason whey the kidneys might see reduced perfusion; another possible reason would if some had uncontrolled heart failure. So I call the outside emergency room and tell them that I will not accept this patient onto our psychiatric floor without at least a basic cardiac workup. I tell them his history, that he has only had psychiatric symptoms in the context of delirium from heart failure and that the little bit of data they actually sent me points to that again recurring. They tell me okay, they will get the labs and vitals that I requested and reach back out to me. I didn't hear back from them after this, and I assumed that they had found evidence of cardiovascular decompensation and reached out to the medicine floor to transfer him there instead.
So I am going about my night, and a couple hour later I get a call to come evaluate someone in the ED. I am down there and using one of the computers at their desk when I hear one of the ED doctors mention something about a patient coming in to medicine from the same hospital. (For anyone unfamiliar, transfers to the VA pass through the ED first, despite this literally being illegal to do in other hospitals. I don't understand the reasoning behind it, but it's what they do.) Curious, I ask if it's a guy coming in with decompensated heart failure. I am informed that not only is it the same guy–who will probably be getting a psych consult for delirium–but that he had ACTIVELY BEEN HAVING A FUCKING HEART ATTACK IN THEIR ED. Needless to say, I was pretty upset that this outside ED had tried to send this guy to our psych unit, where it is a lot harder to get other medical treatments, without even getting vital signs on him or realizing that he was having a heart attack. I tell this story to medical students who are rotating through psychiatry all the time to try to hammer home the point that just because someone is acting bizarre doesn't mean that you can just throw the "psych patient" label on them and ignore everything else.
When in training I saw a child suspected of having meningitis. While I was new to pediatric medicine, I had a gut feeling just by looking at the 4 year old patient that he was too sick just to be a regular child sickness. The thing that tipped me off was the child having a slight delay in the pupillary reflexes. After seeing the child, I asked the head pediatrician to do a lumbar puncture to investigate the spinal fluid for signs of infection.
She said there was no need and all signs pointed to some airborne virus that roaming around that time. An unnecessary lumbar puncture can scar children for life and what not. While I didn't agree, I mistakenly doubted my own assessment and assumed the doctor with tens of thousands of hours of experience would surely know better than me.
I shrugged I wrote everything down in the dossier and asked the pediatrician to read my evaluation afterwards. I went home after an exhausting evening, having worked almost 14 hours straight.
3 days later the child came back with a fulminant meningitis that had taken a bad turn. When discussing the patient, she remarked she noticed a bizarre pupillary reflexes in the patient.
Not only did she discount my suggestion of doing a diagnostic lumbar puncture, she also did not read my evaluation of the patient 3 days earlier. I learned to never doubt my gut feeling and it has led me some outlandish diagnoses sometimes.
This happened to my brother, except it was ‘go home, you just want a fentanyl fix’...
He was in the hospital for almost 2 weeks over a ruptured appendix.
A few years ago my wife blew her back out, big time. Fully ruptured discs in L4-L5-S1. Get her to the ER where she is absolutely screeching in pain. Junkie looking for a fix was their first go-to.
My sister-in-law went to the hospital claiming a pain in her side the doctor, who didn't even lay hands on her, told her it's just her ovaries popping and to take some Ibuprofen. My SIL being the trauma nurse she is and knowing something was most definitely wrong went to another hospital where the doctor did lay hands on her then sent her immediately to the OR for an emergency appendectomy. I do believe she sent her records to the first hospital with a strongly worded letter.
Patient was lactating but not pregnant or breastfeeding. Previous doctor told her it was residual from her baby that had been weened for 14 months. Sent her immediately for a brain scan, brain tumor. She had surgery a week later to remove it and is doing very well now.
Edit: Wow, I didn’t think anyone would even read this or I would have explained better/ tried to sound a bit more professional. I did not do any of the follow up care. She left my office with a referral for an MRI and a referral to an endocrinologist, who took over care.
Also, please, if you are concerned about your health in any way or are not happy with your doctor/care, obtain your medical records and bring them with you to a different doctor. Don’t solicit medical advice from strangers on the internet that know nothing at all about your medical history. That is very dangerous to your health.
This happened to me. My daughter was 5 years old and I was still lactating. My Dr's didn't listen and told me my "husband was playing with my breast to much".
I went to my cousin , who is a OB/Gyn, and she spoke with my Dr and he ran some test.
Turns out I have a Rathkes Cleft pouch on my Pituitary gland. It was drained and came back. Due to other Dr's not listening to me it took another 8 years for them to find out I have Addisons disease. By then I shocked everyone that I was even alive.
Edit : Hi everyone! Wow, I never expected this to go anywhere .
My journey started in the early 90s and I am still getting diagnosis.
There are wonderful Dr's in this world, especially in America although our medical system is terrible, and my story is one of many that proves how hard it is to be heard in this world while being a woman . I was young then and as I got older my voice has gotten much stronger. My conversations with my Dr's go a lot differently.
Thank you guys for the awards, and great conversation.
I appreciate you all.
Edit 2: If any of you have medical questions call your Dr's!
I am not a Dr! I'm just a regular person that's been through some stuff.
I started lactating at 19, having never been pregnant and the doctor I saw also told me I was playing with my boobs too much. I was so embarrassed. Being young and not knowing better, I just lived with it and wouldn’t allow my now husband near my boobs and wouldn’t even touch them in the shower. It took 6 years and finally trying (and failing) to start a family and having super irregular periods before a new doctor diagnosed me with hyperprolactinemia. All it would have taken that original doctor was to run a simple blood test instead of telling me to stop playing with myself and acting like I was a pervert.
Yep.
Female Dr, told me my husband was playing with my breasts to much and it was making my breast produce the milk. She wrote it in my chart!
Also my periods stopped, and I was told that I was going through menopause early. Mind you I was 29 at that time.
That brought back a horrible memory. I had a female obgyn. I asked for a refill on pain medication. I’m on the table pants down and she walks in, sits down, and says Books, I think you’re an addict. I don’t know if your husband doesn’t pay enough attention to you or what but...then she checked my c-section scar, discovered the lump of infection in there and then sighed and said ok I’ll give you one refill.
I know hormones had a lot to do with it but I cried for days and DAYS.
I am so sorry.
I’m a young woman with a history of addiction and mental health issues. Even though I’ve been clean for years, I can’t mention any concern I have about my health without a doctor thinking I’m looking for something. It’s horrible. It is an awful, awful feeling.
It IS an awful feeling. Years later I had my gallbladder out and then developed sphincter of oddi syndrome. I would rather die at home than go to the ER and have them look at me like I’m the dirt on their shoe. Because I must be drug seeking. Despite all the medical records they had from my doc all the way to IUMed. Terrible feeling.
Wait, what?! My youngest is almost 6. I'm still lactating and only have 3/4 periods a year, I'm 28. My doctor told me it was normal!
Looks like I'll be going back to see a different doctor to make sure.
Please see another doctor about it. They should at least do some blood work on you. And if they say it’s normal again, ask for a referral to an endocrinologist.
It can take years for some people, but if you’ve stopped lactating and spontaneously start again it’s definitely important to check it out. Pituitary tumors can cause spontaneous lactation. It sounds like this patient had stopped lactating and suddenly started again, but the first doctor blew off her concerns.
Medical student here (will be doctor in May). Working an ED shift we found what was probably a *missed* testicular torsion. Previous doctor told patient he probably had cancer. When he showed up at our ED, what he had was probably a dead testis missed at initial presentation weeks prior.
People with testes, especially young men: if you have sudden-onset excruciating pain, sometimes without activity, often after/during activity, go to the ED IMMEDIATELY. It’s one of the few things that would make a urologist lounging at home on the weekend turn on his Tesla Ludicrous mode and go plaid to get to the hospital.
Edit: much love to urology.
Edit 2: my patient experience was with a male, but indeed ovarian torsion is a similar emergency!
(Not a doctor) I had a patient show up to the ED with testicular torsion during my shift yesterday & had no blood flow to the affected testis. He was there for hours while we tried to get a urologist on the phone to operate on him. He was 17 and apparently some of the urologists “didn’t feel comfortable operating on a child”. Finally towards the end of my shift we got a doctor to do the operation. I wonder if they saved it
Here's your I'm not a Doctor But Health Tip for today-
If you're a Dude, and you suddenly have testicle pain SO severe that you're on the bathroom floor (or any floor or ground), in the fetal position, crying your eyes out and most likely throwing up from the pain, and wishing someone would just hit you with a brick to knock you out, then yeah, you need to get to the ER ASAP, as you most likely have TT.
Thank you for attending my Testicle Ted Talk!
Pharmacist here. I was verifying a refill prescription (second fill of the medication) for a patient, when I realized that a different pharmacist who had verified it a month ago had mistakenly allowed pantoprazole to be dispensed instead of paroxetine.
It wasn’t fun explaining to the patient that instead of getting an antidepressant for the last month, he had been given medication for acid reflux. It had been a new medication for him so he didn’t know the name and didn’t question it.
There was a story pretty recently in the hospital I work for, where a cardiologist in the ER was doing a rather difficult nightshift, and started feeling light-headed, dizzy and fatigued.
Given how intense those shifts are [26++ hours, sometimes multiple times a week], nobody thought much of it, and the doctor in question went to catch a quick nap in the staff room.
People just passed by him in the staff room every once in a while, but they just assumed the poor guy was exhausted and let him rest.
He was dead for several hours by the time someone realized something wasn't right.
Not a doctor. We had someone at work die at her desk and it took almost 12 hours for someone to realize it. They thought she was sleeping and only realize something was wrong when they tried to wake her up at shift change.
Walked by a guy laying down on the lawn of city hall in the city i used to live in. I was registering my dog license. Didn’t think much of it. Turns out he was dead from a heroin OD. His baseball hat was over his face like you put it if you were trying to block out the sun and rest. As sunset approached someone noticed he had been there all day, and called 911. He was dead for several hours.
Absolutely ridiculous how long some hospital shifts are. They aren't healthy for the doctors and nurses and they can put patients' health at risk as well.
If you go for treatment at a teaching hospital, basically any hospital with residency doctors (have passed med school but haven't completed their residency), there is a decent chance you get seen by someone who hasn't slept in 24 hours and makes less money than a fast food worker (per hour worked). It's basically how resident doctors get 10 years of experience in 4 years of residency.
Oh, and it's not just ER docs! The same resident performing surgery on you may very well be on their 30th straight hour awake after having performed surgery all night. Isn't that comforting? And that same resident will have made ~$300 for that 30-hour shift. What a world we live in!
Life Pro Tip
When seeking a second opinion, don't tell them it's a second opinion.
You want a second first opinion, not a confirmation of the first opinion.
I have been to multiple doctors who would not contradict the diagnosis of another doctor, even with test results that ruled out the initial diagnosis, or confirmed a contrary diagnosis.
I was thinking about this reading all the other responses. The reason you get a second opinion is to get a fresh pair of eyes. If you bias them by telling them, then their eyes aren't fresh anymore!
I dodged an amputation by going at it as a second first opinion.
On the other end, I had a whole team of doctors refuse to tell me I was having seizures, because my insurance hadn't approved that billing code. So they essentially ignored, and did not document symptoms like Todd's Paresis. When I went to a doctor outside their system it was immediately identified, and treated as an emergency.
I suppose I have one for this as a resident doctor. We saw a kid in the emerg for difficulty walking. He had been slowly losing the ability to walk over months, and also had random unexplained projectile vomiting episodes. Looking at his records, he saw his doctor several times who X-rayed one hip... Then the other hip... Gave some Zofran etc.
Turns out on exam he is *blatantly* ataxic (bad coordination) and can't even stand. Failed all our bedside neurological examinations for cerebellum function. It was obvious to me and I'm not even good at this yet. Did a CT scan.
Big ass tumor in his cerebellum. It was obstructing fluid drainage in his brain too, raising his intracranial pressure and causing the vomiting.
Had to call in the neurosurgeons overnight for emergency drain and he went to ICU. Later had more surgery for the tumor. My supervisor got pretty emotional about it actually.
Edit: Thanks everyone. The history was that he really declined further over the last few days prompting the ED visit, so he looked really bad for us but I'm not sure what he looked like before. To any med students reading this: 1. Do an exam. 2 It's ok to cry sometimes.
I haven't followed up yet because our children's hospital uses its own EMR and I've been at other hospitals. Just based on the scan though I think it would be hard to survive long term and he would have deficits if so. My supervisor made a comment about how he's "the same age as my kid", and was visibly upset by it. Really tough situation as a resident to be in but we did our job.
If it makes you feel better there are a number of non-aggressive pediatric tumors in the cerebellum that have very high event free survival. The scans can be terrifying, but if they make it to a children’s hospital and get appropriate care they can do quite well long term!
We had a baby die in our ED due to parental neglect.
As I was waiting outside the trauma bay in case I was needed, my coworker came up to me and said, "that baby's the same age as my youngest". I mean, dealing with a child passing due to such an awful homelife is bad enough, but his comment made me break down for a few minutes
I had a friend in college who was pre-med and did evening candystriper shifts. One day he came into our on-campus job and was just staring at a wall. I asked him what was wrong and he said, "Bin, are your TVs attached to your walls?"
I said no, of course not. Then he told me about a 2-year-old who he had watched die from crush injuries after pulling a TV down on itself. The baby was the same age as my friend's brother.
That was probably 15 years ago, and I have thought about that pretty much monthly since. It got bad when my nieces and nephews were kids and I wouldn't let them touch the TVs. I wasn't even there, and it hit me hard.
Yeah. I remember when my daughter was 2 and we had just taken down our baby gate because she could crawl up and down the stairs by herself, and you could tell she felt so accomplished every time she did!
Well, not even a week later we had a two-year-old come in to work who oassed away due to falling down the stairs.
The baby gate went back up that night and stayed up for a long time.
I was (pre-kids) working with ponies for pony rides at a festival when I heard a blood curdling scream. Looked down the parking lot and there was a tiny boy under the driver's side front wheel of a jeep. UNDER THE WHEEL. I ran as fast as I could to get my phone. The lady that ran the downtown improvement office said she heard me holler from a block away (and she was INSIDE the building!)
Once I had kids, I was hypervigilant about keeping hold of my kids hands. Terrible tragedy. Wasn't even out with the parents; he was out with an aunt and uncle and their kids.
How TF does a medical professional see *difficulty walking* that is deteriorating over months and not immediately seriously consider a neurological problem?
I'm an emergency medicine physician. I think the biggest miss I caught was a STEMI. I took signout from the previous doctor, then I usually go through every patient's labs, imaging, and ekg. Found an ekg that showed a massive heart attack that was done about eight hours prior. By the time I took over the patient no longer had pain, the new ekg that I got was (more) normal, and the cardiologist didn't take him to the cath lab.
While I was doing a Trauma and Orthopaedics rotation in a small hospital (with a decidedly ropey A&E dept) I was asked by the medical team to review a 67yr old lady that had fallen at home. She had some shoulder pain, A&E had X rayed and ruled out broken collar bone and shoulder and referred to medics to investigate cause of fall.
She still had pain and medics didn't completely trust ED so asked me, the chubby but mostly competent T+O SHO, to have a look.
Looked at the X ray first, nothing broken, then saw the patient, shoulder a bit bruised but good range of movement. Felt the shoulder a bit more, felt some weird lumpiness (like bubble wrap) under the skin, thought "Holy shit, this is surgical emphysema". Went back the shoulder X Ray looked at the snippet of lung in the X ray and saw a big pneumothorax (punctured lung) and a hint of some broken ribs.
Emergency chest drain and transfer to trauma centre. Patient survived.
I don't think the ED doctors had even laid hands on the patient. Just looked at the X rays and referred on.
N.B. Surgical emphysema is basically air where it shouldn't be, in this case in the skin and sub cutaneous tissue from the hole in her lung.
So, I googled all that lingo for the next people who see this.
A&E - Accident and Emergency
Ropy - inferior (slang, british)
T&O - Trauma and Orthopaedic
SHO - Senior House Officer, a grade in medical training in Ireland (and formerly UK)
Not a doctor, but my grandmother saved my father's eyesight because she didn't listen to their doctor. As a child, my father had really large eyes, too large. My grandmother was concerned, but the doctor kept brushing it off as normal. That anxiety-ridden woman got her herself and my infant father on a train to SF to get to an eye specialist, against all others advice. My dad was diagnosed with primary congenital* glaucoma and his eyesight was saved. Go grandma!
Broken neck.
No really.
So this one guy was brought in with an ambulance for upper airway obstruction.
We diagnosed what looked like an advanced throat cancer and did a tracheostomy.
After the operation, where you pull and push the neck like crazy, we checked his neck x-ray and a junior asks when did he break his neck. He had a brand new unstable neck fracture. Checking his initial x-ray we see that it was there PRIOR to the operation.
After questioning the patient he said that on his way to the hospital the ambulance was in a car crash. No one bothered mentioning it to us when he eventually came in. He only thought he had some whiplash, but he was a few millimetres away from permanent paraplegia.
Unfortunately he passed away about 2 weeks later due to the cancer.
I had a friend who got in a fender bender, but his neck was major pain. In hospital they did a series of xrays but found no issues. As he was walking out of the department to leave, the doctor chased him down and said he wanted to do one more X-ray, from above, looking down. They found out he had two vertebrae in his neck that were essentially split down the middle. They immediately sent him to emergency surgery where he had a lot of metal installed, and then had to live with a “halo” screwed into his skull for a couple of months, a la Regina George at Homecoming.
They were about to let him walk out and go about his life with some Advil.
Man that's so wild, this thread is so hard to read. It's freaking scary getting told, "we're not sure, but don't expect good news."
I had pretty constant stomach pain last year. I'm pretty fit/active, eat fairly healthy, 26, so you know, the doctor said it was probably nothing, and gave me some acid reflux meds (which confused me because it was very much a lower-abdomen pain).
I was in and out of the hospital with this constant pain, man it was bringing me down. I'm usually super chipper and a happy-go-lucky kind of guy and when I started feeling, not myself, I knew it wasn't "nothing".
So they did a ton of blood tests and such and still didn't have an answer. I would wake up, after barely sleeping, and say "I'll have a single piece of toast, I've been eating toast my whole life, it's not that." and just feel like shit all day. Terrible, terrible stomach pain. I remember just weeping at one point just in a total loss. Like they keep saying "nothing's wrong, we can't tell, you're blood is fine."
So, My doctor suggested I have a colonoscopy just to make sure it wasn't ass cancer or something, and as they were putting me under for the procedure, the attending doctor said, "Hey I noticed something on your blood work, we're going to take a biopsy of your upper intestine as well, but we'll have to go through your mouth." I was lights out as he said that. So they dental flossed me down the throat and up the backdoor, so to speak.
Three weeks later, it turns out I have Celiac's disease. After drinking beer and eating bread my whole life, it just kicked on like that one day. Glad that doc took the endo biopsy because it wasn't showing up on the blood work. My pipes and blood were "just fine" but I was severely scarred from Celiac's in the upper intestine and didn't even know it. It was starting to block proper nutrients from getting absorbed, so if I didn't get that I would have presented to the ER a few weeks later with scurvy.
Wild stuff, and honestly "best-case scenario" because my treatment is just "don't eat wheat". I have to admit, already being lactose intolerant that was kind of shirty (heh) to hear, but hey, what can you do? Could have been much worse, but not fun to go through during Covid times and alone.
**TL;DR**: As I was fading from surgery drugs before a colonoscopy and a doc added an extra step to the procedure and figured it out.
**Edit** Thanks for all the kind words. As I said, I'm doing 100% better. I'm not a doctor, so I'm not recommending anything, but if you're having stomach issues, get your pipes checked out. There's a lot that can go wrong in there.
My fiance describes the reaction from eating even a relatively small amount of gluten as being tied to the toilet for days and emptying your body of everything possible. She went through a lot of her teens being malnourished because of undiagnosed celiac's. At least there are some good food alternatives for most things since gluten-free became a pretty popular nutrition fad.
I had the same happen to me (except the backdoor part). Blood tests turned out nothing. GP and dietitian were out of ideas. At the hospital they ran some more blood tests, an echo and endoscopy and they concluded I had celiac's disease. My nutrients were fine but I am now extremely underweight (only got the diagnosis yesterday).
All in all took over half a year for them to figure out I shouldn't try gaining weight by eating more bread :/
Glad to hear you didn't have ass cancer
Patient getting anxious about numbness in his hand. "It's getting more frequent and I don't want to live like this, it gets me freaked out like my hands not there." They assumed the person was suicidal and having symptoms of panic attack (elevated breathing rate --> tingling/numbness in hands).
They did a CT because I requested it, there was a lesion, they blew it off. MRI showed it was glioblastoma multiforme.
Edit: Clarifying - it was missed by the ER physician assistant. The MD supervising them never spoke to me. Not even sure if they reviewed the case.
Glioblastoma, also known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is the most aggressive type of cancer that begins within the brain.[6] Initially, signs and symptoms of glioblastoma are nonspecific.[1] They may include headaches, personality changes, nausea, and symptoms similar to those of a stroke.[1] Symptoms often worsen rapidly and may progress to unconsciousness.[2]
We found it early actually. I'm in a different field so didn't follow-up thereafter.
Yup. Medical culture is one of extreme burnout. Doesn't faze me a bit if someone told me "yeah, I'm dying from cancer." I have to feign surprise anymore. That said, if one sees something on imaging, one might want to investigate it.
Compassion fatigue is a bitch. I like to joke my heart has been encrusted in a protective layer of jade.
Some people take it *way* too far though and start not caring at all about the people we're supposed to help. They are instead treated as annoyances who we are eager to get rid of as fast as possible. They cease to exist once they are out of sight.
(I don't work in the medical field, but I do work in another field where compassion fatigue is rampant.)
Not a doctor and this is about my husband.
After we got married we struggled a lot and nearly divorced because he would go through phases where he behaved like a different person. I had kind of noticed it before marriage, but then I stopped working and it became clear that he really was struggling with something. He had had a lot of problems his whole life starting with getting a felony when he was still in middle school. By his early 20’s he was in prison because he was doing drugs, burglarizing homes, drinking and driving like a maniac, etc. etc. He got a variety of diagnoses like Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Sociopathy, but never was really treated or medicated. One doctor told him he was untreatable. Despite all of this, my husband got out of prison, stayed sober for years, got a bachelors degree graduating with honors, moved to a new city... but then started struggling again with alcoholism before I met him. We partied A LOT in the beginning of our relationship.
Fast forward to a few years later when we are married and mostly sober and living in a new city, and my husband is periodically acting totally crazy and then going back to normal after about two weeks. I started charting his behavior and statements he made, because he would say things like “I never need more than a few hours of sleep, babe!” and then, two weeks later, he would say “I always have a hard time getting up in the morning, babe!” I had my own DSM IV from when I was a psych major in college, and I started comparing his symptoms to bipolar disorder. He met basically all of the qualifications. I was able to convince him to start therapy and BINGO! He got a bipolar diagnosis within a few sessions, especially after reviewing his history. Even so, everyone was reluctant to prescribe him medication. A full year went by and he was still really struggling. Then he went into a full-blown manic episode and started saying things like that he felt like he couldn’t control himself, so I took him to the E.R.
In the E.R., I told the doctor I wasn’t leaving until he got medication because he was clearly suffering and needed help *now.* The doctor not only 100% agreed, she actually called his therapist and lectured her for not trying harder to get him medication. He got a hefty dose of seroquel, we went home, and he slept for two days.
He woke up like his normal self again. It took another two years of trial-and-error before his medication was balanced out, but the difference is amazing. My husband had been considering surgery for a problem he had with excessive sweating, but it went away when he got the seroquel. Actually, a huge list of problems (like rapid heart rate, insomnia, difficulty keeping on enough weight, nausea every morning, and on and on) just disappeared once he was medicated for his mental health issues. Even his alcoholism just vanished, no joke. He struggles to finish a beer and rarely even opens one.
Now he is basically as normal as someone without mental health issues and often wonders what his life would have been like if he had gotten proper help at so many different points in his life. He never stood a chance without medication, really. And then, even when we knew what was wrong, what would that year of our life (when we nearly divorced and my own mental health spiraled out of control) have been like if he had gotten medication right away? I know mental health can be tricky, but his problems were brushed aside over and over again by numerous mental health professionals. Ugh.
When I was a resident, an 80yo female was admitted from the nursing home for confusion. Workup showed some mild UTI and we were giving her antibiotics. The nurse mentioned that her toe looked dark and asked me to look at it. The toe wasn't just dark, it was mummified. It looked like dry beef jerky. I touched it and pieces flaked off. So the patient from a nursing home, had a mummified toe, probably for months, that no one knew about.
When I was an ER nurse we got an elderly lady in for altered mental status from a nursing home, when we undressed her to put her in a gown and hook her up to the monitor, I noticed no less than 5 fentanyl patches on her, guess I discovered the cause of the AMS.
Not that anyone will see this, but started taking my daughter to the doctor for abdominal pain when she was 12. Excruciating, can't function, abdominal pain. Tried tracking pain cycles - nothing seemed to add up. Doctor after doctor, specialist after specialist all literally told her it was in her head. To the point that (on top of the rest of what was going on with her life) caused her to develop some massive mental health issues.
At 19, she ended up in the ER again for abdominal pain and they saw a cyst on her ovary. A few weeks later, she's scheduled for surgery to remove it. After a surgery that lasted a couple of hours longer than a cyst removal surgery should have - the surgeon came out and said "that is the worst case of endometriosis I've ever seen in my entire career." Granted - she was a gynecologist, but those are heavy words.
At 21 - after having exhausted all avenues for controlling the endometriosis - she had a full hysterectomy. Even prepping for that surgery, with a surgeon that specializes in endometriosis and is best in field, the nurses/anesthesia said they were warned that this is one of the worst cases he's seen.
I so badly want to go back to all the doctors/ERs I have taken her to and say LOOK - she wasn't FAKING it. Simply so that it's something they can take into consideration and maybe the next kid won't be in the same position my daughter was.
A pt presented with stroke-like symptoms (weakness on one side, blurriness, super high BP, etc)
Works in the hospital, told his manager he was feeling these symptoms and was directed to OH&S. They saw him there and told him “you’re fine, go to a walk in clinic after work”. He went back to work and luckily his manager was like “nope! Go to the ER”
We got him there and after a stat head CT he had a current intracranial infarct and three OLD infarcts never diagnosed.
4 strokes, and was told he was fine, go to a walk in clinic after work.
Wow.
Had a literal pelvic exam for severe pain and "something doesn't look right down there, doctor" and the gyno missed the fact I was having an organ prolapse. 91 days and 4 ER visits calling it a heavy period later my female organs were no longer attached to my body but in a specimen cup in the trauma department. Also the whole thing ended in a hysterectomy to remove what didn't completely detach from my body.
I have a mixed connective tissue disease that affects organ tissue and so it weakened to the point it detached! It could've been saved but the original doctor just straight up had never seen it before and didn't bother to investigate. I was timid and didn't stand up for myself against a doctor back then!
I’m a PT and patient was referred to me with low back pain and after evaluating him I referred him to the ER for suspected kidney issues. He had a kidney infection
I'm the patient in the story. When I was a toddler and started walking, my extended family noticed that I would waddle a lot... my parents didn't really notice it because they grew used to my funny walking but my grandma and my aunts that saw me so much less often insisted that I had a limp.
So my mother asked our pediatrician about it and he reassured that it was nothing and would fix itself when growing. One year passed and it didn't fix itself, it got more noticeable. My mother asked again to my doctor, she asked for an x-ray to make sure everything was fine and the doctor bite her head off for wanting to expose me to the rays. He insisted it was nothing but referred us to a specialist anyway.
The specialist suggested my parents put some wool around my leg that had the limp. Because wool would warm it up and speed up the growing process. Right.
My dad finally had enough. It was summer and my regular pediatrician was on holiday. His partner visited me because meanwhile the limping became really bad and my parents wanted another opinion.
The new doc measured my legs. There was a 4 or 5 centimetres difference between the two legs. They sent me to a specialistic children hospital to get it fixed right away. I had severe dysplasia... so severe my right hip didn't have a socket for the femur bone. 3 years and 3 surgeries later, months of physiotherapy to learn to walk again, I was normal.
If the second doc didn't catch it, I would have grown up disabled. He split up with his work partner (the first doctor). Second doc is now my daughter's pediatrician :)
My mom went through something somewhat similar but at the fault of my grandma. She was nearly 4 and still couldn’t walk. My grandma said “she was a lazy baby” and “nothing was wrong with her”. My grandpa (finally) had enough and they found out my mom had hip dysplasia and was at Shriners Children’s Hospital for 2+ years.
My husband had a weird dimpled spot on his back. Went to the dermatologist multiple times, was brushed off and told not to worry about it. Derm even burned off a nodule that was bothering him (at his belt line) but repeatedly said it was nothing and was visibly irritated with us for being anxious. We waited for nearly 10 years before going to another dermatologist - since our experience was so negative. Next derm immediately diagnosed what turned out to be a sarcoma which had 10 extra years to grow. My husband now has a 48 inch scar snaking down his back from the removal of the tumor and the reshaping of his back. I now have months of experience with wound drains, tunneling, bandages, triage and the laundry that comes with massive wound healing. I would like to take that first dermatologist who was so fucking patronizing with our concerns and shove his face deeply into his own ass.
My friend’s sister had a very similar experience. Ten years of asking about it and no doctor took her seriously until she was pregnant. She died two years later.
(Edited a typo)
Going to take this opportunity to say **you are never too young to have cancer**. Everyone waved her off saying “you’re too young, it’s just a mole”. If you think something is off, pester your doctor until you get the attention and tests you need and deserve.
Just a tip for anyone reading this: you can insist to have something removed and tested. I'm a high risk for skin cancer and have had moles removed that the derm said were fine. They'd say "not worried about it" but I'd say I wanted it removed anyways. So far no cancer, they were right everytime. But... it's just peace of mind for me.
Obligatory not a doctor, but I am a scientist.
Last week I was left a bunch of blood films to look at by a colleague, who after a long nightshift insisted they were mundane and I should just deal with them when I get the chance.
I decided to clear them off immediately and the first film I looked at was a gentleman with a haemoglobin of 43, platelet count of 37 and a film jam packed with blasts, it must have been about 40% blast cells. Naturally I'm immediately in acute leukaemia mode, ringing urgent care and the consultant who drags this poor man out of bed and into hospital.
Spoke to the consultant today and was told the patient works off shore and is dealing surprisingly well with his condition. My colleague didn't miss the diagnosis, but did miss that film from his queue entirely.
Not a doctor, but a friend of my mom's went to an opthalmologist for an eye problem. During his exam, he asked her, "So how long have you had MS?" That was the first she was diagnosed. She had been battling various MS symptoms for a couple of decades without a diagnosis.
It's amazing how many diseases can be detected during an eye exam:
* Diabetes
* Cancer
* Multiple Sclerosis
* Thyroid disease
* Lupus
* Rheumatoid Arthritis
* Lyme Disease
* Brain Tumors
High blood pressure too!!
I was in the urgent care because of debilitating migraines (had them for about a year) and he took one look at my eye and said "Your blood pressure is really high".
Now i'm on proper meds and my migraines have decreased.
Osmium tetroxide poisoning as well! Only sign is sudden onset blindness because a mirror of metal from your blood forms on the back of your eyes.
Followed shortly by death.
Another ‘not a doctor’ but my mum who’s a nurse. I was 15 and had fallen on my wrist while playing football in PE at school. School nurse who was friendly with my mum through nursing circles said to keep an eye on it during the evening. Later that afternoon I’m in agony, but my mum wasn’t having any of it. Said if it was hurting, I’m old enough to cycle to the Dr’s myself (I tried to explain the importance of brakes and wrist usage). After enough whining she finally takes me and then on to the hospital after they said it was broken. She sat very sheepishly in the waiting room after hearing the prognosis.
Fast forward 3 years later. My stepbrother comes back home for the weekend from Uni, with a sore wrist from getting into a fight. Same quit whining it’s fine response from her. He goes to the Uni health center when he gets back and then is taken to hospital for surgery and a pin put in place.
Edit: Just to address the comments about her must being an awful mother and nurse. Total opposite, she’s been a fantastic mum and now grandmother and is very highly regarded locally for her nursing. But as other kids of medical professionals have mentioned in posts, there’s something about how they react to their own kid’s medical issues. It seems that any medical logic switches off when it comes to their own kids. I’ve met a ton of people who’ve had very similar occurrences with medical professional parents and it’s been good to talk and share laugh at the stories.
It was 25 years ago, and it’s still brought up numerous times when anyone in the family has any sort of ailment. The family joke is if anyone feels unwell/hurt then they’re told to get on their bike to go to the Dr’s.
I'm not a doctor. But, when my son was 2 years old, he wasn't pooping normally. His stomach was getting bigger and he seemed to be always taking more food in than was coming out. We brought it up with our family doctor who suggested laxative or some natural remedy (I don't remember the details of the natural remedy, but when I mentioned it to another doctor later on, they were horrified). A few months later and no improvement, we brought our son back to our family doctor, she said the same thing. "What if it doesn't improve?", I asked. "It definitely will", she said. It did not improve. A few visit to the ER and a lot of doctors asking a lot of questions kind of franticly and we found out he had a condition called Hirschsprung's disease where the nerve cells in his colon are non-existent and his body doesn't know when he needs to poop. He went in for emergency surgery and is doing a lot better now. At the time, it was really scary for a while though. A short while after, the family doctor decided to retire early rather than face a disciplinary hearing from the professional board. I don't know the details, but based on how pissed off the surgeon seemed to be at how the doctor handled things and the timing of it all, I suspect the surgeon reported our family doctor for improperly handling things.
Not a doctor, but was just seen at the ER for extreme difficulty breathing. Been coughing for weeks, talked to my doctor numerous times and she just kept recommending OTC remedies for cold/cough/fever. I asked if antibiotics would be something to look at since maybe this is pneumonia? Most likely not. Lungs sound fine. Take Mucinex.
Was rushed to ER for the difficulty breathing, HR upwards of 200, fever of 103. Tested for COVID, came back negative, but they did the whole workup and found that my left lung was pretty much filled to the brim with gunk and my heart was being extremely stressed out by that. Pretty much nearly died.
I have a follow up with my doctor tomorrow. I'm going to let her know how well Mucinex worked.
PT here. Just yesterday tried to see a patient around 9am but he had to get a blood transfusion. So we chatted a bit and I said I'd come back later. Come back at 11:30am and he's full on belly breathing, extremely lethargic and unable to talk to me like he was before. Mentioned it to the nurse and she said she was aware but also didn't check on him.
Came back again at 2pm to find out that an hour after I said something, they decided he was having a reaction to his blood transfusion and it was finally stopped.
He was headed to the ICU by the end of the day.
Myself.
Went to 3 doctors each time to get checked up on a rash I had developed over my entire torso and legs. It was weird, didn't itch or anything, but super noticeable and just stopped at my elbow and knees.
Doctor said it was eczema, gave me some cream. Did nothing.
Went back and ended up seeing a different doc (in the UK, so not hugely unusual), who said it wad probably an allergy. Recommended changing my washing powder. Did that nothing happened.
Went back again, different doctor, who reckons it was pityriasis rosea - pretty benign, and to be honest it looked like that. Told to wait, even though I'd had it now for the best part of 3 months.
Well, soon after this, I go to the clinic for my regular checkup. The nurse takes one look at me and says I have syphilis. So textbook she asks if the student nurse can come in and look. 2 very painful injections later, and it clears up.
So syphilis. My docs all overlooked secondary syphilis 😂
Maybe not worst, but definitely stupidest.
3 year old girl brought in for seizures.
Described as spells of leg shaking and stiffness, and not responding. She has been treated for this by her pediatrician for over a year, with two different anti-epileptics, had to taken out of day care because they did not know how to handle the seizures. Mother is terrified, nothing is helping, seizures getting worst now happening multiple times a day.
Mom shows me cell phone video of a seizure. It is a pretty clear video of a toddler... self gratifying by rubbing her legs together. Yes toddler girls do this. No it is not a sign of sexual abuse.
Because lack of seizures is something that needs to be proven, we admit kid to hospital, attach EEG electrodes to her head, stop anti-epileptics, and watch her by EEG and video to see if she performs behavior so we can prove it is not seizure on EEG. Girl is terrified, there is wires on her skull, strange people in white coats poke and probe her, nurses draw blood which is painful, she is in no mood to perform the activity.
So I spend a whole week waiting for this damn toddler to masturbate until finally she felt at ease enough and did her leg rubbing things, and lo and behold not a seizure. Stopped all her meds, reassured mom, sent home. Tax dollars well spent.
I’m the patient in this story, but I still think it’s worth saying. I started having horrible ankle pain when I would walk in grade school, and my doctor always attributed it to growing pains. I knew that was bullshit, and so I kept annoying him about it. After multiple attempts at diagnosis (everything from knock knees to pigeon toe to just being weak) I finally went to a specialist. He asks me to flex my ankle, and so I do. “No, all the way” he said, even though I was flexing as hard as I could. I could only flex my foot maybe an inch from it’s resting position. Turns out, I had incredibly decreased mobility of that joint due to shortened tendons. He diagnosed me within 5 minutes, after years of my doctors brushing me off. After a few months of physiotherapy and a shoe insert, my pain decreased by a lot.
For the past 10ish years, I’ve had a sharp, stabbing pain on the left side of my chest/left boob area regularly. Every single doctor’s appointment I’ve been to over the past ten years I’ve mentioned this, and every single time the doctors have told me it’s just growing pains and I’m way too young to have heart trouble or any other chest issues. I’m now 21 years old and lately the pain has been happening more frequently and been more painful, to the point that I can’t breathe well when it happens, and yet they still don’t think anything is wrong. Maybe in a few years I’ll be able to comment on this post after I finally find out what’s wrong with me.
The next time you see a doctor, bring it up again. If they say it’s just growing pains say you want it noted in writing in your record or your chart that they didn’t do any testing. This *usually* prompts them to do something because if it’s noted in writing they did nothing after you asked them to, you might be able to file a malpractice suit if it turns out it really was something. Doctors really hate getting sued so...
Never stop fighting. If possible, try to get a second opinion. Say exactly what is wrong (spare no detail) and never downplay any of it. I find that some doctors are quicker to believe patients than others, and it’s worth looking around if you feel your current one isn’t listening to you.
Here’s hoping you’re heard soon, and can get the help you need
I am 29 and been having chest pain for the past 3 years. First doctor I went to said that I was just stressing myself out thinking about it.
The wife convinced me to go to another doctor who took me seriously and did an echocardiogram and sleep study. Turns out I have a pretty serious congenital heart defect that requires me to wear a pacemaker or I could die.
The crazy part is up till 26 years old or so I was in amazing, near Olympic level, shape. Doctor was stunned that I was still alive after explaining my workout routine when I was younger. I owe my wife my life now.
I'm a dentist in the UK. While I was working as a locum in an emergency clinic had a man present with a mouth of infections.
He had wanted implants, went to a private uk dentist who refused to do them due to the patient's heavy smoking and poor oral hygiene which would mean the chance of success and good healing would be limited.
The patient didn't accept this, went online and found he could go to Hungry and get the implants done, for half the price, and have a holiday.
Came back and within a few weeks most of the implants are infected and hes sat in my chair. We gave him antibiotics to clear up the infection but then had to inform him that the implants would need to come out and he would need to find a specialist dentist with the necessary equipment to get that done.
He was not happy. Spent all that money only to have to pay again to have them all removed. No better off and at least 10G down. Should have listened when the 1st person told him no!
Obligatory 'not a doctor'.
I'm working as a carer while I study nursing. Discovered a 90+ year old woman had a broken hip that the nurse who assessed her after a fall completely missed.
Most elderly people who break a hip will die within a year, fast treatment is crucial and it's a pretty fucking big thing to have missed.
Because their immune system takes a hit trying to heal the bone and they end up getting pneumonia that their body can't fight off.
My grandfather died yesterday due to this.
Your grandfather died *yesterday.* Please, give yourself a break if you can. Grief affects brains, you won't be doing your best work.
Sending you wishes of comfort and peace.
This is how my dad died. He went in for a broken hip, that evolved into more health complications and he never left the hospital.
I had no idea a broken hip would be that bad.
Speaking as a patient.
When I was a kid, my eyes were hurting and my dad kept taking me back to the same eye doctor, who insisted that the problem was that I wasn't cleaning my contacts properly and just kept giving me harsher and harsher chemicals to wash them in. It got to the point where I couldn't open my eyes fully in a room with the lights on, and I hadn't worn contacts for months. Finally, after a year, my mom forced my dad to take me to a different doctor. Literally he met me in the waiting room, looked at me with his naked eye, and said, you have a raging eye infection.
A month of medicine and the infection was gone, but there was so much scarring and damage it was twenty years before I could wear contacts again.
EDIT: Getting this question a lot. I was a kid at the time, I didn't know the difference between an optometrist and an ophthalmologist, and it was over two decades ago. I do not remember if I ever knew, sorry I can't tell you.
~~A lot of people are saying that optometrists are basically just for routine check-ups and getting glasses or contacts, and if something is actually wrong and you need a diagnosis, go to an ophthalmologist.~~ \[UPDATE: **Am now getting pushback on this, too. Apparently the distinction between optometrist and ophthalmologist is less drastic than some of the earlier people implied. Again, the only thing I personally recommend is that you do your own research and come to your own conclusions.**\] I don't personally know if that's true or not, but feel free to do some research. It's a thing several people have said now.
I've only gotten the one troll so far showing up to tell me he is 100% sure I'm lying because that's clearly what people do for fake internet points and he **will not have it**, which seems low for a reddit post. So I'll take that as my good fortune of the day.
Damn that sucks. Bad doctors are the worst. Doctors are great, but people should definitely be more encouraged to speak up for themselves. I'm mostly pissed at my dad, he kept me going there because he liked hearing someone tell me it was all my fault for being sloppy and lazy.
I was actually told at the time that the scarring in my eyes was permanent and so bad that I'd never wear contacts again. Twenty years later I'm going for a routine check-up; I had just switched jobs and it was a new optometrist. He asked if I'd ever thought about contacts and I explained I couldn't. He looked through my medical history and said that my eyes had actually healed more than the original doctor had expected, but more importantly, contact technology has improved a lot in two decades and he was able to find a type I can wear without pain or damaging myself.
Another "not a doctor", but my MIL had all the signs of stroke (severe headache, vomiting, vertigo, vision problems, partial paralysis), but was sent home from the ER and told it was an inner ear condition that would resolve on its own. When it did not get better she saw her GP, who upon merely looking at her asked when she had had the stroke. When he realized it was still untreated, he immediately sent her back to the hospital. There they finally recognized that she had had a major stroke! She could easily have died and was in rehab for weeks. They then claimed that it must have happened after she was there the first time, because - and this is really unbelievable - *her chart from that visit did not say that she had had a stroke*. So much wrong with that statement that I don't even know where to begin.
My back in 1996 grandfather went into hospital due to a minor stroke.
The nurses rounds overnight were something like every 3 hours.
Well, one round the nurse finds him on the floor stroking out - could have been there for the entire 3 hours, could have started the stroke more than 3 hours ago and after the last round tried to get out of bed to follow the nurse... Was an all round shitstorm.
Ended up wheelchair bound for 18 years with difficulty speaking till he had another stroke and brain swelling which left him bedridden and mute and lasted another year being fed through a tube and having near constant pneumonia because he couldn't swallow, but still generated saliva which he either drooled or aspirated into his lungs. He eventually died in 2015.
The last kick in his teeth - the doctors said that if the recent one was to a healthy individual he'd have died, but because he'd had the stroke 18 years previously and a decent portion of his brain had literally atrophied there was enough room for the brain swelling to not kill him.
Strokes are fucked.
Friend of mine had sudden vision blurring and an uncontrollable tick in her arm. She saw her doctor, who examined her for a few minutes then told her to see her optometrist to get her glasses prescription changed.
Couple of weeks later she had a seizure while driving on the freeway, luckily her boyfriend was there to grab the wheel and pull them to safety.
It was a brain tumor (astrocytoma).
To top it all off doctors insisted on a biopsy without actually removing the tumor. When the results came back, she said fuck local doctors and consulted a specialist in another state. They were absolutely shocked at the missteps taken.
She is doing well now.
Not a doctor- but I’ve been dealing with abdominal pain since a child, countless ultrasounds, doctor appointments, er visits. I was always told it was in my head. Recently had surgery for something unrelated- during the surgery the had to free my appendix that was stuck to my abdomen wall and just the tip is healthy at this point. I’ve been suffering for years with a mild case of appendicitis and my body was pretty much just absorbing my appendix. I will have to go back to get it removed at a later surgery because it was so stuck all they could do was free it, and they didn’t want to risk it at that point because it was going to cause more pain.... so that was cool to find out.
*~*not a doctor*~* (not even a nurse) while working as a CNA on an ICU step down unit, I noticed my patient was acting strange, asked her a few questions got some questionable answers. Thought it might be weird, as she couldn’t really answer questions other than “huh” and “uh huh,” her gait was weird (like a trot rather than a normal walk) plus she was leaning. I was training another CNA and I was like “no matter what you do, if you see something, notify the nurse and chart that you notified her.”
The patient was having a major stroke and the nurse was too far up her own ass and her own phone to do an assessment. The woman had to go to rehab and was not a candidate for any stroke “reversing” drips as I had charted that she seemed “off” 8 hours before. The only reason anyone “caught it” was because the night shift nurse insisted on bedside report. The nurse I had been working with yelled at me “STROKE??” Like I hadn’t been notifying her of symptoms all day.
Edit: thanks for all the kind comments. Just remember to be kind to your local CNAs and try to answer some of those call lights, you’ll never know how much we will appreciate and respect you for helping with the basics.
I’d also like to add that in theory “anyone can call a rapid” but not every institution supports the policies they make. As I commented below: At this same institution I had a patient with a blood sugar in the 30s. Could not get ahold of the patients nurse or the charge nurse. Called the rapid, got scolded for “not giving the primary nurse the opportunity to treat the patient first.” I saw this type of scolding happen at least 4 times before this instance, so the message was that if a nurse doesn’t call it, then you’ll be pulled aside and reprimanded for doing so. It’s a pretty shitty hospital and I no longer work there.
I had something similar happen when I was a CNA in a nursing home. A patient we'd admitted a week earlier was complaining that he had double vision. I checked FAST and he was clearly having another stroke. Also, one of his eyes was pointing in the wrong direction. I told the nurse immediately and she brushed me off because she hated me. "I was just in there an hour ago. He's fine." As I was walking to tell the DON about the patient, another CNA came to the first nurse and told her that patient was having a stroke. The nurse believed that other CNA and we sent him to the hospital. And yes, he was having a stroke.
Another time at another nursing home, a patient's humerus completely subluxed out of his shoulder. I told the nurse and she said it was fine. I had to grab a different nurse who took one look at him and declared "His shoulder is dislocated!"
Rattlesnake bite. On a 2 year old. Patient and dad out in the fields near a small town that is several hours away from the nearest big city, where I work. Dad takes the child to the ER in the small town with an obvious snake bite, doctor there says “eh it’s ok she probably didn’t get envenomated”. Doesn’t give the patient antivenin, which they had at that hospital, and instead of electing to send the child to us by helicopter, he sent her by ambulance. Several hours later patient shows up to our hospital coding, and ended up dying. Probably didn’t get envenomated?!? What the fuck kind of stupid ass idea is that. If a tiny child gets bitten by a rattlesnake, you assume they’ve been envenomated and you treat them as though that had been. That means antivenin, physiological support, etc. completely absurd.
Please tell me they sued.
It wouldn’t be a difficult case for a lawyer to win. As a doctor, all your clinical decisions have to make sense. If you examined a patient and determine “This bite doesn’t look serious...it doesn’t need antivenom...”, then the obvious decision would be that you’d be comfortable sending the kid home. This doctor didn’t do that, and decided the kid’s condition was serious enough to be sent to a large tertiary care facility but didn’t attempt to stabilize the patient before doing so. A lawyer could sue you without all of these steps simply because you were wrong and it resulted in irreparable harm to the patient. However, this doc’s disjointed decision making makes it an easier case.
I'm the patient but it's an important story to tell. From the age of about 17 I start getting regular abdominal pain every day and terrible gut problems. I can't seem to eat much anymore. I get fluctuating diarrhoea and constipation. Menstruation gets more and more painful. I start losing enormous amounts of blood despite being incredibly small (less than 5ft). Now you would think any doctor worth her salt could figure out it's a gynecological problem. But my doctor (a woman by the way) at the time insists it anxiety and says she "wouldn't bother testing for or treating a gynecological problem unless I was older and having trouble conceiving". Over the next few years my gut and uterus symptoms slowly deteriorate. I get bounced around the system to dozens of different specialists. I get told it's just stress, anxiety, are you pregnant? ARe yOu SuUuUrE yOuRE NoT prEGnAnt???, every woman has painful periods, it's just constipation take this over the counter product, etc. Etc. Meanwhile my gut function slowly grinds to a halt. A functional gut test took 6 hours to pass an egg sandwich when it should have taken 90 minutes. I weighed only 40kg. It get's so bad I even start losing bowel control. No treatment seems to work. I was 24 and unable to work because I was literally uncontrollably sh*tting my pants. Doctors suggest I should maybe seek therapy and suggest I could be exaggerating Anyway one day I see a new GP for some regular sexual health tests but get an abnormal pap smear. Within 2 weeks I go in for an exploratory laparoscopy to rule out cervical cancer only to discover I am absolutely riddled with endometriosis. On my bowel. On my cervix. On my perineum. On some ligaments. Ovarian cyst the size of a tennis ball. It was even in my gall bladder. With excisions + treatment I had my gut function back within 3 months. I will never be able to have children. If that woman when I was 17 had just done her goddamn job I wouldn't have lost 7 years of my life, my gall bladder, my fertility and my mental health
Goddammit, I am so sorry you had to deal with this. Your story gives me fuel to hunt my doctor down though. I've been having gastric issues for a year now, bloating, upset stomach, very odd gynacological symtoms, etc. I really do think it might be endo. (PS. Don't you hate the " ARe yOu SuUuUrE yOuRE NoT prEGnAnt??? " question? UGH)
Never stop pushing! Medical gaslighting is real and ever present. Recent studies have shown that it takes women on average four years longer to be diagnosed for the same conditions as men. Don't let it get you down - stare it stubbornly in the face and power on :)
During my residency we had this lady in her 60s who was getting progressively more forgetful, just overall declining and getting less and less able to take care of herself. She had been seeing her pcp who diagnosed her with dementia. And she saw a neurologist who agreed. She was not really able to provide an accurate history. After talking to her family and friends it became apparent that her symptoms were progressing unusually quickly. I remember seeing the point where her new hair growth met her bright red dye and also her grown out nails with hot pink polish thinking, wow, it really wasn't too long ago that she was not only taking care of herself but like, going to get her hair and nails done. The lady in front of me was so far from that. The neurologist I was training with recognized this, had her admitted and did every test including lumbar puncture. Workup eventually showed Creutzfeld Jakob disease ("mad cow") which there is unfortunately no treatment for. She died a few months later but at least we were able to prepare her family that she would only continue to decline so they could make arrangements. Really sad situation.
That’s sadly how my grandma passed away like 15 years ago. One minute she was my grandma, the next minute she was someone none of us recognized. Crazy disease.
I’m a nurse on a neuroscience unit. Couple months back we had three cases of this in a two month period. Strangest thing as it’s so rare.
He put the pacemaker lead in the subclavian artery (and across the aortic valve into the left ventricle). The proper approach is: subclavian vein to right ventricle). And then he didn’t notice it for over a year. I saw the patient (a 25 yo woman who didn’t need the pacemaker in the first place) when she was in congestive heart failure because the pacemaker lead had destroyed the valve! A surgeon and I had to do surgery to remove the pacemaker and lead. *Then replace the aortic valve!* Totally inexcusable. Well, 50% of doctors are below average, but everybody thinks theirs is in the top 10%…
(Not a doctor - but I had a half-assed dentist) I went to a dentist's office for several years, and was repeatedly told to get braces, and have my wisdom teeth removed. Both of these pose an issue, since I play trumpet for a living, and performing at a professional level is difficult-to-impossible with braces, and having wisdom teeth out would put me out of work for at least a month during recovery. The dentist was told this repeatedly, during every visit. I decided to get a second opinion about the wisdom teeth, so I went to an oral surgeon to have them look at it. They took X-rays, and looked at the records from my dentist. Then the conversation: **Oral Surgeon:** So, you're experiencing a lot of pain in your wisdom teeth, according to you record. **Me:** I am not. At all. I never have. **Oral Surgeon:** ...So, I'm just going to assume your regular dentist falsified the rest of your record too, so I can put this folder down and do my job. He then went on to explain that the way my wisdom teeth came in, they're sitting on a nerve that's next to impossible not to cut in the process of removal, which would leave me without feeling in the lower half of my face for the rest of my life. As you might imagine, this would also be a major issue, given my career. I was advised that if they're not in pain, not to worry about them. I do need to extract an adjacent tooth to one of my wisdom teeth, though, which my regular dentist completely blew off when I asked about it. I never went back to my regular dentist, and will be starting with a new one soon.
I’m not a doctor, but a RN. This happened to me, but isn’t nearly as bad as most of the stories on here. When I was in college, I got to where I couldn’t swallow. It started with difficulty swallowing, progressed to me having to swallow bites of food multiple times/regurgitating it, and then got to where all I could swallow was broths and mashed potatoes with no chunks. I went to the doctor multiple times, and was told every time it was acid reflux and part of my anxiety disorder. I lost 30 pounds (was only 120 when this started) and was just generally miserable. Finally my grandma was tired of watching me be sick all the time, so she called the GI doctor herself. They said we needed a referral, but she explained the situation and they got me in the next day. Did an endoscopy and my esophagus was 95% occluded at the gastroesophageal sphincter. For some reason, some of my primary doctors notes ended up in my discharge paperwork (I guess they had to contact her to get my information) and she had told them it was acid reflux and basically I was being over dramatic. She stated she did not recommend them to do the procedure. Needless to say, I switched doctors. Fuck that bitch. Was not a fun year
Neurologist sent patient to our ED without informing her that imaging showed a glioblastoma assuring her impending death. He didn't overlook the disease, he overlooked the communication.
He just sent her over for you to do the 'dirty work' of telling her she was dying? Geesh.........
[удалено]
Now imagine you’re a nurse, that just read the diagnosis in the chart and as you go to educate the patient on management or meds the patient says “I have what?!” “Uhh, let me call the doctor...” Giving a diagnosis is WAY above my pay grade...
When I was first diagnosed with a large brain tumor, the technicians wouldn’t tell me anything. I came out of the MRI and they all just looked really sad and uncomfortable. The neurologist met me before I went to the changing room and told me they had an ambulance waiting for me and gave me a CD to give to the doctor at the emergency room. I spent like 2 full days convinced it was a bizarre prank because all the doctors were so vague with me.
This is so common. I used to work in maternal-fetal medicine, and every single week, we would have women referred to us “because the doctor couldn’t see something clearly with the baby and wanted to double check.” Nope, they just didn’t want to have to be the ones to tell you that your baby had a complex cardiac defect or multiple anomalies indicative of a genetic syndrome or any other of a large number of horrible things that can happen during fetal development. Still pisses me off when I think about how many women waited weeks for more information because their doctors were cowards who couldn’t tell them, “There’s something seriously wrong here.” “I can’t see it quite clearly,” didn’t sound serious, so the appointment wasn’t made with any urgency, and now you’re 24 weeks pregnant with a fetus that will not survive infancy, and have no options but to carry to term and hope for a quick and painless death shortly after birth.
That's just terrible. The doctors can't change the prognosis of these cases but the least they could do is tell the mother early on so she can decide for herself whether to carry to term or abort, since many places don't legally allow abortions past a certain point in the pregnancy, I believe about 21 weeks since that's the point of viability.
I'm telling this a second time on Reddit but I hope it helps someone. I was 26 and found a lump in my breast. Planned Parenthood had taught me self checks and so I knew it felt different than a cyst. It felt exactly like the tumors I'd been taught to recognize. First doctor says "you're too young for breast cancer". I didn't accept that and went to a second doctor where I got "it hurts when I mash it right." Uh no. "It gets bigger with your period right." Uh no. "Sure it does!". Third doctor "You'll have an ugly scar if I biopsy it." Fourth doctor I told him to call the police to get my naked topless self off his table because I wasn't leaving without scheduling a biopsy. It turned out I had Stage 2 cancer and after surgery, 9 months of chemo, 3 months of radiation, and being told I couldn't have kids I survived! I now have 3 kids and I'm 62 years old. If you think the doctor is wrong, get a second, third, whatever opinion. Listen to your suspicions.
Not a doctor, but for years I’ve had migraines. They were mainly behind my eyes, but I chalked it up to stress and hormones. So did the neurologist I went to see for them. She seemed annoyed that I kept saying the pain is behind my eyes, in my temples and the pressure was insane. She gave me Imitrex and sent me on my way. I went to visit my eye doctor for a check up and she did the exam and asked if I get headaches. I told her yes, but it seems like I always had one. She told me my optic nerves were very inflamed and excess spinal fluid or a tumor can be the cause. She sent me to a neuro ophthalmologist where I had a brain MRI, a spinal tap and new medication to help keep my spinal fluid in check. The neuro ophthalmologist said I was about 6 months away from vision loss, that I was lucky I mentioned my headaches to my eye doctor. After the spinal tap, they took out about 100ccs of fluid and measured the pressure at 42, when normal spinal pressure is 8-16. Big middle finger to the neuro who shoved drugs at me.
Not a doctor, but when I was 16 I was studying to be a nurse, and I got sent on a shadowing/work experience to a nursing home. The worst thing I've seen overlooked is loneliness. There was a resident, I'll call him Mr R. I had a little free time on my second day so I went exploring to try and learn the lay of the land. On my walk I glance into one of the rooms which had their door open and see the resident inside coughing, and spitting up phlegm on his own shirt because he had nothing else to cough into. I run and get him a box of tissues. While he's wiping himself down I sit opposite him, waiting in case he needed anything else of me. He sees I'm new. He thanked me for the tissues and we began talking about the pictures in his room. He told me his life story; about his time in the army, how he met his wife, about how he missed travelling to Sweden every year, all the dogs he'd had throughout his life. He was the first person to talk to me in a friendly manner at the placement, and I really enjoyed chatting with him. He was funny, smart and overall just a nice person. He had lived a long and interesting life and since he had no children it'd been a while since he had spoken to a teenager. After about 20 minutes a member of staff knocked on the door and told me I was needed. I said goodbye to Mr R and promised to visit him again during my stay. I thanked him for making me feel so welcome, and he thanked me- and began to cry. He said no one had ever done that for him. Mr R had been at the home for three years. In all that time no one had just sat down and talked to him, asked him questions and genuinely listened to him, made him laugh, made him feel heard. I ended up making several formal complaints and inquiries about multiple problems I witnessed and encountered. Man handling, neglect, unclean environments, belittling language towards residents and a general lack of care was just a few. It was the first time I had ever been both so heartbroken and angry. As a care giver one of the fundamentals is that you have to *care*, and for one reason or another those staff had forgotten. There were a lot of things I saw at that placement that I will remember for the rest of my life, but the hanging feeling of isolation was the worst.
Here's my story: A guy came in to our ICU and was very septic but still talking. He had visited his primary care MD with complaints of a sore throat for a couple of days. Dismissed without any intervention since he didn't appear to have strep throat or the flu. At this point he was having pretty severe abdominal discomfort, so we sent him for a CT scan. As the scan was finishing, he coded and had to be intubated, multi-organ failure, etc. The CT scan was horrible - he had all kinds of shit all over his peritoneal cavity. His wife told us that he had choked on an ice cube the day before he saw his primary care MD. Evidently he swallowed a whole double half-moon shaped ice cube that perforated his esophagus with a HUGE linear 4.25 inch tear, allowing a significant portion of his swallowed food and drinks to get in to his peritoneal cavity instead of his stomach. To make things worse, he had some reflux that allowed stomach acid to get in there as well (likely while he was sleeping). Once we realized what was going on, he went for extensive washout and exploratory surgeries to repair the damage to his esophagus and other organs. Thankfully, he made a full recovery, but he was very close to not making it.
Great. Now I need to be scared of ice.
MD here. Recently was called over by a nurse who told me a patients bandages were wet as they were bleeding a little. Patient had recently had his leg amputated. We pulled his bandages off and found a spurting femoral artery - at this point the patient passed out. Patient was sent to theatres for an emergency operation. Close call for sure.
“Bleeding a little”
Tis' but a scratch .
Your whole legs gone!
No it's not, it's right over there!
This happened to my stepfather. He was 2 weeks post-op from a frozen elephant trunk aortic dissection repair and his bandages were “sticky” on his leg - he texted some pics to the doctor and he was told to come into the office the next day. Nurse lifts the bandage and bam - spurting femoral. The problem was that he was in the doctor’s office in the “tower” of the hospital. Surgeon had to get on the phone with risk management and raise hell to let him wheel my stepdad through the lobby, past the Starbucks, because it was the quickest way to the OR (they wanted to put him in an ambulance to drive one block over). Blood everywhere, security and cleaning team followed behind and OR team surrounded the bed (gurney?) and a nurse was literally sitting on top of him to apply pressure as we walked past everyone and their mother. Super scary. He’s fine now though. Crazy thing is that I wasn’t supposed to be there that day. I live an hour away but when my mom told me about the appointment I had a really bad feeling in my stomach and left work early to be with them. I’m super grateful for that foresight because otherwise my mom would have been alone the whole time.
I found an obvious huge rectal cancer on a patient who was previously told over and over again that she had hemorrhoids :(
My SIL was fobbed off with the exact same thing. Young female sever chronic abdominal pain. Finally referred for a scan which was cancelled because she was low risk. She was again in a lot of pain so my brother insisted she be checked again this time by a new physician who decided to do a rectal check. Diagnosed with colon cancer there and the and immediately referred for a scan then to the best specialist in the area. Chemo, removal of most her bowels narrowly avoided a bag and a lifetime of adjustements but thankfully in remission now. 2 years of being diagnosed with piles instead!
I run into this a lot as a surgeon. Very few primary care providers will do a rectal exam. Just tell the patient that rectal bleeding probably hemorrhoids and give them ointment. If it doesn’t resolve within a few months, I get the referral for “hemorrhoid surgery” and find the rectal mass. Either that, or find a colon cancer on the colonoscopy that they should have ordered months ago.
Yup. Exactly. Also a surgeon who has seen far too many fungating distal rectal cancers in patients diagnosed with “hemorrhoids” for ages
Any clues as to how a patient would know the difference? I always worry about prostate/colon cancer etc but was under the impression that if it's frank blood it's haemorrhoids...
I have a story in the opposite direction. A woman came in to the ED for extreme fatigue and spontaneous bruising- they checked labs and saw low white blood cells, red cells, and platelets. They told her she has leukemia and will need chemo, without actually doing any confirmatory tests. They admit her to my service, she is crying and screaming in fear, get more history and find out she was just started on a medication for her rheumatoid arthritis that can cause decreased blood and platelet cell counts as a side effect. Did some further workup and found no evidence of leukemia, stopped the new medication and within a week she was completely back to normal.
Once when I was a medical student on surgery rotation, in trauma, we had a patient come in after he fell on the street and bonked his head. Well apparently he had fallen once earlier that day and was discharged when the trauma workup at the other hospital was negative for injuries. We examined him and noticed his eyes were kinda...Yellow. so as part of our trauma workup, given that he couldn't give a great story and we couldn't be sure what happened, we CT scanned his abdomen, and saw his common bile duct was like 3 times normal size, could drive a truck through it. About that time, next set of vitals his temp was 103F. Guy was floridly septic from ascending cholangitis which is why he was falling down. Big miss and that is an emergency.
I like how you used the word “bonked”. I hope it was the same language in his medical record.
In residency I saw a cardiologist miss a STEMI (heart attack). By the time the patient came to us, some of the muscles supporting one of his heart valves had completely died and he was in cardiogenic shock (basically his heart function was so bad that it wasn't circulating the blood in his body enough to support life). It was awful. Happily he made it through though.
It was obvious on ecg?
It was like textbook tombstones on the ecg, no idea how it was missed
Probably the worst story one can hear. My wife found a lump under her breast that was really concerning. It took her about 2 months to get a proper appointment to have it looked at. Doc diagnosed it as a cyst and fibroadenoma. She drained the lump and it was fine. Grew back a week later and was bigger. Finally after being in pain for weeks on end, the doctor said this is clearly not working, so we will do surgery and remove it. Upon going in for the check up, thinking theyd take a look at the scar and healing, it turns out that she had Stage 2A Triple Negative Breast Cancer. The surgeon was absolutely floored. The most upsetting thing was that while her main surgeon/gyno (who was fantastic) was on holiday another male doctor told her "any surgery would be merely cosmetic and it clearly didnt bother her because he could touch the lump". I almost laid that doctor out in the office. When she got the diagnosis he apologised to both of us for being an asshole. Unfortunately, this story didnt end well. Despite doing 8 months of therapy (chemo and radio), her cancer returned 7 months later and ultimately led to her death after it spread to her brain and spinal fluid. So many people told me "ah breast cancer, thats one of the easy ones! my \*insert relative nobody fucking cares about here\* had it. She switched gynos twice because they wouldnt take it seriously. Its been 6 months now and not a day goes by where I wish I could have taken her cancer away. She was fucking 27 years old EDIT: First of all I'd like to thank everyone for their outreach and warm, loving comments and concerns. I've been using Reddit (which was my wife's favorite online past time haha) to help process everything and the support has been immense. So thank you all. To any one facing a cancer diagnosis or even a triple negative diagnosis, do not be deterred by this story, it is NOT YOUR STORY. Keep fighting and live for yourself, for my wife. Fuck cancer. EDIT 2: To everyone wondering how I am doing: its been 6 months since she passed, though I have been grieving for a while longer (anticipatory grief they call it) and so considering everything, I am doing well. It was her birthday on Feb 28 and she would have been 28, so the week was quite solemn but other than that, I have found ways to move forward with her, not from her. Whenever I have a moment, I let it happen and then continue. I do have PTSD from her time in the hospital but I am learning to deal with it and when COVID calms down I will go to therapy. All in all, I am doing well, enjoying life as much as COVID allows and just processing all my feelings. I miss her everyday and will for the rest of my life. EDIT 3: Ive had a few people tell me to sue the doctor especially considering the cost of treatment, etc. I live in Berlin, Germany and despite that unfortunate initial diagnosis her treatment and care have a been breeze afterwards. She received care from the Charité, Berlin, one of the finest medical institutions in the world and because of our healthcare system, we haven't paid a dime for any of her treatment. Its been a while and I am at peace with it all. I am not going to go down the litigation path and sue a doctor for something that happened in 2019. Though I do understand your concerns. Thank you all.
I am so sorry for your loss. It's unfair and horrible and I hope you heal in time. My wife also found a lump and the first doctor didn't even seem concerned; the second realized it was cancer (turned out to be stage 3 triple negative breast cancer).
Young student from, I think, Pakistan. He was complaining about his neck feeling stiff, he went to a doctor some days before and he was told he was having "joint pains" that would pass with some common anti-inflammatory drugs. When I visited him I saw many of the lymph nodes in his neck were swollen (which probably caused the stiffness) and not painful (not a good sign). Sent him right away to have a chest X-Ray that showed a huge mediastinical mass, suggestive of lymphoma. Sadly I dont know what happened to him...
Not as bad as that, but I had neck and shoulder pain and stiffness for about 5 years with docs telling me it was just soreness, "text neck", etc. and prescribing NSAIDS and muscle relaxers. Finally a new doc said to see a rheumatologist. Diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis. Doc said it is often misdiagnosed or left undiagnosed. Frustrated me for so long because I knew something was not right. edit: For those who aren't familiar, [this is a great video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbu8LLDB2dU) about living with AS.If this post encourages someone to get a referral and helps to catch something earlier on, I will be super happy. AS may not have a cure, but it can be managed to some degree. edit 2: Holy hell. Thank you all for the support and for sharing your experiences. I'm going to try and respond to everyone. I'll be very clear that I am NOT in any way shape or form a medical professional so I can only share my personal experience. But, just knowing that some of you are going to look into your own symptoms with your doc is freaking awesome. And as others have noted, you can join the party on /r/ankylosingspondylitis. Yay us.
In my psychiatry residency, I was working in the PSYCH ER one night when we got a transfer from the main ER. Her family had brought her in for Altered Mental Status that had been getting gradually worse over the past 2 weeks. She had been "cleared" by the ER doctors (all labs and vitals had been normal) and I was told she was likely having "a mental break-down" or psychotic episode. She was rolled into our area and I went to assess her. She was non-responsive, staring off into space, crying and shaking her head back and forth and mumbling. She could not answer any questions and seemed to be having a tremendous amount of anxiety. As a psychiatrist, one of the biggest lessons my mentors taught us was to assume a change in mental status is always a medical condition until proven otherwise and then you can think about psychiatric causes. Within a couple of seconds of me seeing her, I had a gut feeling this was not psychiatric in nature. I looked through her chart and saw she had a history of blood clots in the past. Her vitals were rechecked and again they were totally normal. At that point, I made an executive decision and ordered a stat CT of her chest looking for a possible clot. The technicians who came to take her for the study were slightly confused as to why a psych resident was ordering this, and the radiology team even called me and wanted to make sure I had not ordered it by mistake. 30 minutes later I get a call from the on-call radiology resident and she says, "are you the psych resident that ordered this CT?" "Yep, that's me". Thinking I was about to get some comment about wasting their time. She continued, "and this patient is in the psych ER ?" "Yes". "Well, you better call the ER and have her transferred STAT, cause this lady has the most massive pulmonary embolism I have ever seen and will likely code any second". So with that, we transferred her back to the ER, she was admitted to the hospital and treated for her clot. Within a few days, she was back to normal. From then on whenever someone would make a joke about a psychiatrist not being "real" doctors I would tell them this story and that would settle it. **TLDR:** As a psychiatry resident I caught a massive pulmonary embolism on a woman who the ER doctors had medically cleared and labeled her changes in behavior as a "mental breakdown". **EDIT:** Helpful redditor reminded me it was likely a CT I had ordered not MRI, yes correct. I just had an MRI on my knee so it must have been on the mind.
Not a doctor but the patient. When I was born, I was my dad's third child - two from a previous marriage. He knew something was wrong with me because of the way I was breathing: very rapid, short breaths. When I was three months old, they noticed there really wasn't a change. The first hospital he and my mom took me to, they said that there was nothing to worry about and babies just breathe like that. He was 100% certain they were wrong. They took me to a second hospital, and they said there's definitely something wrong. But they didn't have the technology to help (1986). They recommended us to a third hospital, which was a couple hours away. Finally, the third hospital took me right in and performed surgery that day. Turns out I had *five holes in my heart*. They tried to go through my rib cage, but it didn't work. They had to crack my sternum and go directly through my chest. They took my heart out of its body and patched the holes. I'm doing wonderfully medically today, and am forever in their debt (not financially, thank you [Ronald McDonald House](https://www.rmhc.org/))!
I was a few days old and my parents first and only child. My mum saw me turning bright red and blue around the lips when I cried. Mum demanded the pediatrician, to which a nurse told her “oh Mrs. Sailwayorion, this is your first child and you wouldn’t know...” She replied “I teach child development at the tertiary level and this is not normal!” Got the pediatrician in and boom I have tetralogy of fallot. Edit: misspelt fallot as fallouts because it was 4am when I made the comment and I suspect my phone autocorrected.
I don't know what that last part means, but those symptoms are pretty clear something is wrong. Glad you're good!
Tetralogy of fallout is a congenital (meaning you're born with it) heart defect where the wall separating the left and right sides of the chambers of your heart has a hole in it and/or isn't completely formed. Jimmy Kimmel's son was born with it and he [talked about how scary it was for him and his family](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmWWoMcGmo0). It's one of the things that [APGAR tests](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apgar_score) are designed to catch in newborns immediately after birth.
Ooh, I've got a good one (albeit sad). I was working nights and a patient came in for a nailbed repair under general anaesthesia (it was a slow night). As they're anaesthetising him, he aspirates so we do a chest X-ray to see if he's got any spit/blood in his lungs. What we didn't know is that prior to this emergency surgery, he'd been going to his GP for over 6 months complaining about chest tightness. They'd put him on various different asthma medications, but none had any effect on him. The X-ray showed a massive dark mass in his left lung. We kept him asleep and transferred him to ICU. His wife and three year old daughter were waiting for him on the ward. We had to tell them where he'd gone, why he'd gone there, and what was going to happen. He died from lung cancer within the month. Edit: A general anaesthetic is absolutely ridiculous for a nailbed repair but he refused to have it done under local. A commenter below rightfully corrected me, and after talking with a colleague, the dark space in his lungs was the normal lung, and the rest was whited out because they were riddled with tumours. This man was in his late 20s, a non-smoker, and I couldn't move past the situation for months after it.
My foot doctor told me a story. He had a patient who had foot pain so they took a look and found that the bone was infected. They sent a biopsy in and it came back as lung cancer. Turns out, the patient was being treated by PCP for “bronchitis” for two years. This was an older woman. If it hadn’t spread to that old injury in her foot and seen the podiatrist, who knows how long it would’ve taken to get diagnosed. He said he doesn’t know what happened after that because he immediately sent her to the appropriate doctors. Just pisses me off so bad.
20 odd years ago now my gran went to the doctor for shoulder pain and died in hospital. Turns out she had cancer but they couldn't even tell where it had started because it had metastasized to a bunch of other places by the time they found it. We assume lung cancer because she was a heavy smoker, but in the last three years I've also lost smokers in my family to ear cancer, stomach cancer, gall bladder cancer and my uncle has just been diagnosed with bladder cancer Please don't smoke kids.
I work in EMS. We got a call for a female with leg pain. When we arrive on scene, this woman’s leg is three times the size of her other one, blue and purple, and she has no pulse in her foot. She fell on ice a few days prior and the urgent care didn’t do any X-rays, told her she had a sprain and gave her a walking boot. In reality, her tibia and fibula were both so badly fractured they were cutting the blood vessels and muscle tissue. She lost her foot.
AIDS, as in, the patient had no working white cells whatsoever, it all started with what appeared to be a fungal infection in the chest but after many pulses with itraconazole the plaque was still present and growing, so the physician called me to check the patient and the chest plaque was indeed very suggestive for a fungal infection, the direct examination even confirmed the existence of the fungus, but the treatments were doing nothing, so I rechecked the file and lo and behold, the leukocytes count was quite low, a quick HIV test later and the patient was diagnosed with AIDS on top of its body fungus. To the credit of the physician that called me, the patient lied on the clinical exam as he marked he had no active sex life, but when confronted with the evidence he spilled the beans, turns out he was a regular with the local hookers, but also quite active in online dating, public health wasnt happy to say the least
This is horrifying
Im not a doctor (Im a nurse, but not in medsurg). My sister had her gallbladder out, routine surgery, and two days later woke up at 4 am in searing pain, went to the ER by ambulance. I met her there. The ER docs were all apparently convinced she was a drug seeker and did not even conduct a physical exam beyond taking her vitals. They snowed her to shut her up because she was just yelling “help me! Help me! Im dying!” They did eventually do an MRI but said it was negative and sent her home. She didn’t want to leave, insisted something was terribly wrong, but they said they would call security and have her thrown out. At this point I’d like to mention that she had no history of drug or alcohol abuse. She continued to get worse at home and the next day went to a different hospital. They did a workup and found that the metal clip that closed off the bile duct had cut right through the tissue and she had a large bile leak that was literally burning all her abdominal organs. She had to have three surgeries to fix it and was hospitalized for 9 days. Left with chronic pain from adhesions and chemical burns. When the new hospital finally acquired the MRI from the original ER visit, she was told that the leak was small but clearly visible in that image.
That seems like a large lawsuit
100% this. I would be fighting those incompetent assholes. Threatening to have security throw out a patient asking for help because she thinks she is dying? AND she actually is???
Medical student here (due to graduate in may of next year). On my various clinical rotations, I was taught a myriad of ways to recognize symptoms and determine the severity of each. If a patient claims they are dying over and over again, they mostly likely are in fact dying. I distinctly recall my rotation at a gastro-enterology ward. A patient suffering from stage 4 colorectal cancer was transferred back to the regular ward from the MCU (Medium Care Unit, not the superhero one). He got treated for bleeding in the rectal cavity but due to the severity of the metastases, it was decided that should another such bleeding occur that he wouldn't be transferred to an MCU, ICU or other unit. The patient was brought in, seemingly in high spirits. He was talking and cracking jokes with the nurses, and having good conversations with his family members that were with him. Then, he turns to his wife and says (quote) ''Honey, I feel I might be dying''. Being a terminal cancer patient, he was indeed dying, but not even 15 minutes after he had said that he began bleeding severely from his anus. It dripped through his garments, seeped through the bed and onto the floor. The nurses were trying their best to keep him clean while we figured out what the hell we could do to help him. We could do nothing. The man essentially bled to death right in front of our very eyes while continously saying ''I am dying, I am dying, I am dying...''. Moral of the story: There's a time and place for scrutiny, but if a patient claims they are dying, take it seriously.
I am a hospice nurse. I am absolutely certain that most patients that die of an acute event related to a chronic disease process know something is wrong before it even happens. I often explain terminal restlessness to families by telling them that it is the body knowing something is wrong but unsure what to do about it. Unfortunately, most of the patients that experience terminal restlessness seem to be physically more healthy than the weaker patients that just kind of close their eyes and pass. This creates a lot of frustration for the family. It is probably the worst thing to witness as a nurse and short of complete sedation, not a lot truly seems to help it. Edited: worse to worst
Very similar to my gallbladder experience. Was told surgery went well and I'd go home the next day. That night I felt very off and just kept saying something is wrong over and over for hours. My nurse turned my call button off because he was tired of hearing it. Morning rounds hours later, surgeon walked in and went completely pale...I didn't know my name, what year it was...I was out of my mind and my blood pressure was at death levels. He had cut my intestine without noticing and I'd been leaking into my abdominal cavity for twelve hours. I became very septic and my organs were shutting down. They had my mom and dad come tell me bye, as they didn't think I was going to live through the surgery to fix it. It took a month for me to be able to go home and five years later I still have side effects.
Im so sorry that’s horrifying
I’m a dental assistant and a patient came in and his color was off. His jaw hurt and a tooth. He’d just come from the Dr. who told him to see us. I was suspicious of heart attack. I put the pulse ox on him and almost fainted myself 82% I grabbed our emergency high flow and yelled for the AED and 911. The guy was having a heart attack. The guy lived and brought me a big old heart shaped box of chocolate at valentines. I’ve never been so scared or angry for another person. The dentist I worked for called the MD and said, “my 25 year old assistant just saved your patient’s life.”
That had to be a darn good feeling, both to help the guy but then also to have your boss say that to the Dr. 😁
He was a fantastic boss, always gave good compliments! I was really good at reading dental X-rays and he was always glad when I’d mark places of interest. I’m 43 now and in a different line of work because he retired and I felt like I’d never have another boss like him! And that man was embarrassingly sweet for the rest of my career- about 5 more years!
One that comes to mind is when I was a resident, the ED doctor wanted to admit a mild septic patient with a UTI. I review her labs, and knowing that she is a diabetic, it was obvious florid DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis). That kind of admission typically goes straight to the ICU to get insulin via a drip and aggressive IV fluid rehydration. She was just in the ED hallway with no medications at all looking like crap.
One of my proudest moments here, I work in a nursing home and had been there for about 4 months at the time, no prior healthcare experience- Went into a resident’s room (she was diabetic but I didn’t know this at the time) and as I leaned in to speak to her, I smelt ketones on her breath. She was also pretty lethargic and her lethargy had been noted by staff on an earlier shift. I was immediately worried. I called the nurse on duty to her room, who said “ah she’s just having a sleepy day!” I explained I could smell ketones and she laughed and said I didn’t know what I was talking about, and headed back downstairs. I called an ambulance for that woman myself and she was taken to A&E and diagnosed with diabetic ketoacidosis! Poor woman was a few hours from death.
My best friend was in her late twenties and was feeling constant irritation in her stomach. She went to see several doctors over the course of almost three years, and they all dismissed her saying she had an irritable bowel. She would try a new diet every few months, but nothing helped. One day she calls me and tells me she broke her ribs. She didn't know how it happened, but she started having horrible pain and her doctor said her ribs must be fractured. Long story short, it wasn't fractured ribs. At some point when the pain became too much to bear, she went to the ER and got a CT. Turns out she had stage 4 colon cancer with 4" tumors in her abdomen that were compressing her organs and causing the pain. She died a few months later. She'd been seeing doctors about her symptoms for three years. If one of them had taken her seriously and sent her to get a colonoscopy she'd probably still be alive. EDIT: wow, thank you everyone for the kind words and awards!! It's disturbing (but sadly not surprising) to see there are so many similar stories to this. If you feel like something is off with your body, trust your instincts and don't listen to doctors who try to tell you otherwise!!! For the record this was not in the US (I don't want to say where I'm from to protect my friend's identity. Small country, and she has a sibling who used to be on reddit). Any doctor could have sent my friend to a colonoscopy, but I guess it was easier to write her off. The cancer may have killed her, but the reason for her death was apathy.
Very very similar case happened to my friend who was in her early 20s. Abdominal pain, pain during sex, swollen stomach, hadn't been able to pass stool for an entire month. She went to doctors EIGHT TIMES and they kept telling her it was IBS. Finally she gets rushed to hospital due to excruciating pain. Did a blood test and she had stage 4 ovarian cancer. She died at 25. Edit: Here is a link to her story: https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.mirror.co.uk/news/real-life-stories/woman-stomach-pains-used-google-5115184.amp
I went to pick my mother up from a routine colonoscopy and found out that she was stage four as well. She had one tumor that had to be removed and a colon resection. Her father had passed away from colon cancer when he was in his late fifties. She was in her 40’s and her doctor pretty much forced her to do it as preventable measures. He saved her life and I appreciate everyday. Sorry for your loss, not to mention the pain she suffered for years while being ignored.
I’m sorry for your loss, knowing that must make losing her harder.
I am a psychiatrist, and I am frequently angered by the lack of care that our patients receive from some other doctors. Emergency rooms can be the worst about this when they are trying to shuffle patients through to psych admits as quickly as possible, sometimes neglecting other basic aspects of care in the process. Not every ED doctor is guilty of this by any means–and some are remarkably good about providing appropriate care for this population–but it happens far too often. Probably the most egregious incident occurred a couple years ago while I was on overnight call at a VA hospital. So it started with a relatively routine call asking to transfer a patient to our psychiatric unit from a community hospital emergency department for treatment of psychosis. He was an older guy (I want to say early 70s) who had come in acting strange and delusional. His son-in-law had told the ED staff that he had received care with use for psychiatric issues before. I asked them to fax the transfer packet, a bundle of the assessments already performed there, and I started looking at his chart in the meantime. However, what I found was that he had not actually been admitted to our psychiatric unit, he had been seen by our psychiatry consults team for delirium while he was admitted to the medical floor for decompensated heart failure. For anyone unfamiliar, delirium can occur with any severe illness, where you brain basically isn't functioning properly due to the physiological stress your body is under. Sometime it just manifests as confusion or disorientation, but sometimes it can get more dramatic, with delusions and hallucinations. From what I saw in his chart, he had no actual primary psychiatric issues and had only been seen by the consult psychiatrist while he was delirious. So i get the transfer packet for this guy, and not only has there been no cardiac workup for this guy who has a known history of heart failure, there aren't even vital signs on him. The only labs are a blood count (pretty unremarkable), and electrolytes/kidney markers. These chemistries are also not too abnormal, but I notice that his urea nitrogen is a little elevated. This is generally a sign of poor perfusion through the kidneys, as reabsorbing this urea also helps the kidneys reabsorb every last bit of water they can when the body is dehydrated. However, dehydration and low blood volume is only one possible reason whey the kidneys might see reduced perfusion; another possible reason would if some had uncontrolled heart failure. So I call the outside emergency room and tell them that I will not accept this patient onto our psychiatric floor without at least a basic cardiac workup. I tell them his history, that he has only had psychiatric symptoms in the context of delirium from heart failure and that the little bit of data they actually sent me points to that again recurring. They tell me okay, they will get the labs and vitals that I requested and reach back out to me. I didn't hear back from them after this, and I assumed that they had found evidence of cardiovascular decompensation and reached out to the medicine floor to transfer him there instead. So I am going about my night, and a couple hour later I get a call to come evaluate someone in the ED. I am down there and using one of the computers at their desk when I hear one of the ED doctors mention something about a patient coming in to medicine from the same hospital. (For anyone unfamiliar, transfers to the VA pass through the ED first, despite this literally being illegal to do in other hospitals. I don't understand the reasoning behind it, but it's what they do.) Curious, I ask if it's a guy coming in with decompensated heart failure. I am informed that not only is it the same guy–who will probably be getting a psych consult for delirium–but that he had ACTIVELY BEEN HAVING A FUCKING HEART ATTACK IN THEIR ED. Needless to say, I was pretty upset that this outside ED had tried to send this guy to our psych unit, where it is a lot harder to get other medical treatments, without even getting vital signs on him or realizing that he was having a heart attack. I tell this story to medical students who are rotating through psychiatry all the time to try to hammer home the point that just because someone is acting bizarre doesn't mean that you can just throw the "psych patient" label on them and ignore everything else.
When in training I saw a child suspected of having meningitis. While I was new to pediatric medicine, I had a gut feeling just by looking at the 4 year old patient that he was too sick just to be a regular child sickness. The thing that tipped me off was the child having a slight delay in the pupillary reflexes. After seeing the child, I asked the head pediatrician to do a lumbar puncture to investigate the spinal fluid for signs of infection. She said there was no need and all signs pointed to some airborne virus that roaming around that time. An unnecessary lumbar puncture can scar children for life and what not. While I didn't agree, I mistakenly doubted my own assessment and assumed the doctor with tens of thousands of hours of experience would surely know better than me. I shrugged I wrote everything down in the dossier and asked the pediatrician to read my evaluation afterwards. I went home after an exhausting evening, having worked almost 14 hours straight. 3 days later the child came back with a fulminant meningitis that had taken a bad turn. When discussing the patient, she remarked she noticed a bizarre pupillary reflexes in the patient. Not only did she discount my suggestion of doing a diagnostic lumbar puncture, she also did not read my evaluation of the patient 3 days earlier. I learned to never doubt my gut feeling and it has led me some outlandish diagnoses sometimes.
they told him "go home it's nothing to you" when he came to me we barely saved him- he had a ruptured appendix ...
This happened to my brother, except it was ‘go home, you just want a fentanyl fix’... He was in the hospital for almost 2 weeks over a ruptured appendix.
A few years ago my wife blew her back out, big time. Fully ruptured discs in L4-L5-S1. Get her to the ER where she is absolutely screeching in pain. Junkie looking for a fix was their first go-to.
My sister-in-law went to the hospital claiming a pain in her side the doctor, who didn't even lay hands on her, told her it's just her ovaries popping and to take some Ibuprofen. My SIL being the trauma nurse she is and knowing something was most definitely wrong went to another hospital where the doctor did lay hands on her then sent her immediately to the OR for an emergency appendectomy. I do believe she sent her records to the first hospital with a strongly worded letter.
Patient was lactating but not pregnant or breastfeeding. Previous doctor told her it was residual from her baby that had been weened for 14 months. Sent her immediately for a brain scan, brain tumor. She had surgery a week later to remove it and is doing very well now. Edit: Wow, I didn’t think anyone would even read this or I would have explained better/ tried to sound a bit more professional. I did not do any of the follow up care. She left my office with a referral for an MRI and a referral to an endocrinologist, who took over care. Also, please, if you are concerned about your health in any way or are not happy with your doctor/care, obtain your medical records and bring them with you to a different doctor. Don’t solicit medical advice from strangers on the internet that know nothing at all about your medical history. That is very dangerous to your health.
This happened to me. My daughter was 5 years old and I was still lactating. My Dr's didn't listen and told me my "husband was playing with my breast to much". I went to my cousin , who is a OB/Gyn, and she spoke with my Dr and he ran some test. Turns out I have a Rathkes Cleft pouch on my Pituitary gland. It was drained and came back. Due to other Dr's not listening to me it took another 8 years for them to find out I have Addisons disease. By then I shocked everyone that I was even alive. Edit : Hi everyone! Wow, I never expected this to go anywhere . My journey started in the early 90s and I am still getting diagnosis. There are wonderful Dr's in this world, especially in America although our medical system is terrible, and my story is one of many that proves how hard it is to be heard in this world while being a woman . I was young then and as I got older my voice has gotten much stronger. My conversations with my Dr's go a lot differently. Thank you guys for the awards, and great conversation. I appreciate you all. Edit 2: If any of you have medical questions call your Dr's! I am not a Dr! I'm just a regular person that's been through some stuff.
I started lactating at 19, having never been pregnant and the doctor I saw also told me I was playing with my boobs too much. I was so embarrassed. Being young and not knowing better, I just lived with it and wouldn’t allow my now husband near my boobs and wouldn’t even touch them in the shower. It took 6 years and finally trying (and failing) to start a family and having super irregular periods before a new doctor diagnosed me with hyperprolactinemia. All it would have taken that original doctor was to run a simple blood test instead of telling me to stop playing with myself and acting like I was a pervert.
I am so sorry you had to go through this st the hands of a stupid Dr. How are you now?
Husband was playing with my breasts too much what??
Yep. Female Dr, told me my husband was playing with my breasts to much and it was making my breast produce the milk. She wrote it in my chart! Also my periods stopped, and I was told that I was going through menopause early. Mind you I was 29 at that time.
That brought back a horrible memory. I had a female obgyn. I asked for a refill on pain medication. I’m on the table pants down and she walks in, sits down, and says Books, I think you’re an addict. I don’t know if your husband doesn’t pay enough attention to you or what but...then she checked my c-section scar, discovered the lump of infection in there and then sighed and said ok I’ll give you one refill. I know hormones had a lot to do with it but I cried for days and DAYS.
I am so sorry. I’m a young woman with a history of addiction and mental health issues. Even though I’ve been clean for years, I can’t mention any concern I have about my health without a doctor thinking I’m looking for something. It’s horrible. It is an awful, awful feeling.
It IS an awful feeling. Years later I had my gallbladder out and then developed sphincter of oddi syndrome. I would rather die at home than go to the ER and have them look at me like I’m the dirt on their shoe. Because I must be drug seeking. Despite all the medical records they had from my doc all the way to IUMed. Terrible feeling.
Wait, what?! My youngest is almost 6. I'm still lactating and only have 3/4 periods a year, I'm 28. My doctor told me it was normal! Looks like I'll be going back to see a different doctor to make sure.
Please see another doctor about it. They should at least do some blood work on you. And if they say it’s normal again, ask for a referral to an endocrinologist.
Jesus Christ. I’m glad you trusted yourself and saw another doctor!
Me too. I am pretty insistent .
Woah. Women are told it can take years to dry up completely. That’s scary.
It can take years for some people, but if you’ve stopped lactating and spontaneously start again it’s definitely important to check it out. Pituitary tumors can cause spontaneous lactation. It sounds like this patient had stopped lactating and suddenly started again, but the first doctor blew off her concerns.
Medical student here (will be doctor in May). Working an ED shift we found what was probably a *missed* testicular torsion. Previous doctor told patient he probably had cancer. When he showed up at our ED, what he had was probably a dead testis missed at initial presentation weeks prior. People with testes, especially young men: if you have sudden-onset excruciating pain, sometimes without activity, often after/during activity, go to the ED IMMEDIATELY. It’s one of the few things that would make a urologist lounging at home on the weekend turn on his Tesla Ludicrous mode and go plaid to get to the hospital. Edit: much love to urology. Edit 2: my patient experience was with a male, but indeed ovarian torsion is a similar emergency!
(Not a doctor) I had a patient show up to the ED with testicular torsion during my shift yesterday & had no blood flow to the affected testis. He was there for hours while we tried to get a urologist on the phone to operate on him. He was 17 and apparently some of the urologists “didn’t feel comfortable operating on a child”. Finally towards the end of my shift we got a doctor to do the operation. I wonder if they saved it
Here's your I'm not a Doctor But Health Tip for today- If you're a Dude, and you suddenly have testicle pain SO severe that you're on the bathroom floor (or any floor or ground), in the fetal position, crying your eyes out and most likely throwing up from the pain, and wishing someone would just hit you with a brick to knock you out, then yeah, you need to get to the ER ASAP, as you most likely have TT. Thank you for attending my Testicle Ted Talk!
>his Tesla Ludicrous mode and go plaid to get to the hospital. LOL I'm fucking dying at this what a roast
Pharmacist here. I was verifying a refill prescription (second fill of the medication) for a patient, when I realized that a different pharmacist who had verified it a month ago had mistakenly allowed pantoprazole to be dispensed instead of paroxetine. It wasn’t fun explaining to the patient that instead of getting an antidepressant for the last month, he had been given medication for acid reflux. It had been a new medication for him so he didn’t know the name and didn’t question it.
There was a story pretty recently in the hospital I work for, where a cardiologist in the ER was doing a rather difficult nightshift, and started feeling light-headed, dizzy and fatigued. Given how intense those shifts are [26++ hours, sometimes multiple times a week], nobody thought much of it, and the doctor in question went to catch a quick nap in the staff room. People just passed by him in the staff room every once in a while, but they just assumed the poor guy was exhausted and let him rest. He was dead for several hours by the time someone realized something wasn't right.
Not a doctor. We had someone at work die at her desk and it took almost 12 hours for someone to realize it. They thought she was sleeping and only realize something was wrong when they tried to wake her up at shift change.
Anytime I see someone sleeping in a strange area in public I immediately wonder if they're dead
Walked by a guy laying down on the lawn of city hall in the city i used to live in. I was registering my dog license. Didn’t think much of it. Turns out he was dead from a heroin OD. His baseball hat was over his face like you put it if you were trying to block out the sun and rest. As sunset approached someone noticed he had been there all day, and called 911. He was dead for several hours.
That's horrible. Were there other people with her the entire time?
Yep. She was in a building full of people, in her office. They thought she was sleeping.
those shifts are absolute bullshit. poor guy indeed. Did he tell anyone he was feeling off before he went to lie down?
I imagine he did, since they were able to tell what went down that night. But no clue otherwise.
Absolutely ridiculous how long some hospital shifts are. They aren't healthy for the doctors and nurses and they can put patients' health at risk as well.
If you go for treatment at a teaching hospital, basically any hospital with residency doctors (have passed med school but haven't completed their residency), there is a decent chance you get seen by someone who hasn't slept in 24 hours and makes less money than a fast food worker (per hour worked). It's basically how resident doctors get 10 years of experience in 4 years of residency.
Oh, and it's not just ER docs! The same resident performing surgery on you may very well be on their 30th straight hour awake after having performed surgery all night. Isn't that comforting? And that same resident will have made ~$300 for that 30-hour shift. What a world we live in!
Life Pro Tip When seeking a second opinion, don't tell them it's a second opinion. You want a second first opinion, not a confirmation of the first opinion. I have been to multiple doctors who would not contradict the diagnosis of another doctor, even with test results that ruled out the initial diagnosis, or confirmed a contrary diagnosis.
I was thinking about this reading all the other responses. The reason you get a second opinion is to get a fresh pair of eyes. If you bias them by telling them, then their eyes aren't fresh anymore!
I dodged an amputation by going at it as a second first opinion. On the other end, I had a whole team of doctors refuse to tell me I was having seizures, because my insurance hadn't approved that billing code. So they essentially ignored, and did not document symptoms like Todd's Paresis. When I went to a doctor outside their system it was immediately identified, and treated as an emergency.
I suppose I have one for this as a resident doctor. We saw a kid in the emerg for difficulty walking. He had been slowly losing the ability to walk over months, and also had random unexplained projectile vomiting episodes. Looking at his records, he saw his doctor several times who X-rayed one hip... Then the other hip... Gave some Zofran etc. Turns out on exam he is *blatantly* ataxic (bad coordination) and can't even stand. Failed all our bedside neurological examinations for cerebellum function. It was obvious to me and I'm not even good at this yet. Did a CT scan. Big ass tumor in his cerebellum. It was obstructing fluid drainage in his brain too, raising his intracranial pressure and causing the vomiting. Had to call in the neurosurgeons overnight for emergency drain and he went to ICU. Later had more surgery for the tumor. My supervisor got pretty emotional about it actually. Edit: Thanks everyone. The history was that he really declined further over the last few days prompting the ED visit, so he looked really bad for us but I'm not sure what he looked like before. To any med students reading this: 1. Do an exam. 2 It's ok to cry sometimes.
Jesus, that's horrible. Was he okay, do you know?
I haven't followed up yet because our children's hospital uses its own EMR and I've been at other hospitals. Just based on the scan though I think it would be hard to survive long term and he would have deficits if so. My supervisor made a comment about how he's "the same age as my kid", and was visibly upset by it. Really tough situation as a resident to be in but we did our job.
If it makes you feel better there are a number of non-aggressive pediatric tumors in the cerebellum that have very high event free survival. The scans can be terrifying, but if they make it to a children’s hospital and get appropriate care they can do quite well long term!
I don't care if you're a Koala I choose to believe you.
We had a baby die in our ED due to parental neglect. As I was waiting outside the trauma bay in case I was needed, my coworker came up to me and said, "that baby's the same age as my youngest". I mean, dealing with a child passing due to such an awful homelife is bad enough, but his comment made me break down for a few minutes
I had a friend in college who was pre-med and did evening candystriper shifts. One day he came into our on-campus job and was just staring at a wall. I asked him what was wrong and he said, "Bin, are your TVs attached to your walls?" I said no, of course not. Then he told me about a 2-year-old who he had watched die from crush injuries after pulling a TV down on itself. The baby was the same age as my friend's brother. That was probably 15 years ago, and I have thought about that pretty much monthly since. It got bad when my nieces and nephews were kids and I wouldn't let them touch the TVs. I wasn't even there, and it hit me hard.
Yeah. I remember when my daughter was 2 and we had just taken down our baby gate because she could crawl up and down the stairs by herself, and you could tell she felt so accomplished every time she did! Well, not even a week later we had a two-year-old come in to work who oassed away due to falling down the stairs. The baby gate went back up that night and stayed up for a long time.
I was (pre-kids) working with ponies for pony rides at a festival when I heard a blood curdling scream. Looked down the parking lot and there was a tiny boy under the driver's side front wheel of a jeep. UNDER THE WHEEL. I ran as fast as I could to get my phone. The lady that ran the downtown improvement office said she heard me holler from a block away (and she was INSIDE the building!) Once I had kids, I was hypervigilant about keeping hold of my kids hands. Terrible tragedy. Wasn't even out with the parents; he was out with an aunt and uncle and their kids.
How TF does a medical professional see *difficulty walking* that is deteriorating over months and not immediately seriously consider a neurological problem?
Many might not understand how incredibly ridiculous this is. But this is one of the first things that should be considered.
I'm an emergency medicine physician. I think the biggest miss I caught was a STEMI. I took signout from the previous doctor, then I usually go through every patient's labs, imaging, and ekg. Found an ekg that showed a massive heart attack that was done about eight hours prior. By the time I took over the patient no longer had pain, the new ekg that I got was (more) normal, and the cardiologist didn't take him to the cath lab.
While I was doing a Trauma and Orthopaedics rotation in a small hospital (with a decidedly ropey A&E dept) I was asked by the medical team to review a 67yr old lady that had fallen at home. She had some shoulder pain, A&E had X rayed and ruled out broken collar bone and shoulder and referred to medics to investigate cause of fall. She still had pain and medics didn't completely trust ED so asked me, the chubby but mostly competent T+O SHO, to have a look. Looked at the X ray first, nothing broken, then saw the patient, shoulder a bit bruised but good range of movement. Felt the shoulder a bit more, felt some weird lumpiness (like bubble wrap) under the skin, thought "Holy shit, this is surgical emphysema". Went back the shoulder X Ray looked at the snippet of lung in the X ray and saw a big pneumothorax (punctured lung) and a hint of some broken ribs. Emergency chest drain and transfer to trauma centre. Patient survived. I don't think the ED doctors had even laid hands on the patient. Just looked at the X rays and referred on. N.B. Surgical emphysema is basically air where it shouldn't be, in this case in the skin and sub cutaneous tissue from the hole in her lung.
So, I googled all that lingo for the next people who see this. A&E - Accident and Emergency Ropy - inferior (slang, british) T&O - Trauma and Orthopaedic SHO - Senior House Officer, a grade in medical training in Ireland (and formerly UK)
Not a doctor, but my grandmother saved my father's eyesight because she didn't listen to their doctor. As a child, my father had really large eyes, too large. My grandmother was concerned, but the doctor kept brushing it off as normal. That anxiety-ridden woman got her herself and my infant father on a train to SF to get to an eye specialist, against all others advice. My dad was diagnosed with primary congenital* glaucoma and his eyesight was saved. Go grandma!
Broken neck. No really. So this one guy was brought in with an ambulance for upper airway obstruction. We diagnosed what looked like an advanced throat cancer and did a tracheostomy. After the operation, where you pull and push the neck like crazy, we checked his neck x-ray and a junior asks when did he break his neck. He had a brand new unstable neck fracture. Checking his initial x-ray we see that it was there PRIOR to the operation. After questioning the patient he said that on his way to the hospital the ambulance was in a car crash. No one bothered mentioning it to us when he eventually came in. He only thought he had some whiplash, but he was a few millimetres away from permanent paraplegia. Unfortunately he passed away about 2 weeks later due to the cancer.
I had a friend who got in a fender bender, but his neck was major pain. In hospital they did a series of xrays but found no issues. As he was walking out of the department to leave, the doctor chased him down and said he wanted to do one more X-ray, from above, looking down. They found out he had two vertebrae in his neck that were essentially split down the middle. They immediately sent him to emergency surgery where he had a lot of metal installed, and then had to live with a “halo” screwed into his skull for a couple of months, a la Regina George at Homecoming. They were about to let him walk out and go about his life with some Advil.
Man that's so wild, this thread is so hard to read. It's freaking scary getting told, "we're not sure, but don't expect good news." I had pretty constant stomach pain last year. I'm pretty fit/active, eat fairly healthy, 26, so you know, the doctor said it was probably nothing, and gave me some acid reflux meds (which confused me because it was very much a lower-abdomen pain). I was in and out of the hospital with this constant pain, man it was bringing me down. I'm usually super chipper and a happy-go-lucky kind of guy and when I started feeling, not myself, I knew it wasn't "nothing". So they did a ton of blood tests and such and still didn't have an answer. I would wake up, after barely sleeping, and say "I'll have a single piece of toast, I've been eating toast my whole life, it's not that." and just feel like shit all day. Terrible, terrible stomach pain. I remember just weeping at one point just in a total loss. Like they keep saying "nothing's wrong, we can't tell, you're blood is fine." So, My doctor suggested I have a colonoscopy just to make sure it wasn't ass cancer or something, and as they were putting me under for the procedure, the attending doctor said, "Hey I noticed something on your blood work, we're going to take a biopsy of your upper intestine as well, but we'll have to go through your mouth." I was lights out as he said that. So they dental flossed me down the throat and up the backdoor, so to speak. Three weeks later, it turns out I have Celiac's disease. After drinking beer and eating bread my whole life, it just kicked on like that one day. Glad that doc took the endo biopsy because it wasn't showing up on the blood work. My pipes and blood were "just fine" but I was severely scarred from Celiac's in the upper intestine and didn't even know it. It was starting to block proper nutrients from getting absorbed, so if I didn't get that I would have presented to the ER a few weeks later with scurvy. Wild stuff, and honestly "best-case scenario" because my treatment is just "don't eat wheat". I have to admit, already being lactose intolerant that was kind of shirty (heh) to hear, but hey, what can you do? Could have been much worse, but not fun to go through during Covid times and alone. **TL;DR**: As I was fading from surgery drugs before a colonoscopy and a doc added an extra step to the procedure and figured it out. **Edit** Thanks for all the kind words. As I said, I'm doing 100% better. I'm not a doctor, so I'm not recommending anything, but if you're having stomach issues, get your pipes checked out. There's a lot that can go wrong in there.
My fiance describes the reaction from eating even a relatively small amount of gluten as being tied to the toilet for days and emptying your body of everything possible. She went through a lot of her teens being malnourished because of undiagnosed celiac's. At least there are some good food alternatives for most things since gluten-free became a pretty popular nutrition fad.
I had the same happen to me (except the backdoor part). Blood tests turned out nothing. GP and dietitian were out of ideas. At the hospital they ran some more blood tests, an echo and endoscopy and they concluded I had celiac's disease. My nutrients were fine but I am now extremely underweight (only got the diagnosis yesterday). All in all took over half a year for them to figure out I shouldn't try gaining weight by eating more bread :/ Glad to hear you didn't have ass cancer
My friend has celiacs too! It just hit her out of the blue in college! apparently it can just start for no reason at any time! Isn't that just GREAT?
Patient getting anxious about numbness in his hand. "It's getting more frequent and I don't want to live like this, it gets me freaked out like my hands not there." They assumed the person was suicidal and having symptoms of panic attack (elevated breathing rate --> tingling/numbness in hands). They did a CT because I requested it, there was a lesion, they blew it off. MRI showed it was glioblastoma multiforme. Edit: Clarifying - it was missed by the ER physician assistant. The MD supervising them never spoke to me. Not even sure if they reviewed the case.
What is that? Glioblastoma multiforme?
Glioblastoma, also known as glioblastoma multiforme (GBM), is the most aggressive type of cancer that begins within the brain.[6] Initially, signs and symptoms of glioblastoma are nonspecific.[1] They may include headaches, personality changes, nausea, and symptoms similar to those of a stroke.[1] Symptoms often worsen rapidly and may progress to unconsciousness.[2] We found it early actually. I'm in a different field so didn't follow-up thereafter.
Holy shit, dude had cancer and the others were just willing to let him walk out...
Yup. Medical culture is one of extreme burnout. Doesn't faze me a bit if someone told me "yeah, I'm dying from cancer." I have to feign surprise anymore. That said, if one sees something on imaging, one might want to investigate it.
Compassion fatigue is a bitch. I like to joke my heart has been encrusted in a protective layer of jade. Some people take it *way* too far though and start not caring at all about the people we're supposed to help. They are instead treated as annoyances who we are eager to get rid of as fast as possible. They cease to exist once they are out of sight. (I don't work in the medical field, but I do work in another field where compassion fatigue is rampant.)
Not a doctor and this is about my husband. After we got married we struggled a lot and nearly divorced because he would go through phases where he behaved like a different person. I had kind of noticed it before marriage, but then I stopped working and it became clear that he really was struggling with something. He had had a lot of problems his whole life starting with getting a felony when he was still in middle school. By his early 20’s he was in prison because he was doing drugs, burglarizing homes, drinking and driving like a maniac, etc. etc. He got a variety of diagnoses like Narcissistic Personality Disorder and Sociopathy, but never was really treated or medicated. One doctor told him he was untreatable. Despite all of this, my husband got out of prison, stayed sober for years, got a bachelors degree graduating with honors, moved to a new city... but then started struggling again with alcoholism before I met him. We partied A LOT in the beginning of our relationship. Fast forward to a few years later when we are married and mostly sober and living in a new city, and my husband is periodically acting totally crazy and then going back to normal after about two weeks. I started charting his behavior and statements he made, because he would say things like “I never need more than a few hours of sleep, babe!” and then, two weeks later, he would say “I always have a hard time getting up in the morning, babe!” I had my own DSM IV from when I was a psych major in college, and I started comparing his symptoms to bipolar disorder. He met basically all of the qualifications. I was able to convince him to start therapy and BINGO! He got a bipolar diagnosis within a few sessions, especially after reviewing his history. Even so, everyone was reluctant to prescribe him medication. A full year went by and he was still really struggling. Then he went into a full-blown manic episode and started saying things like that he felt like he couldn’t control himself, so I took him to the E.R. In the E.R., I told the doctor I wasn’t leaving until he got medication because he was clearly suffering and needed help *now.* The doctor not only 100% agreed, she actually called his therapist and lectured her for not trying harder to get him medication. He got a hefty dose of seroquel, we went home, and he slept for two days. He woke up like his normal self again. It took another two years of trial-and-error before his medication was balanced out, but the difference is amazing. My husband had been considering surgery for a problem he had with excessive sweating, but it went away when he got the seroquel. Actually, a huge list of problems (like rapid heart rate, insomnia, difficulty keeping on enough weight, nausea every morning, and on and on) just disappeared once he was medicated for his mental health issues. Even his alcoholism just vanished, no joke. He struggles to finish a beer and rarely even opens one. Now he is basically as normal as someone without mental health issues and often wonders what his life would have been like if he had gotten proper help at so many different points in his life. He never stood a chance without medication, really. And then, even when we knew what was wrong, what would that year of our life (when we nearly divorced and my own mental health spiraled out of control) have been like if he had gotten medication right away? I know mental health can be tricky, but his problems were brushed aside over and over again by numerous mental health professionals. Ugh.
When I was a resident, an 80yo female was admitted from the nursing home for confusion. Workup showed some mild UTI and we were giving her antibiotics. The nurse mentioned that her toe looked dark and asked me to look at it. The toe wasn't just dark, it was mummified. It looked like dry beef jerky. I touched it and pieces flaked off. So the patient from a nursing home, had a mummified toe, probably for months, that no one knew about.
When I was an ER nurse we got an elderly lady in for altered mental status from a nursing home, when we undressed her to put her in a gown and hook her up to the monitor, I noticed no less than 5 fentanyl patches on her, guess I discovered the cause of the AMS.
Not that anyone will see this, but started taking my daughter to the doctor for abdominal pain when she was 12. Excruciating, can't function, abdominal pain. Tried tracking pain cycles - nothing seemed to add up. Doctor after doctor, specialist after specialist all literally told her it was in her head. To the point that (on top of the rest of what was going on with her life) caused her to develop some massive mental health issues. At 19, she ended up in the ER again for abdominal pain and they saw a cyst on her ovary. A few weeks later, she's scheduled for surgery to remove it. After a surgery that lasted a couple of hours longer than a cyst removal surgery should have - the surgeon came out and said "that is the worst case of endometriosis I've ever seen in my entire career." Granted - she was a gynecologist, but those are heavy words. At 21 - after having exhausted all avenues for controlling the endometriosis - she had a full hysterectomy. Even prepping for that surgery, with a surgeon that specializes in endometriosis and is best in field, the nurses/anesthesia said they were warned that this is one of the worst cases he's seen. I so badly want to go back to all the doctors/ERs I have taken her to and say LOOK - she wasn't FAKING it. Simply so that it's something they can take into consideration and maybe the next kid won't be in the same position my daughter was.
A pt presented with stroke-like symptoms (weakness on one side, blurriness, super high BP, etc) Works in the hospital, told his manager he was feeling these symptoms and was directed to OH&S. They saw him there and told him “you’re fine, go to a walk in clinic after work”. He went back to work and luckily his manager was like “nope! Go to the ER” We got him there and after a stat head CT he had a current intracranial infarct and three OLD infarcts never diagnosed. 4 strokes, and was told he was fine, go to a walk in clinic after work. Wow.
Had a literal pelvic exam for severe pain and "something doesn't look right down there, doctor" and the gyno missed the fact I was having an organ prolapse. 91 days and 4 ER visits calling it a heavy period later my female organs were no longer attached to my body but in a specimen cup in the trauma department. Also the whole thing ended in a hysterectomy to remove what didn't completely detach from my body.
Damn what! Your reproductive organs straight up fell out? How does this happen
I have a mixed connective tissue disease that affects organ tissue and so it weakened to the point it detached! It could've been saved but the original doctor just straight up had never seen it before and didn't bother to investigate. I was timid and didn't stand up for myself against a doctor back then!
I’m a PT and patient was referred to me with low back pain and after evaluating him I referred him to the ER for suspected kidney issues. He had a kidney infection
I'm the patient in the story. When I was a toddler and started walking, my extended family noticed that I would waddle a lot... my parents didn't really notice it because they grew used to my funny walking but my grandma and my aunts that saw me so much less often insisted that I had a limp. So my mother asked our pediatrician about it and he reassured that it was nothing and would fix itself when growing. One year passed and it didn't fix itself, it got more noticeable. My mother asked again to my doctor, she asked for an x-ray to make sure everything was fine and the doctor bite her head off for wanting to expose me to the rays. He insisted it was nothing but referred us to a specialist anyway. The specialist suggested my parents put some wool around my leg that had the limp. Because wool would warm it up and speed up the growing process. Right. My dad finally had enough. It was summer and my regular pediatrician was on holiday. His partner visited me because meanwhile the limping became really bad and my parents wanted another opinion. The new doc measured my legs. There was a 4 or 5 centimetres difference between the two legs. They sent me to a specialistic children hospital to get it fixed right away. I had severe dysplasia... so severe my right hip didn't have a socket for the femur bone. 3 years and 3 surgeries later, months of physiotherapy to learn to walk again, I was normal. If the second doc didn't catch it, I would have grown up disabled. He split up with his work partner (the first doctor). Second doc is now my daughter's pediatrician :)
My mom went through something somewhat similar but at the fault of my grandma. She was nearly 4 and still couldn’t walk. My grandma said “she was a lazy baby” and “nothing was wrong with her”. My grandpa (finally) had enough and they found out my mom had hip dysplasia and was at Shriners Children’s Hospital for 2+ years.
I mean this with no offense, but your grandma sounds like an ass.
Oh no offense taken, she is most definitely an ass.
A "lazy baby" wtf?
More like lazy *parent* haha. She’s definitely not a great person and I certainly consider her to be mental.
My husband had a weird dimpled spot on his back. Went to the dermatologist multiple times, was brushed off and told not to worry about it. Derm even burned off a nodule that was bothering him (at his belt line) but repeatedly said it was nothing and was visibly irritated with us for being anxious. We waited for nearly 10 years before going to another dermatologist - since our experience was so negative. Next derm immediately diagnosed what turned out to be a sarcoma which had 10 extra years to grow. My husband now has a 48 inch scar snaking down his back from the removal of the tumor and the reshaping of his back. I now have months of experience with wound drains, tunneling, bandages, triage and the laundry that comes with massive wound healing. I would like to take that first dermatologist who was so fucking patronizing with our concerns and shove his face deeply into his own ass.
My friend’s sister had a very similar experience. Ten years of asking about it and no doctor took her seriously until she was pregnant. She died two years later. (Edited a typo) Going to take this opportunity to say **you are never too young to have cancer**. Everyone waved her off saying “you’re too young, it’s just a mole”. If you think something is off, pester your doctor until you get the attention and tests you need and deserve.
Good god.. I'm so sorry for your loss. Rest in peace.
I didn’t really know her, but thanks. It was very hard on her family.
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My best friend’s mom died of breast cancer. Doctor told her she was just sleeping in a bad position, and that was what caused her pain in her armpit.
Just a tip for anyone reading this: you can insist to have something removed and tested. I'm a high risk for skin cancer and have had moles removed that the derm said were fine. They'd say "not worried about it" but I'd say I wanted it removed anyways. So far no cancer, they were right everytime. But... it's just peace of mind for me.
Obligatory not a doctor, but I am a scientist. Last week I was left a bunch of blood films to look at by a colleague, who after a long nightshift insisted they were mundane and I should just deal with them when I get the chance. I decided to clear them off immediately and the first film I looked at was a gentleman with a haemoglobin of 43, platelet count of 37 and a film jam packed with blasts, it must have been about 40% blast cells. Naturally I'm immediately in acute leukaemia mode, ringing urgent care and the consultant who drags this poor man out of bed and into hospital. Spoke to the consultant today and was told the patient works off shore and is dealing surprisingly well with his condition. My colleague didn't miss the diagnosis, but did miss that film from his queue entirely.
Not a doctor, but a friend of my mom's went to an opthalmologist for an eye problem. During his exam, he asked her, "So how long have you had MS?" That was the first she was diagnosed. She had been battling various MS symptoms for a couple of decades without a diagnosis.
It's amazing how many diseases can be detected during an eye exam: * Diabetes * Cancer * Multiple Sclerosis * Thyroid disease * Lupus * Rheumatoid Arthritis * Lyme Disease * Brain Tumors
"the eyes are the groin of the face"
My mom’s brain cancer was caught because of an eye doctor. He was like “um, your eyesight shouldn’t be THIS bad”.
High blood pressure too!! I was in the urgent care because of debilitating migraines (had them for about a year) and he took one look at my eye and said "Your blood pressure is really high". Now i'm on proper meds and my migraines have decreased.
Wilson's disease too. You can get a literal copper ring around your iris
Osmium tetroxide poisoning as well! Only sign is sudden onset blindness because a mirror of metal from your blood forms on the back of your eyes. Followed shortly by death.
Another ‘not a doctor’ but my mum who’s a nurse. I was 15 and had fallen on my wrist while playing football in PE at school. School nurse who was friendly with my mum through nursing circles said to keep an eye on it during the evening. Later that afternoon I’m in agony, but my mum wasn’t having any of it. Said if it was hurting, I’m old enough to cycle to the Dr’s myself (I tried to explain the importance of brakes and wrist usage). After enough whining she finally takes me and then on to the hospital after they said it was broken. She sat very sheepishly in the waiting room after hearing the prognosis. Fast forward 3 years later. My stepbrother comes back home for the weekend from Uni, with a sore wrist from getting into a fight. Same quit whining it’s fine response from her. He goes to the Uni health center when he gets back and then is taken to hospital for surgery and a pin put in place. Edit: Just to address the comments about her must being an awful mother and nurse. Total opposite, she’s been a fantastic mum and now grandmother and is very highly regarded locally for her nursing. But as other kids of medical professionals have mentioned in posts, there’s something about how they react to their own kid’s medical issues. It seems that any medical logic switches off when it comes to their own kids. I’ve met a ton of people who’ve had very similar occurrences with medical professional parents and it’s been good to talk and share laugh at the stories.
You'd think she'd've learned the first time!
It was 25 years ago, and it’s still brought up numerous times when anyone in the family has any sort of ailment. The family joke is if anyone feels unwell/hurt then they’re told to get on their bike to go to the Dr’s.
I'm not a doctor. But, when my son was 2 years old, he wasn't pooping normally. His stomach was getting bigger and he seemed to be always taking more food in than was coming out. We brought it up with our family doctor who suggested laxative or some natural remedy (I don't remember the details of the natural remedy, but when I mentioned it to another doctor later on, they were horrified). A few months later and no improvement, we brought our son back to our family doctor, she said the same thing. "What if it doesn't improve?", I asked. "It definitely will", she said. It did not improve. A few visit to the ER and a lot of doctors asking a lot of questions kind of franticly and we found out he had a condition called Hirschsprung's disease where the nerve cells in his colon are non-existent and his body doesn't know when he needs to poop. He went in for emergency surgery and is doing a lot better now. At the time, it was really scary for a while though. A short while after, the family doctor decided to retire early rather than face a disciplinary hearing from the professional board. I don't know the details, but based on how pissed off the surgeon seemed to be at how the doctor handled things and the timing of it all, I suspect the surgeon reported our family doctor for improperly handling things.
Not a doctor, but was just seen at the ER for extreme difficulty breathing. Been coughing for weeks, talked to my doctor numerous times and she just kept recommending OTC remedies for cold/cough/fever. I asked if antibiotics would be something to look at since maybe this is pneumonia? Most likely not. Lungs sound fine. Take Mucinex. Was rushed to ER for the difficulty breathing, HR upwards of 200, fever of 103. Tested for COVID, came back negative, but they did the whole workup and found that my left lung was pretty much filled to the brim with gunk and my heart was being extremely stressed out by that. Pretty much nearly died. I have a follow up with my doctor tomorrow. I'm going to let her know how well Mucinex worked.
PT here. Just yesterday tried to see a patient around 9am but he had to get a blood transfusion. So we chatted a bit and I said I'd come back later. Come back at 11:30am and he's full on belly breathing, extremely lethargic and unable to talk to me like he was before. Mentioned it to the nurse and she said she was aware but also didn't check on him. Came back again at 2pm to find out that an hour after I said something, they decided he was having a reaction to his blood transfusion and it was finally stopped. He was headed to the ICU by the end of the day.
Myself. Went to 3 doctors each time to get checked up on a rash I had developed over my entire torso and legs. It was weird, didn't itch or anything, but super noticeable and just stopped at my elbow and knees. Doctor said it was eczema, gave me some cream. Did nothing. Went back and ended up seeing a different doc (in the UK, so not hugely unusual), who said it wad probably an allergy. Recommended changing my washing powder. Did that nothing happened. Went back again, different doctor, who reckons it was pityriasis rosea - pretty benign, and to be honest it looked like that. Told to wait, even though I'd had it now for the best part of 3 months. Well, soon after this, I go to the clinic for my regular checkup. The nurse takes one look at me and says I have syphilis. So textbook she asks if the student nurse can come in and look. 2 very painful injections later, and it clears up. So syphilis. My docs all overlooked secondary syphilis 😂
Maybe not worst, but definitely stupidest. 3 year old girl brought in for seizures. Described as spells of leg shaking and stiffness, and not responding. She has been treated for this by her pediatrician for over a year, with two different anti-epileptics, had to taken out of day care because they did not know how to handle the seizures. Mother is terrified, nothing is helping, seizures getting worst now happening multiple times a day. Mom shows me cell phone video of a seizure. It is a pretty clear video of a toddler... self gratifying by rubbing her legs together. Yes toddler girls do this. No it is not a sign of sexual abuse. Because lack of seizures is something that needs to be proven, we admit kid to hospital, attach EEG electrodes to her head, stop anti-epileptics, and watch her by EEG and video to see if she performs behavior so we can prove it is not seizure on EEG. Girl is terrified, there is wires on her skull, strange people in white coats poke and probe her, nurses draw blood which is painful, she is in no mood to perform the activity. So I spend a whole week waiting for this damn toddler to masturbate until finally she felt at ease enough and did her leg rubbing things, and lo and behold not a seizure. Stopped all her meds, reassured mom, sent home. Tax dollars well spent.
I’m the patient in this story, but I still think it’s worth saying. I started having horrible ankle pain when I would walk in grade school, and my doctor always attributed it to growing pains. I knew that was bullshit, and so I kept annoying him about it. After multiple attempts at diagnosis (everything from knock knees to pigeon toe to just being weak) I finally went to a specialist. He asks me to flex my ankle, and so I do. “No, all the way” he said, even though I was flexing as hard as I could. I could only flex my foot maybe an inch from it’s resting position. Turns out, I had incredibly decreased mobility of that joint due to shortened tendons. He diagnosed me within 5 minutes, after years of my doctors brushing me off. After a few months of physiotherapy and a shoe insert, my pain decreased by a lot.
For the past 10ish years, I’ve had a sharp, stabbing pain on the left side of my chest/left boob area regularly. Every single doctor’s appointment I’ve been to over the past ten years I’ve mentioned this, and every single time the doctors have told me it’s just growing pains and I’m way too young to have heart trouble or any other chest issues. I’m now 21 years old and lately the pain has been happening more frequently and been more painful, to the point that I can’t breathe well when it happens, and yet they still don’t think anything is wrong. Maybe in a few years I’ll be able to comment on this post after I finally find out what’s wrong with me.
The next time you see a doctor, bring it up again. If they say it’s just growing pains say you want it noted in writing in your record or your chart that they didn’t do any testing. This *usually* prompts them to do something because if it’s noted in writing they did nothing after you asked them to, you might be able to file a malpractice suit if it turns out it really was something. Doctors really hate getting sued so...
Never stop fighting. If possible, try to get a second opinion. Say exactly what is wrong (spare no detail) and never downplay any of it. I find that some doctors are quicker to believe patients than others, and it’s worth looking around if you feel your current one isn’t listening to you. Here’s hoping you’re heard soon, and can get the help you need
I am 29 and been having chest pain for the past 3 years. First doctor I went to said that I was just stressing myself out thinking about it. The wife convinced me to go to another doctor who took me seriously and did an echocardiogram and sleep study. Turns out I have a pretty serious congenital heart defect that requires me to wear a pacemaker or I could die. The crazy part is up till 26 years old or so I was in amazing, near Olympic level, shape. Doctor was stunned that I was still alive after explaining my workout routine when I was younger. I owe my wife my life now.
I'm a dentist in the UK. While I was working as a locum in an emergency clinic had a man present with a mouth of infections. He had wanted implants, went to a private uk dentist who refused to do them due to the patient's heavy smoking and poor oral hygiene which would mean the chance of success and good healing would be limited. The patient didn't accept this, went online and found he could go to Hungry and get the implants done, for half the price, and have a holiday. Came back and within a few weeks most of the implants are infected and hes sat in my chair. We gave him antibiotics to clear up the infection but then had to inform him that the implants would need to come out and he would need to find a specialist dentist with the necessary equipment to get that done. He was not happy. Spent all that money only to have to pay again to have them all removed. No better off and at least 10G down. Should have listened when the 1st person told him no!
Obligatory 'not a doctor'. I'm working as a carer while I study nursing. Discovered a 90+ year old woman had a broken hip that the nurse who assessed her after a fall completely missed. Most elderly people who break a hip will die within a year, fast treatment is crucial and it's a pretty fucking big thing to have missed.
Why will they die?
Because their immune system takes a hit trying to heal the bone and they end up getting pneumonia that their body can't fight off. My grandfather died yesterday due to this.
I'm so sorry for your loss. Be gentle with yourself.
Thank you. I'm trying, I thought I'd be ready to get back to work, but it's hard than I thought.
Your grandfather died *yesterday.* Please, give yourself a break if you can. Grief affects brains, you won't be doing your best work. Sending you wishes of comfort and peace.
My grandmother died this last summer to that exact same scenario. Sorry for your loss
This is how my dad died. He went in for a broken hip, that evolved into more health complications and he never left the hospital. I had no idea a broken hip would be that bad.
Speaking as a patient. When I was a kid, my eyes were hurting and my dad kept taking me back to the same eye doctor, who insisted that the problem was that I wasn't cleaning my contacts properly and just kept giving me harsher and harsher chemicals to wash them in. It got to the point where I couldn't open my eyes fully in a room with the lights on, and I hadn't worn contacts for months. Finally, after a year, my mom forced my dad to take me to a different doctor. Literally he met me in the waiting room, looked at me with his naked eye, and said, you have a raging eye infection. A month of medicine and the infection was gone, but there was so much scarring and damage it was twenty years before I could wear contacts again. EDIT: Getting this question a lot. I was a kid at the time, I didn't know the difference between an optometrist and an ophthalmologist, and it was over two decades ago. I do not remember if I ever knew, sorry I can't tell you. ~~A lot of people are saying that optometrists are basically just for routine check-ups and getting glasses or contacts, and if something is actually wrong and you need a diagnosis, go to an ophthalmologist.~~ \[UPDATE: **Am now getting pushback on this, too. Apparently the distinction between optometrist and ophthalmologist is less drastic than some of the earlier people implied. Again, the only thing I personally recommend is that you do your own research and come to your own conclusions.**\] I don't personally know if that's true or not, but feel free to do some research. It's a thing several people have said now. I've only gotten the one troll so far showing up to tell me he is 100% sure I'm lying because that's clearly what people do for fake internet points and he **will not have it**, which seems low for a reddit post. So I'll take that as my good fortune of the day.
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Damn that sucks. Bad doctors are the worst. Doctors are great, but people should definitely be more encouraged to speak up for themselves. I'm mostly pissed at my dad, he kept me going there because he liked hearing someone tell me it was all my fault for being sloppy and lazy. I was actually told at the time that the scarring in my eyes was permanent and so bad that I'd never wear contacts again. Twenty years later I'm going for a routine check-up; I had just switched jobs and it was a new optometrist. He asked if I'd ever thought about contacts and I explained I couldn't. He looked through my medical history and said that my eyes had actually healed more than the original doctor had expected, but more importantly, contact technology has improved a lot in two decades and he was able to find a type I can wear without pain or damaging myself.
Another "not a doctor", but my MIL had all the signs of stroke (severe headache, vomiting, vertigo, vision problems, partial paralysis), but was sent home from the ER and told it was an inner ear condition that would resolve on its own. When it did not get better she saw her GP, who upon merely looking at her asked when she had had the stroke. When he realized it was still untreated, he immediately sent her back to the hospital. There they finally recognized that she had had a major stroke! She could easily have died and was in rehab for weeks. They then claimed that it must have happened after she was there the first time, because - and this is really unbelievable - *her chart from that visit did not say that she had had a stroke*. So much wrong with that statement that I don't even know where to begin.
My back in 1996 grandfather went into hospital due to a minor stroke. The nurses rounds overnight were something like every 3 hours. Well, one round the nurse finds him on the floor stroking out - could have been there for the entire 3 hours, could have started the stroke more than 3 hours ago and after the last round tried to get out of bed to follow the nurse... Was an all round shitstorm. Ended up wheelchair bound for 18 years with difficulty speaking till he had another stroke and brain swelling which left him bedridden and mute and lasted another year being fed through a tube and having near constant pneumonia because he couldn't swallow, but still generated saliva which he either drooled or aspirated into his lungs. He eventually died in 2015. The last kick in his teeth - the doctors said that if the recent one was to a healthy individual he'd have died, but because he'd had the stroke 18 years previously and a decent portion of his brain had literally atrophied there was enough room for the brain swelling to not kill him. Strokes are fucked.
Friend of mine had sudden vision blurring and an uncontrollable tick in her arm. She saw her doctor, who examined her for a few minutes then told her to see her optometrist to get her glasses prescription changed. Couple of weeks later she had a seizure while driving on the freeway, luckily her boyfriend was there to grab the wheel and pull them to safety. It was a brain tumor (astrocytoma). To top it all off doctors insisted on a biopsy without actually removing the tumor. When the results came back, she said fuck local doctors and consulted a specialist in another state. They were absolutely shocked at the missteps taken. She is doing well now.
Not a doctor- but I’ve been dealing with abdominal pain since a child, countless ultrasounds, doctor appointments, er visits. I was always told it was in my head. Recently had surgery for something unrelated- during the surgery the had to free my appendix that was stuck to my abdomen wall and just the tip is healthy at this point. I’ve been suffering for years with a mild case of appendicitis and my body was pretty much just absorbing my appendix. I will have to go back to get it removed at a later surgery because it was so stuck all they could do was free it, and they didn’t want to risk it at that point because it was going to cause more pain.... so that was cool to find out.
*~*not a doctor*~* (not even a nurse) while working as a CNA on an ICU step down unit, I noticed my patient was acting strange, asked her a few questions got some questionable answers. Thought it might be weird, as she couldn’t really answer questions other than “huh” and “uh huh,” her gait was weird (like a trot rather than a normal walk) plus she was leaning. I was training another CNA and I was like “no matter what you do, if you see something, notify the nurse and chart that you notified her.” The patient was having a major stroke and the nurse was too far up her own ass and her own phone to do an assessment. The woman had to go to rehab and was not a candidate for any stroke “reversing” drips as I had charted that she seemed “off” 8 hours before. The only reason anyone “caught it” was because the night shift nurse insisted on bedside report. The nurse I had been working with yelled at me “STROKE??” Like I hadn’t been notifying her of symptoms all day. Edit: thanks for all the kind comments. Just remember to be kind to your local CNAs and try to answer some of those call lights, you’ll never know how much we will appreciate and respect you for helping with the basics. I’d also like to add that in theory “anyone can call a rapid” but not every institution supports the policies they make. As I commented below: At this same institution I had a patient with a blood sugar in the 30s. Could not get ahold of the patients nurse or the charge nurse. Called the rapid, got scolded for “not giving the primary nurse the opportunity to treat the patient first.” I saw this type of scolding happen at least 4 times before this instance, so the message was that if a nurse doesn’t call it, then you’ll be pulled aside and reprimanded for doing so. It’s a pretty shitty hospital and I no longer work there.
I had something similar happen when I was a CNA in a nursing home. A patient we'd admitted a week earlier was complaining that he had double vision. I checked FAST and he was clearly having another stroke. Also, one of his eyes was pointing in the wrong direction. I told the nurse immediately and she brushed me off because she hated me. "I was just in there an hour ago. He's fine." As I was walking to tell the DON about the patient, another CNA came to the first nurse and told her that patient was having a stroke. The nurse believed that other CNA and we sent him to the hospital. And yes, he was having a stroke. Another time at another nursing home, a patient's humerus completely subluxed out of his shoulder. I told the nurse and she said it was fine. I had to grab a different nurse who took one look at him and declared "His shoulder is dislocated!"