Messed up things a doctor did to you or someone you know? / Bad experiences with doctors

Today I spoke to a coworker who had bad experiences with doctors and was seeking recommendations for a new one, then other coworkers chimed in, and so I decided to ask you guys as well. Well, not for a doctor recommendation, but about your bad experienced with doctors?

I’m gonna spoiler mine, because it makes me very uncomfortable, so perhaps it may make someone else very uncomfortable.

uncomfortableI had a doctor who had no business in it make me show my intimate parts (I’m intersex) and she touched them. She was curious, I guess…? She’s a psychiatrist, so, again, literally 0 business doing so. I already have trauma from regular people who treat me like a circus display, I really had no need for someone with systemic power over me using it like that… No, I didn’t report this. I was a teenager and barely functioning at the time. :/

Wojwo,

Felt depressed, low energy, not putting on muscle despite biking. Family practice doc said let’s test your testosterone. Ok, it was low, very low. He checked my TSH and then prescribed testosterone replacement therapy. I was young and worried about having kids. He said that the T would not affect my sperm count. My wife said he needed to run a few more tests, but he dismissed her A few years later we’re looking at adoption, because surprise, the T made me infertile. We decided to pause the adoption process and my wife went to med school. During which she was vindicated and I went to a proper endocrinologist, who put me on HCG and now we have 3 kids.

usernamesaredifficul,

I kept coming in with early signs of a treatable but very serious condition and they were waved away until it got very bad.

I’m fine now but easily could have died from it

Lamb,

I don’t get why it’s so common. Early treatment is always easier andand yields better results, not to mention patient’s suffering is much, much less.

usernamesaredifficul,

I do many early symptoms look benign on their own and doctors are often overworked because the stupid government wants to destroy universal healthcare to give the whole thing over to some Norman

bigboopballs,

what was the signs / condition?

usernamesaredifficul,

don’t want to say because of privacy. It was a form of cancer

sunbeam60,

Have always been treated fairly well by doctors, but since marrying and getting to know my wife so well that very, very little remains private, it’s very clear to me that doctors (male and female alike) take a special interest in diminishing female problems relating to periods, menopause, child birth, breast feeding, hormones etc.

arabiclearner,

Failing to diagnose properly, if at all

Acting like they are superior in every way

Getting upset if you research stuff yourself beforehand

Telling you that it’s either “stress-related” or “age-related”

Etc. Etc.

Fosheze,

When I first got officially diagnosed with depression the doc prescribed me an antidepressant and when I asked about sideffects he said “noone ever gets any sideffects from this med”. It literally had a black box warning and a CVS recipt of known sideeffects. Also yes there were definitely sideffects. Luckily the pharmacist wasn’t a moron like the doc and actually told me what to expect.

intensely_human,

My psychiatrists told me for well over a decade that they reason it takes antidepressants a couple weeks to start working is they need to build up in the blood.

Later research showed that antidepressants work through neurogenesis, same way as exercise. The thing that takes two weeks is the proliferation of new and differentiated cells eventually leading to new emotional states.

This whole “build up in the blood” thing never made any sense. If you ingest MDMA or alcohol it doesn’t need time to build up in the blood. The timeframe for an ingested chemical to reach peak volumes in the blood is about 30-60 minutes.

This story never made sense, yet it was accepted and parroted by doctors everywhere.

Fosheze,

This depends on the antidepressant. Most modern antidepressants have a relatively short half-life in the body. For example the one I’m on now has a half-life of about 10 hours. However one of the first SSRIs and the still most frequently prescribed one, Fluoxetine, has a half life of 4 days for the medication itself and its metabolite has a half-life of up to 10 days. So that one does literally take weeks to fully build up in the blood and that’s probably why doctors use that line.

Regardless, even with the shorter half-life drugs it does take a couple of weeks for your brain to adjust to the altered neurotransmitter levels. So even if it’s not technically “waiting for it to build up in the blood”, the result is the same and it’s an easily understandable explanation for doctors to use even if it’s not technically correct.

stolid_agnostic,

Doctors will absolutely gaslight your symptoms with anything that affects your brain. They don’t care that you can’t sleep or eat or have sex or experience emotions, it’s all about throwing pills at the problem until one seems to work a little bit and doesn’t make your life shit. I’ve never met a psychiatrist capable of basic human empathy.

Fosheze, (edited )

There are a lot of really shitty doctors out there that do shit like that but there are still decent ones too. Luckily the one in my initial post wasn’t my primary care doc. I couldn’t get in to see my normal doc at the time so I just got Dr. Dumbass instead.

My primary care doc is actually great with dealing with my depression despite it not being his area of expertise. I’d love to get in to see a psych and therapist but they’re all so booked up my doctor can’t even get me on a waiting list so he just does the best he can on his own. He literally called up that department while I was in the office with him and they basically gave him a flat no and then hung up on him. Durring one of my initial appointments he just straight up told me that mental health isn’t an area he knows much about but as time went on it became clear that he was putting in a ton of effort to actually educate himself. Now whenever I’m having an issue related to my depression or medications sideeffects he can quickly come up with multiple potential solutions discuss the pros and cons of each one with me and ask which one I want to try. Needless to say I will be keeping this doctor even if it means I need to lock him in my basement.

stolid_agnostic,

amazing!

calypsopub,

I’ve been lucky with having good doctors, but my best friend OTOH … I took her to an ER because she had severe back pain for no reason. She’s diabetic, and I noticed one of her toes looked black. I pointed this out to the doctor, who dismissed it. She said my friend just needed some pain killers for strained muscles. As we were sitting in a drivethru waiting to pick up the prescription, my friend was getting worse, so I took her to a different ER. They said she was just constipated and gave her some laxatives. Two days later she is screaming in pain, can barely move, and is shitting herself from the laxatives. We take her to a third hospital ER and insist she be admitted. She lay in a hospital bed for days with no diagnosis. Finally when she fell and they realized her legs were paralyzed, they did an MRI and found she was nearly dead of sepsis and had three abscesses along her spine.

They put her on strong IV antibiotics and did surgery to clean the abscesses – telling her she only had a 20% chance of surviving the surgery and would probably never walk again. Four months later, after learning to walk again, she finally went home. She still has chronic back pain and adhesions from the surgery.

All from an infected toe that doctors couldn’t be bothered to check out.

ClarissaDarling,

A woman I know, younger than 30, received the “husband stitch” after giving birth. She does not trust medical professionals, and I don’t blame her.

Lamb,

It’s fucked up and people who do it should lose the ability to work with medical patients and other vulnerable people for life. :/

intensely_human,

The what?

stolid_agnostic,

An unnecessary suture placed in to make the vaginal opening tighter, ostensibly because this will feel good for their partner. It is an extra medical procedure that serves no purpose and can actually cause problems and pain for the woman later.

Sometimes birth causes tearing and doctors are ready to do some quick suturing right after. In this case, the person is saying that a doctor just went ahead and did this thing under the guise of cleaning things up but without asking about it first. This is medical assault.

intensely_human,

That’s fucked up

stolid_agnostic,

Anyone with a condition like HIV or cancer will tell you that every ailment you ever report is totes obvs related to that condition and not, you know, a freestanding one that needs its own treatment.

Mothra,
@Mothra@mander.xyz avatar

After a minor gynecologic surgical procedure I was feeling really anxious and could barely feel anything since the local anaesthetic was still in effect. The doctor left the room, and the nurse (a woman past her 50s) said I peed myself and that I should be careful when leaving since it was likely to happen again. It was all a lie, as I later realised. When I was able to check myself and saw I was perfectly fine and dry, I understood what that fleeting moment of glee on her face was all about.

Bitch Nurse I hope you die of chronic incontinence if any such thing exists.

Lamb,

Holy fuck. Why are so many nurses so vile? I had nurses cover me in a pile of extremely warm blankets in a room heated to the highest temperature to a point where it felt like I was having a stroke and were ignoring me telling them how much the temperature hurt. Or nurses leaving in clearly wrongly put in venflons with 0 things scheduled for injections, leaving me in pain, unable to use an arm. I developed a severe phobia of venflons thanks to this. :/

Mothra,
@Mothra@mander.xyz avatar

I don’t know… Sorry about your experience. Fortunately in my case every other nurse I’ve dealt with was actually okay.

stolid_agnostic,

Nurse can be the female version of asshole cop.

LemmyKnowsBest, (edited )

That time in the year 2000 I had gotten extremely ill and I had never felt such peculiar horrific illness in my life, it was like a flu but worse and weirder and I felt like I was going to die because I couldn’t eat I couldn’t stand up, (I’m normally an extremely healthy active person), this went on for a couple weeks and I lived alone which made it impossible to see a doctor because I couldn’t drive myself in that condition,

but thankfully I had a spiritually intuitive friend who had a feeling she should call me and thankfully she did and she arranged for one of her friends to drive me to the hospital.

So I saw my primary care physician and he was very dismissive of me. When he came into the room he saw me laying on the crackly paper bed and he insultingly thought I was faking sick and trying to get out of work, and told me to sit up. He mockingly said “oh you’re not feeeeling well?” He troubled himself to run a throat culture on me then sent me home. I was not feeling well enough to go back home and die alone.

The next day my same friend arranged to come pick me up and take me to the emergency room where they admitted me into the hospital.

I was hospitalized for 2 weeks apparently I had cytomegalovirus, and they ran all kinds of tests on me including general anesthesia for throat probe down to my intestines, an eye exam for some reason, but mostly those two weeks were a complete blur to me, I mostly slept all the time.

The husband and son of my friend came to pick me up from the hospital when it was all over, and I was recuperating at home for another week before returning to work, when I got a phone call from my original primary care physician and he said “You know what, your throat culture came back looking a little unusual.”

I’m like

“No shit! I was just hospitalized nearly dead for 2 weeks. Now you’re calling me a month later telling me my throat culture was slightly abnormal? If I’d waited here all that time for your phone call, I wouldn’t have answered the phone because I would’ve been dead. Thanks for nothing.”

I didn’t actually say all those things to them, we don’t think of how to respond to such things until years later.

Lamb,

I’m so sorry. Bless the person who saved your life. And bless doctors and nurses who treat patients well. A faking patient will show up on tests. A denied non-true patient may die or suffer life-long consequences. There is 0 reason to deny people medical care.

stolid_agnostic,

If it helps, the doctor had actually reviewed your entire chart before calling you. He already knew he was an idiot, but whether he had the emotional maturity to understand it is a different question.

son_named_bort,

I had an issue where food would get stuck while eating. It wasn’t chocking, as I was still able to breathe. It was more like the food would slowly make its way to my stomach and sometimes it would come back up. I told my doctor at the time, but he dismissed it as me eating too fast. So I tried to eat slower and just dealt with it. Several years pass and I got married and moved away and thus ended up with a new doctor. My wife asked me to ask the new doctor about my condition, and I told her that he would probably dismiss it, which is what ended up happening. That doctor ended up leaving the practice (which I wasn’t too upset about) and I ended up with a new doctor. The new doctor seemed more receptive to what I had to say, but I was reluctant to tell her about it since I’ve had two doctors dismiss me already. My wife again asked me to ask the new doctor about it, and this time I was taken seriously. The doctor set me up with a specialist and I had a procedure done that pretty much fixed my problem and now I can eat without having my food get stuck.

Lamb,

Happy that you got the problem sorted out eventually! Livid the doctor denied you the help you needed. :(

Lifecoach5000,

Was it getting stuck in your esophagus? If so, I have a similar condition. I have to make sure I chew my food into a fine paste before I swallow.

DudeDudenson,

Sounds like you’ll never have trouble losing weight

Lifecoach5000,

It sucks. If I get a dense piece of food lodged in there, I can’t get any fluids down and will start to just regurgitate anything I drink or eat. It feels like the worst heartburn in the world mixed with nausea until it gets dislodged.

vivadanang,

sounds like a hiatal hernia - my dad suffered with the same thing for years.

DudeDudenson, (edited )

I know, it was a joke

Lifecoach5000,

I did still laugh lol. Sorry I took the serious turn there

son_named_bort,

That’s what was happening. It didn’t happen all the time, but it was still annoying when it happened. Certain foods seemed to be worse than others. The procedure I had basically widen the esophagus, making it easier for the food to go down.

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Your story is quite something. Can’t beat that.

For mine:
I suspect my orthodontist messed up my jaw as my bite is now skewed to one side (left is deeper than right).
Reason for why: I got removable braces (was/am afraid of glued braces in regards to feeling and social stigma) and they had a bridge in the back. Since the resting position of the tongue is around where the the metal wire bridge was it cut into the sides and I probably compensated by lowering my tongue position.
If I swallow the accumulated saliva I’d push the tip of my tongue against my front teeth and by that pushing apart the gap between my jaw rows.
The orthodontist obviously denied it but I am still thinking about that. and it would all add up…

intensely_human,

Please consider going to a rolfer with this jaw situation.

These kinds of “I did X action for a long time then my body reconfigured its shape” scenarios happen and the mechanism is myofascial tension.

A rolfer is trained on how to achieve that new alignment. It’s like myofascial release plus a layer of theory about how to sequence the release to ensure patterns don’t come back.

Usually runs about $150 a session.

OutlierBlue, (edited )

Rolfing is pseudoscience. Do not visit anyone who makes claims like this.

www.skepdic.com/rolfing.html

Appoxo,
@Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com avatar

Already did training with a speech therapie specialist for the tongue resting position. Nothing major beyond a cracking jaw if I open it too much /shrug.

DrQuint,

My senses are telling me to stay quiet on this one.

apotheotic,

I am curious, why?

DrQuint,

Joke about my name have the “Dr” title

apotheotic,

Ah, me dumb. Thanks

GrayBackgroundMusic,

I was having some unusual medical issues and went to a doctor recommended by a friend. They seemed OK. I researched their treatment and it seemed OK. After a while I was having severe side effects and decided to find a more main stream doctor, a proper endocrinologist.

They were appalled at the dosage from the previous doctor. I had been started on 2x the maximum dose! Usually people start at 0.5x the dose and step up if it’s not enough.

That went fine for a bit, but I was having some discomfort administering the medicine and asked my GP. He lost his temper (not at me). The previous 2 doctors had gone straight to the simplest but most side effects solution. He explained that there are 5 different treatments for my condition! I was suffering thru unnecessary side effects because the previous doctors hadn’t even discussed these other solutions with me. I wasn’t aware of them at all.

So pissed.

neshura,
@neshura@bookwormstory.social avatar

Doctors can be so incredibly hit or miss and the worst part is there is no good way to check the reputation of a doc beforehand.

1993_toyota_camry,
@1993_toyota_camry@beehaw.org avatar

There are sites like ratemds.com, depending on your area.

But like most internet reviews, people tend to only post negative experiences or astroturfing.

michaelrose,

It’s deeply weird that it rates Staff Punctuality Helpfulness Knowledge and then averages them. Kinda funny that if Dr Ned had a nice nurse he would probably rate higher than House.

Nefara,

I had a baby last year, and while I was lucky to have an uncomplicated and smooth birth, my experience with lactation was hellish. I had no frame of reference to be able to anticipate how painful breast feeding could be, and my discomfort and suffering were constantly dismissed and downplayed by every nurse I encountered. They basically played it off as “oh you’re just not used to it” and told me my baby’s latch was fine so I must be fine. One nurse even squeezed my (extremely sore and sensitive) breast while attempting to show me how to feed my baby. I tried telling them the breast pump machines hurt me even on the lowest setting and they just waved me off with a “well it’s gotta be done” attitude. When my milk finally did come in it was literally the worst pain I’ve ever experienced. I woke my husband up with a wailing howl of anguish that made him think the baby had died. When I called the women’s health line, trying to explain what I was going through in between gasps and choking back tears they said they couldn’t help me but they’d have someone call me back. No one did. I ended up spending the night hyperventilating and in tears trying to massage myself while my husband tried to soothe me.

In every other respect my baby and I got exemplary care. I just got the impression that my experience with having so much pain must be rare, and because of that they figured it couldn’t happen or I was just making shit up. I certainly had no idea it could hurt, it wasn’t even on my radar of things to be worried about, but turned out to be the worst part of having a baby. I did make an effort to make myself heard, and made some complaints at follow up appointments, but who knows if they took it seriously.

Lamb,

Even if your suffering is rare and they didn’t know how to help you, the least they could do was acknowledging your pain and offering mental comfort instead of dismissing it. Thank you for speaking up about it. Hopefully this can stay at the back of people’s heads so if they encounter someone with your problem, they may seek solutions or at least comfort the person.

Nefara,

Thanks. It really felt like every time I tried to speak up about it the response was as if they weren’t hearing me at all. No one seemed concerned or even really acknowledged what I was saying. It would have gone a long way for someone to say “wow that sucks” and at least make some show of trying to find something to do about it, even if it did end up as something I had to just “tough it out” with. They were so good about other aspects of the experience that it really threw me that no one took it seriously.

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