Had wrist pains and sometimes my hand sort of locked (extremely painfully initially, but I got used to the shock) for a few minutes when I did a specific movement with my neck. Doctor told me " * shrug * just live with it. Neck and wrist pains come with the office job if you're not careful" So I did, for a year-ish. Then someone close to me got diagnosed with "your spinal discs pressure your spine and nerve system from the neck down and you might get paralysis", with similar symptoms to what I had. I just received better health care so said fuck it, got an MRI even though my doctor was sceptical, sent it to my friend's doctor and he said "I usually book surgeries by urgency... I can make time for you next week" (the wait time for my friend was 2 month)

What a sly way of saying “dear god you are *fucked up*”

Yeah.... yeah.... That also came after like 20 minutes of nerve wracking small talk about A.I and stuff, since the surgeon was interested in it, and I have some knowledge, and felt it would be rude to interrupt the flow of the talk, so after 20 minutes the surgeon threw the conversation into a brick wall. But I did make full recovery, and now I just advise people that if they have a neck pain or numbness in their hands, just get an MRI because doctors won't indugle this (admittedly rare) issue, and worst case scenario you waste some money and time

How can I go getting tests done without a referral? Doc offices love to give me a hard time on that

I just asked for a neck MRI, but you can also do a nerve test for your hands (I think EMG or something like that) Edit: Obviously don't take this as gospel or medical advice, this is purely anecdotal, but because the actual bone issue is a neck issue then other MRIs usually don't matter, and you could do nervous system tests to check if there is nerve damage if you need to still justify an MRI

It's basically a nerve conduction test and yes if u feel tingly arms or back or feet get this checked out. Also watch out for carpal tunnel if u have a desk job.

The advice I have heard about getting doctors to order tests is that you should tell them “can you please document that I asked for this test and why you declined?” I have no idea how well that works though.

I’m chronically ill & we tend to do this a lot (because why would doctors listen to us), so I have a guess. You’re letting them know that you want a record of their medical negligence. You’re also letting them know that you know what evidence/records you need in order to sue them for it. I think of it as a veiled legal threat, “Okay, if you deny me, just make sure that it’s possible for me to sue you if it turns out you’re wrong.” I think they’d usually rather just cover their own ass.

I might be wrong, but I think it’s because it falls back on them specifically if you do end up having something horribly wrong with you, and that would be a potential malpractice and/or professional record issue. It might not ruin their career, but it could ruin a potential promotion. I have heard somebody else say this with no evidence, but it makes sense which is why I’m saying it now, I am not in the medical field

The easiest thing to order for yourself (in the US at least) is a blood test - you can generally just order it online via LabCorp or Quest (though it is a little expensive and won’t usually be covered by insurance without a doctor’s order). Scans are a little harder, but I’ve found that a) specialists are more likely to order them than GPs and b) a facility that only does scans/imaging (as opposed to one that’s part of a doctor’s office or a larger health system) is more likely to let you order a test on your own

I have a friend who was only recently diagnosed with POTS, a really rare neurological disorder, and she's referred to herself as a polkadotted zebra because of an expression doctors use when they graduate. There's a tendency to want to diagnose patients with all these crazy diseases and disorders that you learn about, but 99% of your patients are just dealing with "normal" issues. So "when you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." It took her ages and ages of self advocacy before she finally found a doctor who recognized all the crazy conflicting symptoms as POTS and a whole alphabet soup of other diagnosises and started working through a treatment plan. And even then when visiting other doctors they STILL have a hard time believing she has the problems that she does. It's a weird confluence of issues all coming together. There's absolutely cases of bias coloring doctor's decisions but there's also a degree of skepticism that goes with it to try and make sure you don't misdiagnose someone, especially if the treatment plan for that is expensive.

Was it spinal/femoral stenosis?

Im not sure about exact medical names, but I wrote a different comment about the whole procedure

Hank Green has a bit about this in his standup special about his cancer and it really sums up the sensation of dealing with shit in our system, the fact that it's frightening if you get to the point where our healthcare system actually starts working because that only happens when things are really bad.

I'm reminded of hank green's reaction to when he was diagnosed with cancer. He had a done a handful of initial tests and was back in the doc's office or something. The person looking at his file and telling him where to go pulled up his file and suddenly got wide eyed and said something like "oh, don't sit down in the waiting room. We need to get some stuff done *now*." And his reaction to this was something like "you know...it's really uh...*disconcerting* when the american healthcare system suddenly pulls out all the stops and starts working quickly, just for you."

I went to the ER because ai was having a headache with partial facial tingling and numbness. Man - they didn't even make me so *paperwork* before they wheeled me away for a CT scan, blood tests, all kinds of stuff. It turned out I wasn't having a stroke, but we never did figure out what it was, either. And the whole time I was terrified of what kind of hole each test was going to put in my bank account, *and I have insurance*. But yeah, they can be real efficient if they think you're actively dying

Did they rule out migraines? I get them and have a really atypical presentation where my face gets numb and tingly and feels like it’s swelling up sometimes, in addition to sound sensitivity. I don’t get light sensitivity all that often.

Oh I've had several different versions of this. I've had 3 times a doctor go do rounds and get other doctors to see how fucked up i am. I have always found it funny. Deadass once had a doc call 1 of his students snd and tell him to get to the hospital asap as i had a very unique circumstance that the student was studying. Very cool.you learn alot when you're speshal

> “dear god you are fucked up” A friend of mine was in the doctor's office for a physical. The doctor told him to call his wife and tell her to meet him at the hospital; the ambulance was already en route to pick him up. The doc was _not_ happy with the sounds his heart was making. _Note_: This was before off-the-shelf defibs where the doctor's office would likely have one now.

That's so scary, especially the part about him calling his wife. Sounds like he was treated in time?

A black former colleague of mine went to get his spine scanned at a fancy private clinic via our work insurance after feeling a lump and also intense pain. Heard nothing back. Eventually he collapsed, got rushed to hospital, where it turned out he had a tumor on his spine and the first hospital *hadn't even looked at his scans* because they didn't believe him when he said he was in pain.

Wow... that is messed up... the only thing I had going for me is that I was really stressed about the whole thing, so it didn't leave my mind once I did the scan and me and my parents constantly called the clinic every day until I got the results.

> "I usually book surgeries by urgency... I can make time for you next week" Reminds me of my friend who went to get checked out after messing up his ankle but he wasn't sure how bad (He ruptured his Achilles) doctor told him how bad by saying his surgery was scheduled for the morning and to come back in 8 hours.

Wow, if you don’t mind me asking, what sort of a surgery can they do for that?? I’m very interested in health so I really appreciate your story!

So Im not sure the direct translation to English, but I filed insurance claim for "Spinal disk replacement", where they "simply" go through the front/throat area (less nerves and blood vessels than going from the back), push things aside to get to the spine, (this is the technical explanation I got) "pop out the problem disks" and put a thingy for the bone to grow over. Also they constantly have you under x-ray to properly see everything, and they have your hands and legs hooked to a low electric current to make sure they don't fuck up your nervous system by accident. The entire thing is obviously under full anesthesia, takes about 3 hours from the moment you book into the surgery until they wheel you out, and you lose about a spoon of blood total (they take more blood for blood tests, very precise and high tech surgery) It was all a year ago and now I have a nice red scar still on my neck, right above the shirt neckline

I had a miscarriage 2 months ago. I’m still having pain. I finally got my ultrasound results back after 2 weeks and the doctor was like “well, your cyst looks like it did last time we checked it, but you’re welcome to get another ultrasound in 6 months to check it again.” So I reminded him we weren’t checking on my cyst, we were trying to find the cause of the excruciating pain I’ve been in for longer than I was pregnant in the first place. There was a bit of silence on the phone and then he just goes “huh. That is weird. Do you want to schedule that follow up ultrasound for 6 months?”

That’s terrible. I’ve been on the ultrasound roundabout- don’t know what’s wrong with you? Why don’t you wait a few months and have another ultrasound, even though you’ve already had three and nothing was picked up?

Go to a different doctor, we had to get an abortion procedure when my wife miscarried in another pregnancy.

"Doctor, with all due respect, I trust the burger flippers at McDonald's to give me what I ask for, not what they feel like I should get. Is there some reason I should trust you to do your job properly I should be aware of?"

Maybe there's some residual tissue or something left over from the miscarriage? I'd suggest getting a second opinion anyway, preferably from a female doctor. They tend to take these things more seriously

I'm sorry for your loss. My last two ultrasounds showed a cyst as big my ovary, basically wearing it like a skin suit. No one brought it up. I was like "um.... can we... are we like gonna mention that thing? Seems a bit concerning."

Yes! The first time it was found, the ER doctor was like “well, it’s massive. If you start bleeding one day and you think you’re bleeding out, it probably just ruptured and you’ll be fine.” My husband was APPALLED at the response. Don’t even get me started on the very casual mention of me being “riddled with kidney stones” and then also choosing to ignore/not treat them

And then what did you say?

Called my PCP and my OB/GYNO oncologist. Waiting on appointments with both of them. The original OB that was handling the miscarriage finally said he’d order a urinalysis and an xray, but I feel pretty defeated tbh. Kind of like he’s just rolling his eyes and ordering random tests to shut me up

I hate this for you. I’m sorry. Don’t give up until you’re taken seriously.

Once went to a doctor after coughing up ludicrous amounts of blood, having brown urine, and having horrible muscular pain after walking around campus all day. (Blood that was clearly in my lungs,to the point where you can hear it in my chest.) The guy checks me with a stethoscope, asks if I've had a nosebleed recently. I respond with : "Maybe, I think I have? I'm not sure" and he sends me home with no testing or anything. I have vasculitis. If I hadn't gotten a second opinion I would be dead. Fuck that guy.

My old home town doc (the only quack in town) would just write prescriptions for steroids like candy to my friend's mother, and diagnosed my smoked-a-pack-a-day-of-cigarettes-since-12 great-uncle that he just had a really bad cold for over a year. Just reminds me of the an old joke. "What do you a med student that got straight C's in college? Doctor."

Lotta truth in that saying. At the med school that adjoined my old grad school, the saying was “P’s get degrees” after they switched to a simple pass/fail system. The bulk of the med students also mocked the extra studious ones for wanting to know their shit and do well, so that may well be one root of the problem.

Anyone who’s actually been to med school knows there’s zero chance the people who do well actually get mocked. There may be comments, but they’re born from fear/jealousy. Everyone in med school is terrified of not doing well enough to get into their desired specialty/residency program, and when we see others succeed it’s unsettling that we may be going up against them when it comes time to apply for residency. Almost every single doc has gone through their training trying their absolute best, and most of us were at least a little scared our best might not be good enough. These stories are “everywhere” because there are indeed outliers, but the millions of people coming to see us everyday who are well taken care of aren’t going to social media to complain or clout chase.

Totally agree that the comments come from a place of insecurity. The whole derisive “gunner” comments towards the students who try to get ahead of their studying probably fall more in the collegiate roasting category, so I see your point for sure. You’re definitely spot on about the prevalence of these claims, as there surely are thoughtful doctors that do their best to hear patients and treat them accordingly. That said, there are many doctors focused on just churning patients through with only the application of topical diagnostics, if any are ordered at all, which is what the post was attempting to highlight.

My mother has experienced fatigue problems since she was in her twenties (that I seem to have inherited so there's likely a genetic/environmental factor at work here) and her current doctor is trying to write it off as menopause. Lol. Lmao, even.

Have you been tested for fibromyalgia? Shot in the dark, but that’s what one of my bosses had and chronic fatigue was a big one of her symptoms

Yeah fibromyalgia is the ultimate "it's probably because you're a woman" disease. You can come to a doctor with a laundry list of clinical symptoms that simply have no mundane explanation and line up perfectly with fibro, and they'll just say "yeah, I get it, periods are hard. You can go home now."

Oh god yeah, both me and my fiance have fibro. Her doctors didn’t diagnose her it for over a decade because of bullshit reasons, while i’ve given up on it because they clearly think i’m trying to score drugs. Both my parents have been diagnosed and I have all their symptoms, thats all I need to know, so I don’t bother with doctors on the subject anymore

> they clearly think i’m trying to score drugs. hate doctors like this yes idiot i am trying to score drugs because I HAVE A MEDICAL CONDITION THAT IS TREATED WITH DRUGS

Ugh, even to the point where some people (and even some *doctors*!) treat fibro as the “hysterical woman disease”. Like they just diagnosed you because you wouldn’t shut up and leave them alone, so they wrote “fibromyalgia” on the form to get you out the door. Had a coworker a few years back that even refused to believe men can (and are) diagnosed with it pretty regularly.

Feels like one of those things that you can't get diagnosed with unless you're a quote unquote attention seeker I've been in pain for a while but I ignore it because it's manageable. Like doesn't everyone wake up in pain with their arms and legs going numb? Edit because yeah that me in the morning

I've realized very recently that I almost definitely have fibro - the symptoms fit me exactly and explain a few different issues that I have - and I'm not looking forward to the battle ahead of me to get it diagnosed. I really need better pain management though, I'm not functional right now.

Tylenol tends to work best for it for taking the edge off, and if you have access to and are okay with thc gummies they help a lot with sleeping. You’ll also slowly realize that a lot of weird things your body does is actually just the fibro, it can cause visual symptoms, sensation of needing to pee but barely any comes out, light sensitivity, dry mouth, and even tinnitus. I hope it’s not a battle and they just take care of you, I wouldn’t wish this on anybody

My mum got a diagnosis for this this year after a lot of ummm and ahh about it. She also got the “it’s probably menstrual” as someone who’s post menopausal It took a decent amount of time to find someone who took her seriously and now she has pain management help but it as frustrating to hear about let alone try and navigate

It’s the worst, it’s either “its because you’re a woman” or “you’re looking for drugs” our health infrastructure is a joke

Unfortunately we've ruled out rheumatological problems at this point :/ the general tested pinged something (which we now think was a false positive) and the pet theory at the time was lupus (family history + the butterfly rash), so the doc ordered more specific tests. Lupus testing comes back negative and she tells me that my pain problems are most likely mechanical in nature, not rheumatic, and that the fatigue was stress-induced (in her defense, I was under clinically unhealthy amounts of stress at the time so that wasn't an unreasonable statement). Neither my mother nor I meet the criteria for fibro (my pain is almost exclusive to my hip joints and my mother's are better explained by physical injury) so we're back to the drawing board atm. (I really thought lupus was going to be it because everything seemed to line up—it was crushing to be told that I was wrong and we still have no clue what's wrong with me.)

That fucking sucks :( I hope you get diagnosed soon

Here's to hoping!

Could be chronic mono? (Epstien-barr I think is what it used to be called). It took so long for that medical discovery because the virus only shows on tests when you have a flare up so bad your lymphnodes swell up.

Doctors used fibromyalgia against me and delayed me getting the hip surgeries I needed. Remember it’s often weaponized against patients more than helped. There is no real treatment that can even calm symptoms down there’s no blood test for it, because most of the time the patient isn’t suffering from fibromyalgia. Doctors told me I couldn’t have knee and hip problems. It was nerve issues and fibromyalgia. Guess what?? I have knee joint problems and hip joint problems too! And it wasn’t fibromyalgia!

lol yup just got done calling it a "fuck you" diagnosis elsewhere.

It’s crazy, people who actually have fibromyalgia struggle getting it diagnosed because “it’s just your period” or “you’re just looking for drugs” but people who have serious need for surgery get hit with “it’s just fibro” ugh

My Mom's fatigue got written off for *years* as "Oh well, you're getting old, it happens", only to finally get diagnosed with a very aggressive form of Leukemia in November of 2017, and she passed away February of 2018. It may be survivor's guilt, but I still feel awful that I wasn't around to advocate for her. Fuck cancer, fuck leukemia, and fuck lazy and chauvinist doctors.

it might be a kind of mild dysautonomia. Mild dysautonomia symptoms can have a lot of stuff, but the main ones are fatigue and sudden dizzyness spells, specially when you were sitting/laying and you stand up. It's also more common in women, iirc 3 times more likely than in men, and if your parents have it you have a higher chance of having it (not to be confused with familial dysautonomia). Dysautonomia is almost always overlooked, except if you have a stronger one that's more disabling or you have unexplained fainting and nothing else shows up as a cause.

After the biggest joke of a psych eval of my life, a university psychiatrist told me that I wasn't depressed, I just needed to be more social, go outside, and read a book about how people are only sad because society teaches us we're supposed to be happy all the time (basically implying depression i was feeling was me just being indignant at having any emotions other than happiness, like wtf?). Two months of white-knuckling through the pain later, I tried to kill myself. To this day, the one moment of ultimate cosmic vindication I have ever received is this: In the hospital following my attempt, the same doctor who evaluated me at school did my psychiatric intake assessment once I was conscious and out of the woods. I could tell during the evaluation that he had absolutely no recollection of me. This wasn't surprising. At the end of his questioning, he asked if I had ever sought treatment before. I told him I had an eval at my school. He was surprised to have the university in common, and automatically jumped to the conclusion that I must have seen his colleague. "No sir," I corrected, "I had an appointment with you." His face didn't necessarily fall, but there was a heavy pause and a resetting of his features to neutral. "And what was my recommended course of treatment." "Nothing. You didn't diagnose me or schedule a follow up, you sent me on saying I didn't require psychiatric care and could set more appointments with [the psych grad student I was seeing who referred me for more intensive care in the first place] if I needed to talk." He didn't really address it or say much more on the subject before leaving, but I didn't need him to. All I needed was for him to know that there was at least one patient out there who he failed. Who needed his care but received none. Years later, when I saw Olenna Tyrell say "Tell Cersei. I want her to know it was me" it reminded me of this moment and the feelings it evoked. I had already "taken the poison," but then I finally spoke my truth.

Wow... fuck that guy and I'm glad you got to have an Olenna Tyrell moment. I hope he realised how shit of a doctor he was in that moment. I wasn't so lucky with one negligent idiot who refused to believe he was a dumbfuck... I had a nervous breakdown trying to cope with my hallucinations and went to a psych ward for about a week, then they referred me to the first doctor who could prescribe me the same meds they loaded me up with in the ward. That ward and those drugs were extremely fucked up. Pretty sure it got shut down a few months after my parents pulled me out of there. Basically any patients that came in were sedated to the point that they "can't harm themselves or others" and then left to their own devices until a doctor gets around to assessing them (if they're even able because most patients couldn't even talk on those drugs, just sleep in their own piss/shit). It was literally just a human storage facility. Anyway, when I left I was told by the idiot doctor to keep taking the same drugs they gave me in the ward. The ones that keep me unconscious for 18 hours at a time, impede my most basic motor skills (like walking or chewing food) and *still* don't get rid of my hallucinations, only make me too weak to defend against them. "Keep taking them for another 5 weeks. Your body will adapt to the new drugs by then and the side-effects should go away" I was *extremely* doubtful of that, but I've also tried a lot of different meds that needed a 4 - 6 week 'settle in' period. So I suffered for another 5 weeks. Absolutely nothing changed. I went to my next appointment and told Idiot Doctor it wasn't doing anything for the hallucinations and the drugs have completely robbed me of my ability to function as a human being. Doc: "They're not stopping the hallucinations? In that case I want you to start taking 800mg per day, starting tomorrow" Me: "But... I'm taking 200mg right now. You want me to go up to 800 tomorrow?" Doc: "That's right" Me: "Shouldn't I build up to that kind of dose slowly? I'm already sleeping 18 hours a day on 200mg. I've been wetting the bed because I can't even wake up from these drugs to go to the bathroom. 800mg all at once will probably kill me!" Doc: "The bed wetting sounds like a separate issue that we'll talk about next appointment if it's still bothering you" My mum, who was a registered nurse, was waiting in the car for me after this appointment. I told her everything the Idiot told me and I was right! Quadrupling those meds overnight was definitely a big fat no-no that, at best, would've left me permanently brain damaged or, at worst, dead. She actually got out of the car, dragging me with her, went back into the doctors office and demanded to know what the fuck he was thinking. I was literally *just in there,* he wasn't even seeing another patient yet! But he claimed he couldn't remember what he just told me 5 minutes ago, but that it mustn't be true, "because I didn't jot it down in my notes".

My issue was far less serious than others here but in high school, I constantly was getting these episodes where I felt like I couldn’t breath and was gasping for air. There wasn’t even always a trigger. Sometimes I’d be watching TV and suddenly be struggling to breath. Thing was, I’d already been diagnosed with asthma and was using an inhaler but it wasn’t helping at all. Doctors treated me like I was crazy because my oxygen levels were coming back normal. Just keep using the inhaler, it’s asthma or it’s in your head. After months, and thanks to my grandma taking no one’s shit, I finally found a doctor who told me I don’t have asthma. The inhalers aren’t working and my oxygen is normal because the issue isn’t my lungs, it’s my vocal cords. They don’t open and close properly so my brain thinks I can’t breath. It’s called vocal cord dysfunction and gets misdiagnosed as asthma all the time. And this would’ve been really easy to figure out if any doctor told me that asthma is usually an issue exhaling, while I was struggling to inhale. This is a less obvious thing to catch but you’d think doctors would care a bit more when someone’s saying they feel like they’re suffocating for no reason. I’ve also been struggling with insomnia and acting out my dreams for years. One doctor told me it’s normal. Another told me if it’s not sleep apnea there’s nothing they can do and they won’t even try to find the cause or diagnose it.

I'm not a doctor but I'm pretty sure acting out your dreams is not normal. Also, Mike Birbiglia had a routine about acting out his dreams.

Absolutely, it is not. I'm not a furry artist, but acting out dreams means that the paralysis that's supposed to happen during REM sleep isn't activating properly. It's called REM Sleep Behavior Disorder and can be dangerous to the person who has it and others because of the possibility of accidents. A sleep study and/or neuropsychologist should be able to easily diagnose this disorder. It literally shows up in any introductory neuroscience textbook.

I had an autoimmune disorder and was dying of blood loss from it. (Crohns. Well actually Ulcerative Pancolitis but that was only the diagnosis after my colon was removed) Anyway. I had been dying of blood loss slowly for months apparently. (I had essentially internal bleeding, though it exited during bathroom trips at least), and it being a GI problem I wasn't absorbing iron worth shit. So there issues compounded. During those months I had been to my GI a bunch. And they apparently never noticed. I was too fucked up to notice either really. But I had an appointment with my GP, and he looked at me. And went "you need a blood test" cause I was that pale I guess. I wound up in the ER and then the ICU for a few days. Honestly I had been feeling slightly better that day. So anyway, this same GI, (I stuck with him for a few more months), well basically none of his care was working. I was very sick. Couldn't work, barely left my bed, unimaginable constant pain and nausea. And he was just like 'yeah nothing can be done, this is just life now. Would you like 20 more mg of prednisone?'. Eventually I went to another GI and he immediately recommended surgery. He tried another biologic and did another colonoscopy first out of like, politeness basically. Eventually I went with it. That worked, but being on like, 60 mg of prednisone for so long really fucked me up. I was on it for like 3 years. It's likely permanently damaged my bone structure and joints, it gave me cataracts in my early twenties, cataract surgery did not do a great job, and my eyes are very frustrating to use now. Nothing is clear anymore. I miss clear vision. If I had just not trusted him and immediately gotten a second opinion, I mightve not been left so fucked in the long term. Even if my early condition wouldn't gave resulted in immediate surgery. Few doctors not operating on 30 year ago standards would have kept me on prednisone so long.

Pred as a first line of treatment for so long is batshit. Like maybe for a few weeks to try and get it under control, absolutely. But not even trying mesalazine or vedolizumab first or trying to shift to azathioprine after steroids weren't working is ridiculous. Maybe it's partially because it got so out of hand before they noticed but it's not exactly like IBD is subtle and any GI with a brain should know how to handle it. I think it's somewhat of a universal experience with IBD - I took nine months to be diagnosed and medicated for Crohns and that was with me knowing exactly what it was and which tests to push for from the start due to a substantial family history. And I've heard that's practically instant by average standards. I hope you're doing better now while colonless? That was dreadful treatment and you never shoulda been treated so poorly to be at this stage, but I hope there's a point where you can live your life more than you could at the worst of it.

I’m so sorry for what you’ve gone through and still going through <3

That doctor is crazy. Every doctor learns about cushings syndrome and they *should* know you shouldn't just dump endless amounts of prednisone into people for that reason.

Jesus christ, doctors wouldn't even give my dying grandmother prednisone long term, what fucking doctor prescribes prednisone for YEARS????? I am so sorry this happened to you

Well I got no issue warning others. Dr. Anthony Colvin in Monroe North Carolina is the fucking doctor.

I went in for a check because the skin was peeling from my hands. Full like a snake shedding. Not painful thankfully, just really weird. The first doctor's diagnosis 'oh its chafing from playing video games' Like the tiny ass joysticks on a PlayStation controller was chafing enough to dislodge whole layers of skin Later went back to another doctor who diagnosed it as dermatitis, prescribed some cream, and it stopped

That controller skin peeling has happened to me, but it takes awhile and it's not snake skin peeling

I might have missed the point here, but it feels like snapcracklepop-myjoints is kinda saying something completely different to everyone else? The other posts are talking about how it's hard to get proper diagnoses when doctors dismiss concerns as "woman/trans/fat/black problem", but SNP-MJ seems to be saying "doctors will diagnose political dissidents with conditions that can be used to discredit the patient's credibility". That seems like a very different point to everyone else.

Yeah, I think it's that thing where people jump from "people do this very bad thing to members of oppressed groups" to "they're consciously doing it to perpetuate the oppressive system". (See also "the media makes women starve ourselves to stop us from overthrowing patriarchy" and so on) I mean, obviously black women being seen as crazy for no good reason *is* the result of systematic racism and misogyny, and quite often personal racism and misogyny. But it's not doctors thinking "this obviously sane black woman looks like trouble, so I'll diagnose her as psychotic". It's them being led by a racist and misogynist culture to *genuinely believe* that she's crazy. And on the receiving end it looks exactly the same and has the same impact. But getting rid of it requires understanding the causes, and usually the cause is not anyone consciously plotting to oppress anyone else.

honestly, I think that's what makes the isms so insidious and difficult to combat. *They genuinely believe it* due to brainwashing from childhood, but in order to dismantle their own racism, ableism, etc. they have to be willing to take a closer look at long held beliefs and come to terms with the fact that its *them* who isn't a good person. I like to believe we all want to believe that we're good people, that the bad guys is always some *other guy.* the reality of realizing you have these beliefs society deems as bad, conciously or not, is really difficult to recon with. And Im not even really talking about the extremists, but more the average everyday people who have some internalized sexism, racism, whatever, especially because well, "Im don't think like *insert extremists here* so Im not the problem" is kinda how these things perpetuate

I also think, and forgive me if I am misinterpreting your point, that framing it as an issue of good people versus not good people isn't actually helpful. Somebody who does hold one of those beliefs, who has held it from childhood and never really considered otherwise, isn't necessarily a bad person, just because they've never questioned it. I mean it depends on what it is obviously, but it's impossible to know everything. And when you get told from birth that things are a certain way, especially by parents or caregivers who you're already inclined to believe, well, you're probably going to listen.  I grew up decently privileged and had to grapple with that when I got out into the real world and realized that things weren't quite so black and white. I wasn't a bad person, or at least not not a good person, just because I didn't know this. I was a teenager who had a lot of stuff to learn. I think when we start framing it that way, we lose a lot of people because suddenly people get defensive. No one wants to think that they're a bad person and they're suddenly going to start defending themselves because look at all these other things they do! They didn't know this one thing, and again, it's impossible to know everything. I feel like if you spend a lot of time online, which I do, a lot of the stuff seems very obvious, like obviously we should know and believe all of these left-wing ideals, but it's not so simple depending on where you grew up. (That kind of black and white thinking can also become an issue if you have low self-esteem. I've noticed that sometimes, folks with low self-esteem, when they're told that they did something wrong, will actually double down because they have this belief that to be a good person, you have to be perfect. And if they do something wrong, that means they're a bad person, and that's a huge problem, and their already fragile ego can't take it, so they have to fight back. I've been there, I'm not anymore, but I know what it's like, and it's not pleasant.) I think that the real test is how people react when their beliefs are challenged. Are they open to learning new information, or do they double down and insist that they're still right? I think that, if you're presented with evidence that a few of yours is harmful and you don't listen because you still think you're right and those other people who are dealing with the oppression are just crazy and being dramatic or whatever, that's much more telling. Sorry for the long post. I just think it's very easy to fall into the mindset that somebody having certain beliefs is an indicator that they're a bad person, but you have to consider how they got the beliefs and how they react when presented with new information. It's not so black and white. Beliefs are not necessarily an indicator, on their own, of what kind of person you are.

Oh yeah, definitely! I was mostly just word vomiting and explaining the idea in my head in simply terms cause if I tried to go into nuance that early in the morning, I would've lost my original point, lol That and partly, while yes, there is so much nuance, people *do* frame it as black and white, which turns a lot of people off. I was also in part speaking from my own experiences of growing up fairly privileged and sheltered, and then having to come to terms with my own internalized ableism when I ended up walking with a cane at 18. I don't think that it makes you a bad person necessarily, but more like everyone wants to be a good person, and at least for me, when I realized that I had that internalized ableism I found it difficult to grapple with because ableism is bad, and I don't think of myself as a bad person, but in ny eighteen year old brain, someone who is ableist is bad. I will also admit I struggle a bit to reach a medium between black and white thinking and so much nuance all at once that I can barely get the thought coherent, lol I hope I'm making sense, but yes I agree with you

This is precisely why I hate the current paradigm of calling all bias and prejudice "racism" or "sexism" or whatever, because those words generally come with a connotation of conscious and witting beliefs and actions. Which means they get kickback from the vast majority of people who *aren't* actively, consciously making racist/sexist etc choices which either shuts the conversation down, or leads it to get nowhere because, as you point out, people may discuss it but not realise that *they do it too*. Of course, it's now become so heated that TBH even using terms like "racial prejudice" or "gender bias" or the like still just causes reflexive defensive emotional and cognitive responses too. I wish there was a snappy, succinct term that would *only* have the connotation of "unconscious, socially-conditioned bias and prejudice that _is not a value judgement of you as an individual_ because you can't help how society conditioned you", that might then open up the conversation to the average person to start looking dispassionately and objectively at the emotional or unconscious foundation to their cognitive and physical actions. But then again, since most people seem to not be aware that they don't *actually* have to THINK the same way that they FEEL (feeling being, by definition, not rational) I'm probably being painfully naive and optimistic 😕

Most of the problematic stuff caused by conspiracy thinking in this context can be attributed to seeing malicious intent where the system is simply perpetuating itself through sheer force of inertia. People tend to underestimate just how powerful "idk, we've always done things this way, don't question it" can be. In fact, if it gets to that point, it's already likely something will happen. A huge part of it is that most of this stuff *you never have to even notice let alone think about consciously*. When you're a recipient of it, it can feel like everyone else is fucking with you, because surely it can't simultaneously be in everybody's blind spot at once? No, they must be doing it on purpose, with full knowledge. To you, it's *constantly* on your mind and bright as daylight. How could it ever be invisible? Your brain knows that kind of experience isn't universal, but it's been tuned to get in line with your surrounding social groups by millions of years of evolution. You know empathy is step one of any interaction with any other member of your species. And you know other human brains are supposed to pick up on that stuff. Especially since it could so easily be communicated on explicitly. So what's going on? At some point, cognitive dissonance kicks in, and conspiracism is the solution to that disconnect.

This took me a while to understand because it definitely does happen—I've personally been threatened with a (psychiatric) diagnosis for the explicit, voiced out loud reason of shutting me up under threat of medical abuse—but yeah, while it's tempting to assume everyone knows exactly what they're doing, in my experience they often just don't care.

Indeed. And while it's one that isn't entirely without merit (the USSR is known to have done exactly that, at the very least), it's a very different discussion to be had.

There’s a time and a place I guess.

Yeah they're not really saying "doctors often have biases" they've started saying "your doctor is a government spy"

Somehow it’s easier to believe that people are malicious or evil than that they’re just ignorant morons.

Even the original one could have been different and taken out of context. We don't know why the psych doctors were asking about doctors not taking patients seriously. Maybe they were trying to screen for medial trauma or resistance to treatment (ie you're less likely to calmly accept what a doctor is telling you if you've had issues with a doctor before). They might even be trying to screen for a physical health problem that's not being taken seriously and is causing psych symptoms (ie you have undiagnosed hypothyroidism and anxiety is a symptom) Like I know that Tumblr likes to piss on the poor but that original situation doesn't seem like the researchers are trying to say that not being taken seriously by a doctor is a symptom of a mental illness without a lot more context

Where I live, "distrust towards authorities" is still recognised as a schizophrenia symptom, and used in psych eval tests.

I think that psychiatry and psychology is a couple decades behind body medicine in terms of advancement. I don’t think it’s something intentionally used to suppress the people though.

It’s a real shame that people don’t need to have bad intentions in order to cause harm

I’m not trying to say that the harm is excusable. Just that it’s the wrong motivation to ascribe to this scenario.

I didn't interpret it that way. It sounded more like: If a psych eval is asking you if you ever feel paranoid or persecuted to see if you have a "normal" reaction to authority figures, it's going to be a really bad evaluation for people who have good rational reasons to distrust authority figures.

I read it as "if you're black and politically active, then it's not paranoia if you think the state is out to get you".

Hemingway somewhat infamously got a bunch of psych treatment in part because he thought black cars with spies were following him around… which they quite literally were as the government tried to decide if he was a communist.

It's a different point but a well supported one. There are so many "symptoms" that will obviously be used to describe othered/disenfranchised people more often: -joblessness -demotivation -the belief you're being monitored without criminal suspicion (which was actually true of all Americans) -the belief you're being poisoned (true of a ton of people's water) -speaking "strangely" -having "illogical" views -lower academic achievement Not to mention that disqualifying factors can also be less recognized for those people; e.g., white people are more likely to have their autism detected, and that's often a disqualifying factor for a schizophrenia diagnosis (they'd need to have more and more persistent symptoms to get the diagnosis)

Yup, this is more or less how my mom died of an extremely treatable cancer. At least, treatable if you don’t disregard every symptom as resulting from obesity.

Same happened to my Mom, she'd been complaining of fatigue for years, only to be diagnosed with a very aggressive form of Leukemia that couldn't realistically be treated at her age. Like, how are you supposed to exercise if you barely have the energy to eat, much less exercise? I still wanna track that doctor down and punch him in the face.

When I (f28) was 15/16 I broke my wrist (for the second time). Mum took me to the ER and we waited an hour and a half+ to be seen. When we finally got back and through all the intake bs the doctor looked directly at me and told mum I was faking it for attention. The doc refused to do X-rays, argued with mum even though she was trying to tell her that this was the same as the first time, and sent us out. Yes, I have a high pain tolerance. Yes, I had full mobility. Was it broken? The X-rays that urgent care immediately took said it was. Mum went back to the hospital and raised hell while I stood there awkwardly in a cast. That’s the day I learned to say, “Put that on my chart. Now. In front of me. I also need to take a picture of that and I’d like a printed copy.” (A lady in the urgent care waiting room told me that) and sadly I’ve had to say that to get any form of medical respect several times.

That's infuriating. I broke my ankle last summer and never lost the ability to walk on it. I was walking my dog when it happened and I walked him home and went to bed. Assumed it was a bad sprain and treated it as such for two weeks until family members convinced me to go to a dr and get out xrayed just to be safe. Did so and learned it was a fracture. Got sent to ER for further x-rays and got fitted for a boot and crutches. Thing is, it was a stable fracture. It MIGHT have healed ok eventually left to its own devices. But had the Dr gone with my "it's just a sprain probably? " diagnosis I wouldn't have gotten the 3 months of physio covered that eventually brought my foot back to full function. Even with the treatment I still have a limp when it rains. I also have a high pain tolerance and could have accidently stiff upper lipped my way to a permanent disability had a Dr not felt the need to be thorough.

It's frustrating how some doctors just seem to shrug off serious symptoms.

It's helpful to remember that doctors are just people, and people are often incompetent. We tend to hold doctors to a higher standard or deify them in a sense since that's how we were conditioned. Doctors of the incompetent variety use this social conditioning and our general deference to status and title to insulate themselves from criticism or accountability, and it works. Every single day, it works.

It's probably not totally accurate, but I love the joke: What do you call someone who got straight C's all through medical school? Doctor!

"your doctor is cheating on their online tests rn so you better eat your fucking vegetables"

It's also what happens when you commercialize healthcare. I live in germany, we don't really get the issue of doctors going "Eh, it's this" without any tests. The only time we do, it's if it's something super obvious, like food poisoning or badly grown shoulders. And even then it's only GPs that do it, or severely overwhelmed ERs. As soon as the doctor isn't 100% sure they run tests, because tests don't cost money for us and since we get infinite sick days, don't even cause us to lose out on salary.

The fact that Americans can get millions from malpractice lawsuits also doesn't help. It makes the doctors very careful to not misdiagnose someone

Yeah, this is a complex issue, more complex than, "If you're a certain gender/look a certain way..." I'm white. I'm AMAB and as far as my doctors know, I'm a cis man (I'm for real non-binary.) I'm 6'3", muscular, and not overweight. I have dysplastic tissue in my mouth from an auto-immune disease that is at mild risk for further mutation. When that first presented, I also experienced weight loss of about 40 lbs in 4 weeks, massive fatigue (went from running 8 mi easily to not being able to make a mile over night), dysphagia to the point of barely being able to eat, lightheadedness when standing to the point of passing out several times, and a complete change in the color, consistency, and frequency of my stool (regular once-a-day in the AM to bright yellow, pencil thin, full of barely digested food several times a day), and incredible, persistent pain in my right tonsil that was affecting the entire lower right side of my face and upper right side of my neck. I also have generalized anxiety disorder, which as you can imagine, made all of this *very difficult* to ignore. But that's what my doctors told me to do: go to therapy and get on anxiety meds, because there's nothing wrong with you that we can treat. And that last part is so important: that we can treat. I definitely had reason to be concerned about my health, and everything I was experiencing was real, but unless your doctor is able to prove with evidence that you have a specific condition that has a known treatment, there's really not much they can do. They're not House, M.D. It's not TV. Doctors are bound by a diagnostic process called differential diagnosis, which means that they have a set of possible explanations for what you're experiencing that they eliminate over time with different approaches or treatments. Using Occam's Razor, they start with the most obvious cause and go from there. Because I have anxiety, the first step was to figure out if I was sick with something diagnosable and treatable or if my body was simply responding to all the stress from my anxiety over the condition in my mouth. Now, this wasn't the case, but even once my anxiety abated through treatment, there wasn't much they could do because my symptoms didn't amount to anything diagnosable and treatable. The best they could do was say, "Tonsil stones and IBS." And years later, that's still where we stand. I'm doing FODMAP for my digestive issues, and it's working, but my tonsil remains an issue. Could they try something drastic like removing my tonsil even though it doesn't meet the diagnostic criteria for removal? Sure. But what if they do and things get worse? Or I don't respond well to the surgery? Or my recovery doesn't go well? That opens them up to a potential lawsuit for malpractice. Or maybe my insurance would refuse to cover it in the first place, and I'd end up paying out of pocket for an expensive surgery that might not actually help. Yes, there are gender-based and racial disparities in the healthcare system, for sure. But I think a lot of people watch these medical procedurals on TV and think, "That's what will happen when I go to the doctor. I'll tell them my symptoms, and they'll work tirelessly to figure out that I have some obscure condition and treat it immediately, and I'll make a full recovery." Doctors understand better than anyone that we don't actually know *that much* about the body and how it works. They also understand better than anyone how primitive most of our care methods still are. Often, if we're not talking about treatment in emergency rooms and maternal mortality, it's as simple as what is happening with you is not diagnosable or treatable or that you have to go along with the differential diagnostic process instead of rushing your doctor through the steps they *have* to take.

My mom once went to the ER with severe stomach pain. They barely looked at her and sent her home. My grandmother was visiting, and she made mom go right back to the hospital because something was very obviously wrong. Turns out my mom had an ectopic pregnancy that had burst. My mom could have died. Whoopsie daisy!

Friend of mine was constantly fainting. Didn't matter where or when, she would just randomly faint. One of the first things, one of her doctors said, was that she should lose some weight. She isn't even overweight or anything, just a woman. It took literal years for her to be taken seriously and get at least some help. The disregard of health concerns in female patients makes my blood boil.

[удалено]

That's very kind, she's gotten a lot better recently, thankfully!

This reminds me of that one famous musician who asked for a guard due to being famous and was denied treatment and illegally detained for psych evaluation because of it

Who?

[Alexander Morris of Four Tops](https://www.statnews.com/2024/06/11/alexander-morris-four-tops-lawsuit-er-hospital-racism-straightjacket/). idk how famous he is but he was in fact labeled crazy for saying that he was who he is

holy shit that’s horrifying

I've been lucky to always have had a really good family doctor that will be like "this is very common and nothing to be concerned about usually, but just in case let's get these tests done". That is, unless you ask him to see what your blood type is. He has a whole spiel prepared about how you don't actually need to know your blood type lmao

> He has a whole spiel prepared about how you don't actually need to know your blood type lmao NGL, that is a hella weird hill to die on.

Type and screen isn't a cheap test. I don't order it unless I think there's a chance I'm giving blood to the patient. It has no purpose beyond a few select medical uses. Always good practice to not order tests unless the answer guides clinical practice. You'd be surprised at the amount of patients who ask what their blood type is. 

Me, with a family history of ovarian cysts and ok'n a medication with ovarian cysts as a possible side effect: "I think I have a cyst, it really hurts." Normal people: "okay yeah, that sucks. You need anything?" Every medical professional: "no you dont" It was an ovarian cyst, and it was pretty big

Note: this doesn't mean don't go to a doctor. It just means that if you have concerns, don't hesitate to get a second opinion!

I’ve had at least 7 doctors for a joint condition from ages 5-27. Only one has ever listened to me and not told me I was a liar, bow legged, fat or what have you. I’m average height/weight for my ages, was a very active kid, but there would be days where my knees were so swollen i couldn’t walk or bend my knees. Most doctors don’t believe people with chronic pain

Honestly, this can happen to anyone. I had anemia for several months, as bad as the person in the post described. No one believed it was as bad as I said it was, including my parents and doctors. It was miserable, and gave me some trust issues with the medical system as a whole.

I’ve had low ferritin (but not anaemia) for over five years. Every time the doctors checked my levels they said they were low but nothing to worry about. I’m fatigued all the time, really pale, can’t summon energy for basic tasks, and have developed narcolepsy with cataplexy. I knew it had to connect to the iron levels but didn’t know what. Pushed for yet another blood test earlier this year and the nurse started with the same spiel of “your iron levels are low but nothing to worry about” and I just said. “Something is wrong. I can’t get through the day without my body shutting down. Please can you check it again.” Asked them to print of my blood test results. And my ferritin levels were in low single digits. Finally on meds for it, and will be starting meds to take when I’m on my period but. Holy shit. It took almost six years of blood tests, being told I was fine when I wasn’t, etc etc. EDIT: the doctor literally said to me “your ferritin levels have been really low for a while” and I just said kind of shrugged and went, “I was told it was nothing to worry about by multiple practices”.

Im confused, why would printing out the results change things? Did the nurse not actually look at the levels? If so, what WERE they looking at other than the actual fucking results?

Probably just looked at the standard measurements and neglected the detailed one? Idk how blood tests get printed out wherever the person you're responding to is, but I've seen them like that. Stuff like blood cell counts, Hb, platelets will be on the first page and if the first page looks fine or just a little under normal, they don't always check the complete list

My ferritin count was the first entry on the first page, lol. It was 6.2 ug/L and the baseline was 15-200. I really don’t know why they were telling me I was fine all these years when it must have been consistently dropping

Oof. That's just plain negligence. I hope you got an apology

It meant that I could actually see what my levels were instead of just taking their word that I have nothing to worry about

Similar experience. Went to the ER 3 times and was told I was having a panic attack and to "relax" at home. My heart was racing and I was severely light headed. On the last trip I told them that my period had been lasting for 6 months without stopping and that I thought that was the problem. I said I was measuring how much I was losing (using a menstral cup) and it was like an ounce an hour. They said that was not possible and that it "looks like more in the bathroom" and that it was again, panic. the next day i collapsed at work and they sent me to the ER by ambulance. i needed a blood transfusion. they sent me to a gyno who literally tossed aside the ER paperwork and said it was happening because i was fat, and he trippled my birth control to stop it.  fast forward to a second oppinion, saw a female doctor who became horrified and immediately took me off my birth control because it was causing the bleeding in the first place.

I called my doctor worried about a neurological disorder. My memory was non existent, I couldn’t hold a conversation after 8 pm, and the scariest part was nodding off/fighting sleep on my drive home from work. I was either losing my mind or going to die in a car crash falling asleep at the wheel (half my drive is on a highway as I live rurally). Anemia. Low iron. After a week of taking supplements I could think again.

I'd go to a furry artist next time tbh.

Helps me figure out what's wrong with me, AND I get Rouge the Bat wider than she is tall with tits to match? Deal.

unlike those coward doctors

Despite seeing a few different illustrations of that conversation I have never seen someone take a crack at showing Rouge the Bat wider than she is tall with tits to match alongside. Someday.

boy have i got a few websites for you

Am a furry artist, was complaining about my dizziness and inability to sit and was begging for more time to complete a commission to my client. He told me "sounds like a spinal fluid leak" Fast forward a week later I go to the hospital because I can't eat because I'm so dizzy I'm swaying in my chair. Tell the ER "maybe it's a spinal fluid leak?" They classify me as a possible stroke and shove me in an MRI.  Doctor comes back and says "well you were close. Not a spinal fluid leak, but similar symptoms. You have a chiari malformation. Your brain is herniating down your neck, and obstructing CSF flow from the brain." Id been talking to multiple doctors about this dizziness problem including a neurologist who had done a CT scan on me and said "you're fine talk to your primary about vertigo" prior to this and somehow no one caught my brain falling down my neck. 20 year old furry was closer than the neurologist with a CT scan. 

Sounds like Crohn's

The shingles one is especially bad since I was able to get it as a TEEN. Incredibly mild but I still had it very young.

My brother has it by the time he was 8. Granted, he was on chemotherapy for leukemia. But still.

My uncle has downs, he was getting fat as hell, the doctor just said “stop feeding him junk food”, this was to my grandma, a woman who didn’t even have the money to waste on junk food. Only good food. She eventually got a new doctor. Everyone hated this new guy. So she was hesitant to bring in my uncle. The doctors first question was “has anybody checked his thyroid?” Sure enough that’s what it was. Not shocking either because it’s super common with downs people. But it was too late to do much at this point so now he’s permanently overweight. Grandma said the new doctor was the best she’s ever had. And she thought people didn’t like him because he got straight to the point and it might seem a bit rude or something.

did your grandma go to doctor House or something?

Some people don’t like doctors that tell them things they don’t like. It’s a tough position to be in when people do shit they need to change.

The only reason I am alive is because my mother, when she was pregnant with me, had a nurse FINALLY listen to her about various complications she had with previous pregnancies (none made it to term) and that nurse decided to test her for various auto-immune disorders and deficiencies. Once the root problem was identified and treated, boom, (relatively) easy pregnancy for her and I was born. It took several pregnancies ending before their term for someone to take her seriously, I can't imagine what it was like for her going through those.

I have excruciating period cramps, and an ultrasound a few years ago showed I have ovarian cysts. I’ve brought it up to a few different doctors - could it be endometriosis? Something else? Seriously, is there ANYTHING that can be done so I’m not in agonising pain for a week every month? Every single time, they ask me how heavy my flow is. I tell them it’s normal. They tell me, “you’re fine then.” Great. Cheers. I’ll just be using another sick day because I hurt too much to focus on work.

You need to push for a laproscopy. Doctors seem unwilling to perform them unless they already believe you, but make them note it in your chart that you requested and were denied. Bring it back up again and again if that doesn't make them pause and order it. They can excise your cysts and use them to assist in diagnosis - pcos, or chocolate cysts from endo etc. Please heed this! You shouldn't have to push for healthcare, but untreated endo can permanently disable you - fuse your bowel to your uterus to your bladder to maybe even your abdominal wall. It's been found in people's brains, people have stomas are in wheelchairs over it. And even if it's PCOS, that also has a host of endocrine/skin/weight/fertility issues as well as quality of life. I hope you find some success in treatment and diagnosis of this, because endo ruined my life pretty much constantly.

Gee I hope no one makes this worse by training every teacher in the country that incredibly rare psychological conditions are in fact common and that parents of disabled kids can be dismissed as mentally ill when they complain about their child not having their needs met. Because that would be obviously and cartoonishly evil. /fucking s due to the UK doing precisely that.

What condition is that, out of curiosity? Because I can very much buy the UK doing that sort of shit, but I'd prefer to know more.

I'm a disabled female veteran. My left foot got basically crushed and I was medically discharged with a walker at 19. I watch what I eat and do what I can but not being able to stand without being in pain, have PCOS, plus having two kids since then will add weight. I'm barely overweight though, just enough to look slightly chubby. Every damn time I go to the VA they try to get me in with a dietician, which I went once and they were shocked because I was eating properly. Or they try to get me in an exercise program. The VA tends to go through doctors so I had new ones every 6 months. I had a new doctor who barely looked at me and wouldn't listen so he kept lecturing me about my weight and how I needed to exercise more. I finally got pissed and asked how tf he expected me to exercise when I can't even stand? He was shocked and had to look at my chart to remember I'm service connected because my foot is fucked up which is also causing hip and back pain. He fumbled around and finally admitted that it was unrealistic to demand and asked if the VA had ever done anything to treat my foot or make walking easier. Nope, they gave me a walker and shit load of pain pills. He sent me to a podiatrist who was able to get me custom orthotics and some specialized shoes that made it where I can at least stand comfortably and walk for a little bit without being in pain. But none of that would have happened if I hadn't yelled at the doctor to pay attention.

Posts like this make me conflicted because: They're all really valid points to make. but They lead to a lot of people just straight up writing off medicine as a valid profession. The amount of times I've seen people just straight up tell someone not to go to the doctor ever, citing posts like this one, is insane. I'm sure we all know the infamous "Doctor Yiff" post. I've had someone I used to be friends with \*use that as a genuine justification for their complete refusal to see a doctor.\* Are there bad doctors, therapists, etc? Yes. And interacting with them fucking sucks, especially if you're in an already vulnerable group. But for the love of god don't just assume you're better off never seeing trained professionals. Because you're not.

Also experiences like "my doctor said I have 5 months to live but here I am, 10 years later!" Like the prognosis is just a statistic based off your symptoms; you're not a miracle.

They also don't give prognoses like that, and that's a great example of why. People hear, "The typical survival rate at 5 years is 50%" and go, "Doc said I was definitely going to die but I proved him wrong!"

“Doctors suck” can be taken in two ways: * Medicine has systemic biases against minorities and neurodivergent people and it needs to work on that * Medicine is *wrong* and trying to sell us on bullshit And I feel like it’s really easy for the two types to get blended in a conversation about this. Personally, I do think doctors are victims of the system as much as they are perpetrators of it. The treatment and working conditions they have to endure is completely inhumane, and it severely hampers them from giving the best care they have to every single patient. I won’t deny that there are obviously doctors that are terrible. My own secondary care guy strung me along for a year and ultimately gave up on treating ADHD anymore because he didn’t believe I had it. I just think that a lot of the bias stems from how much of what they learn is already implicitly biased, basically only taking data from white men. Couple that with the fact that residency takes years to complete, and those doctors are pretty much unable to see any patients on their own, and it means that this kind of thing is gonna take a pretty significant amount of time to address.

The argument isn't to not see trained professionals! The point is that doctors need to be more cognizant of this shit!

Correct, problem is a lot of people who do need help see posts like this and jump to the conclusion "doctors are bad and evil and are going to murder me with their incompetence." Posts like this NEED to be made, but unfortunately we also need to keep an eye on the anti-medical sentiment they tend to stir up.

Whos more likely to see this and alter behavior, a doctor who actively treats paitents, or internet users?

I agree with OP and everyone in this thread, but at the same time, _have you EVER heard someone talk about the times their ailments were accurately and precisely diagnosed, treated, and cured_? No, you don't, because people just don't _talk_ about the times things work right, the times when everything went according to plan.

Correct. Very good. Part of the reason why these psych evals need to be done by a DOCTOR... a Psychologist (Psy.D.) or a Psychiatrist (M.D.) is because you need a DOCTOR to *interpret* the responses. " Have you ever been to the doctor and told them a physical ailment and they did not believe you" ... is not a yes / no question. If you *scoff** and joke "yeah, it's called being a female amirite?!?!" Then the psychiatrist isn't going to think you have a mental disorder. If you say yes and talk about the aliens that live in your brain that turn everything outside purple and how the doctor has aliens in his head and he just doesn't know it and don't you hear that the aliens are talking to me right now... ... the psychiatrist *still* might not say you have a mental disorder, because they need to take your responses to the rest of the test into consideration. This isn't a "catch all" You're not smarter than a psychiatrist.

In addition: People should take these stories with a grain of salt. I am an ER nurse. Patients lie to me, to my face, literally daily. When I can easily disprove their story with their past medical records. So, taking the word of an anonymous username on the internet with no proof backing them, and then using that “evidence” to “fight the good fight” is a bit naive. Medical malpractice happens. It isn’t unheard of. It is, however, EXTREMELY RARE. Or none of us would ever have time to work, being tied up in court all the time. That’s why big malpractice suits are big news, because they don’t happen all the time.

Lotta people also just don't tell medical professionals things because of shyness, embarrassment, or similar. Its like where people fuck up their eye prescriptions by forcing themselves to get the test right because its awkward to admit you can't read something that feels important.

I’m not talking about “not telling me things.” I’m talking about straight-up making up diagnoses out of thin air, which we can disprove with basic lab work. Telling us they’re prescribed (or have no history of) narcotics; guess what, we can see your past prescriptions. Saying they’re from out of town; “interesting, your past 5 visits in a month say otherwise. Also, I recognize you.” I mean lying.

Sorry, I knew what you meant and was just trying to add in with another bit to carry on the discussion, wasn't trying to override your point or change it. My bad.

You’re good, I kinda thought that was what you meant, but it also kinda felt like you were saying “they don’t mean to lie, they’re just shy 🥺👉👈” so I just covered my bases. Like I said, ER nurse. Subtlety was lost years ago.

Very understandable.

To add to this, during medical school I did a 3 month internship on the maternity ward and would, among other things, conduct the standard interview with anyone who was being admitted. The amount of women who when asked "do you smoke?" vehemently denied that they currently smoked or ever even had a cigarette, who I would then see chain smoking in front of the hospital with their IV drip was absolutely astonishing. (To be clear, most women said they didn't smoke and didn't, or at least didn't while they were at the hospital. But out of the ones that did smoke I think only ever one admitted to it during the interview.)

I have a different perspective with this after ending up in a special hospital for rheumatic diseases for some years in my youth. I personally got lucky and had a very quick diagnosis despite a rare disease. But the hospital was filled with patients who spent *years* chasing after a proper diagnosis and had suffered significant physical (and often mental) damage because of it. My experiences with doctors have also been very up and down. It most definitely is not "extremely rare" to receive no or a wrong diagnosis only to get a completely different one from a different doctor. I get the concern about patients going "diagnosis shopping" or ER patients trying to get certain prescription drugs, but the grim reality is that people with the actual diseases often have no other choice. If they listened to the first (and sometimes second, third, or fourth) doctor who told them no, then they'd just be left to their own devices until it gets bad enough that they have to be hospitalised.

I don't even agree with the way the post frames the issue, but it's really fucking disingenuous to suggest that every time, or even most of the time a patient receives subpar care is litigable, let alone successfully litigated as malpractice. Of course, it mostly comes down to training, funding, and workloads that are - for reasons financial, political, or sheer incompetence - not conducive to giving the best care possible. One of the reasons I'm not a fan of the framing, it antagonizes healthcare professionals when they're really not the problem. But this response ain't it either, downplaying that there is a problem at all.

As an example of a good doctor experience: it took me about 6 months from symptom onset to be diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis. Autoimmune diseases are known to be difficult to get diagnoses for because of their vague symptoms. I told my doctor that my hands and feet have been hurting for about a month and haven't gotten better, and that I got tendinitis a lot as a kid. She said that it sounded a lot like RA, something I hadn't even considered, and to come in for a blood test. My numbers were LITERALLY off the charts. My immune system was fucking up bad. After a few more months waiting for my rheumatologist appointment, I was diagnosed and started treatment. This was also mid-late 2020, when doctors were at their most stressed.

Six months is amazing! It took me ten years after multiple doctors told me the pain was just in my head. Constantly labeled as just a drug seeker.

Yeah. There are definitely problems in the system, certainly there are huge swathes of professionals who have biases that cause them to misdiagnose or ignore certain people, and the push by insurance and for-profit companies to constantly be shaving margins and forcing people into smaller and smaller windows for care, is detrimental. But it is wild to me that as soon as someone starts telling a story about bad medical experiences they are suddenly bastion's of perfect truth and no one doubts them, but if it were literally anything else people would be pressing X to doubt immediately. There's definitely a middle ground between "doctors are infallible" and "all doctors are worthless" and I think people need to understand that, as with so many things.

> I am an ER nurse. Patients lie to me, to my face, literally daily. When I can easily disprove their story with their past medical records. I'm not a nurse, but I've worked around acute care and general inpatient, as well as outpatient clinics and screening medical histories. These kinds of conversations around healthcare always piss me off. There are *gigantic* problems with healthcare systems with no easy solutions and yes, there are ongoing issues with symptoms being ignored - I've suffered from it myself - but, having seen how these places work first-hand for over a decade, the average person has no idea how much shit healthcare professionals put up with. The vast majority of them are doing the best they can with what they have. Patients aren't paragons of virtue being shunned by a cold, indifferent system. They're just people, and most of the people who go to the hospital get something like the care they need. Some of those people are full of shit. Some of them (more than you'd think) are aggressive for no good reason. Some of them are convinced there's something physically wrong with them when the healthcare professionals can't find anything - or more likely, they want something else to be wrong with them other than the thing that's obviously wrong with them. And it's not all capitalism, I live in the UK and people take the absolute piss when it comes to the NHS, clogging up emergency rooms and GP clinics with minor coughs and scrapes because hey, it's free, might as well. A small minority of people do have sometimes have symptoms ignored or brushed off, and it's a genuine tragedy. But it's not an epidemic, and is naturally going to happen in an imperfect system. Are those people a majority non-white, non-male etc.? Very possibly, and that needs to be addressed. But it's a huge leap to go from that to "Big Medicine doesn't give a fuck about you unless you fit these specific traits", and if any of these people had worked in healthcare for any length of time, they'd know that instead of parroting things that reinforce their worldview.

Agreed. We're definitely not better off never seeing trained professionals, but in my experience going to doctors for a myriad of issues for *years*, MOST doctors are terrible at listening to their patients. We absolutely need doctors and medicine, but we also need more doctors willing to believe that their patients are experiencing what they say they are. Right now, it just takes being stubborn and looking for doctors that are actually willing to listen to your symptoms.

As possibly the most ‘eligible for doctor bias’ person ever: holy fucking shit y’all have it bad

I've gained a shitload of weight since I was 9 without being able to lose any. Like, if I lost 10 kilos in a month thanks to a good balanced diet and more physical activity than usual, I'd gain them back in a week without changing anything. For years, my doc was like, "You eat too much and don't do enough sport". Bitch, you've been telling me that since I'm 12, I'm 20 now, maybe check for something else ! Thanks to a blood test when I was 24, we discovered I have an adenoma on the pituitary gland messing with my hormones responsible for losing weight. If it had grown any further, it could have pressed against my breathing canals and blocked my whole nose. I'm now finally losing weight with the help of a bariatric surgery done a month ago but damn, that thing might have been in my head for so long and this cunt didn't care at all.

Oof, that's horrendous.

I watched this happen to my wife while I was accompanying her to doctors visits. She has an autoimmune disease (unknown at the time ) and her body was attacking the site of her epidural, which would cause her to spasm and fall to the floor. The doctor thought it was drug seeking behavior and put her on antidepressants. For like six months. Finally she went to a doctor who listened. He looked at her blood work and as he walked into the room, before he even introduced himself, said, "oh has anyone diagnosed you with Lupus? Because I think you have lupus." She'd gone through six months of weekly blood tests and a brutal bone marrow biopsy - no painkillers ever prescribed - before we ran into Dr. Doeshisjob. Her hair was coming out in clumps, her skin was peeling off, and she was essentially bedridden, and they gave her Lexapro. The truly sad thing is that the doctors might not even be bad doctors, but they're driven by profit and fears of the DEA arresting them if they actually order the tests they need and help a patient manage their pain.

Recently applied for disability support from central office in my job, part of this application was my diagnosis of disability and they still somehow concluded based on the evidence provided I don’t have a disability

I just feel like that's par for the course with disability. Good luck getting any help, as they seem to always deny any support.

The amount of times my mother has almost died because the doctor refused to take her, a WOC, seriously is honestly astounding and I am furious about it. They also don’t take me seriously because I spoke to a psychiatrist once, so I *must* be insane (:

And it doesn't stop when they do finally take you seriously, either. I've had several things done, because my mom insisted that frequent heavy nosebleed or ingrown toenails were bad, and while both issues were fixed by surgery, I now have other issues. My nose almost constantly feels like it's clogged, even in places that shouldn't be possible, and I can't walk up or down stairs without one hand on the wall or handrail, for fear of falling over. And even then, I sometimes have to stop and readjust myself. They should really invent surgery that doesn't just replace perfectly manageable issues with ones that probably require even more surgeries to fix. Like, I know doctors are important, but I don't wanna take up too much of their time.

As a white cis guy with years of undiagnosed ASD (which hilariously is abbreviated to ass in my language) I have only experienced a fraction of this kind of behaviour and only that was already truly enraging. Doctor stories from my girlfriend drive me up the fucking wall when her doctor pulls shit like this.

I’m fat and a woman so I’ve just been putting off seeing a doctor about what I suspect is chronic fatigue because I stg if they refuse to screen me for anything until I lose weight I will actually fucking lose it.

Please don't delay, I have often been overweight myself but by advocating for myself and asking what else could be influencing my symptoms I've gotten great results, and I'm in the American South, lol. Also don't underestimate the power of checking doctor's websites to see if they discuss their position on weight issues, or even just talking to a nurse who answers the phone to ask how the doctor views overweight patients. Nurses know all ;)

I'm a middle aged tall athletic white male and the doctors still regularly don't believe me for shit.

My wife is overweight and has a history of mental health issues,  I have had to attend doctor's appointments with her to advocate on her behalf.  We once went in for a pain issue and the nurse checking us in very patronizingly asked my wife "Are you sure it's not just your anxiety?"  Just about slapped the fucker.     She also broke down crying after one appointment and asked "Do they think I don't know I'm fat!!??"  The struggle is real here.  Don't ever assume a doctor will listen to you or take you seriously - push them or shop around until you develop a personal relationship with one you trust.   

Trans woman with chronic fatigue. 5 separate doctors in a row, the first of which I had been seeing for over a decade, all wrote it off as just "being lazy". The only doctor who believed me was a homeopathic bullshit artist who prescribed me supplements I ended up being allergic to

Yeah honestly in my experience this is just doctors. They're human, and they need to feel confident in their job just like everyone else. I think they also feel the need to project confidence, but that seems to run sour and everything they don't understand must be mental illness. Any "other" types are even harder to understand, and are even more likely to get dismissed. I'm an average guy with a rare disease that was dismissed by my primary care for years, despite very obvious physical signs and positive test results. At some point I was describing my symptoms to my primary doc, he looked irritated, interrupted me and said "you need a psych eval for these things you're feeling." I was shellshocked because I was discussing symptoms with positive test results from specialists, which he was unaware of because he assumed it was all mental/anxiety. After that, I got into a great GI doctor (the most problematic symptom was gastroparesis), who explained he had no idea what was causing it, and very often they don't ever find out. Explained why they needed to treat symptoms first, etc. Basically a doctor who had the confidence to say he didn't understand what was happening, but was going to do everything he could to help. The one time I was selected as a juror it was for a malpractice suit. A fairly well known professor (should be well respected, able to speak eloquently, etc), tore his quad shoveling snow. They repaired it, and he kept complaining of pain in his hip and knee. They kept insisting he just needed to keep up with physical therapy. He died of sepsis after a couple of weeks if I remember right, after the infection in the surgery site made its way to the bloodstream. I read this book during my whole ordeal to try to get some better perspective. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every\_Patient\_Tells\_a\_Story:\_Medical\_Mysteries\_and\_the\_Art\_of\_Diagnosis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Every_Patient_Tells_a_Story:_Medical_Mysteries_and_the_Art_of_Diagnosis)

Am a trans girl. Well before I came out, I had some pretty awful pain in my crotch. Went to the doctor and he looked me over, asked questions, did an ultrasound even, and diagnosed me with constipated. Pains in my crotch tho? Yea, constipated, here's some miralax. Spent the whole day drinking miralax Gatorade, not pooping much more than normal, showered at the end in pain. Called my dad in there and asked about my ball being the size of a grapefruit. Turns out my 'constipation' was a testicular torsion, which could be saved if caught fast enough, like I dunno the first doctor visit, but instead sat untreated for a whole day. I only have one ball now

I know white cis men are taken more seriously at the doctor's office, but getting dismissed or ignored out of hand is still a nearly universal experience. For example, I went to my doctor thinking I had ADHD and got dismissed despite showing obvious symptoms, and a friend of mine got dismissed for complaining of pelvic pains for 6 months straight before they figured out he had a huge cancerous tumor in his stomach. That is to say, I know that women, black people and trans people are proven to be more ignored by health services, but I find the question odd because it doesn't mention frequency. I think most people in any group would answer "yes", and the survey would then fail to capture the breadth of that answer.

first year med school they teach that hoofbeats means horses not zebras. It was very irritating when myself and my sister had joint issues for several years, and it took us that long to get diagnosed with EDS (which is literally represented by a zebra because it IS the zebra in this case). In the meantime doctors recommended surgery to remove cartilage (a specific surgery which is well known to fuck people up permanently) and AMPUTATION because we had knee pain.

I don't know why people assume doctors listen to white dudes either. I have narrow ear canals, and I didn't find out that was the case until I was about 17. All those years I had tons of ear infections, I stopped swimming out of fear of more swimmers ear, and i found out my mom had the same issues but no doctor ever said anything other than to clean my ears better (q tips were part of the problem lol) The problem is just that doctors don't listen to ANYBODY. They've had to deal with so many bullshitters, pill chasers, and hypochondriacs that they feel it's just safer to assume that the person they're talking to is lying or clueless.

If noone else is going to, then I'll post the LWT video. https://youtu.be/TATSAHJKRd8

Nowhere is sexism more painfully obvious than in the medical field. Obviously it still happens in a lot of contexts, but the way doctors just blatantly disregard what women say pisses me off so much

It took me like five fucking years of complaining to my doctor, and eventually other doctors, to finally get my gallbladder checked. Turns out my gallbladder was never really functioning, and removing it fixed my problem. I just kept getting told I need to manage my stress levels or consider anxiety medication.

Man, it really does seem that if they're lazy or don't want to be outed as clueless, the go-to excuse for blowing you off is "anxiety" or "fat". I get that the profession is understaffed, but you should still be doing your goddamn job.

Tbh stuff like the OP started to make sense to me when you kind of realize that for whatever reason doctors usually try to go for whatever would be minimally invasive; no one wants to pump you full of drugs or slice you open if they don’t have to. Either way, I’m not a massive fan of rhetoric like that in the post because it can convince people who are marginalized to avoid medical attention or actively refuse it.

I have had chronic joint pain since I was 16 and weighed about 100lbs. I'm now in my 20s and my weight has doubled, in part because I'm in constant pain that gets worse with exercise and can occasionally just... not get up or walk. Last time I went to the doctor he suggested a weight loss program. He was not very interested in hearing that "Hey actually all of these problems have been persistent since I was nearly underweight and a physical therapist I know tested me a bit and my range of motion is really actually pointing to this issue which needs testing in a lab and has nothing to do with my body weight". Still haven't found someone to test me for EDS, actually.

Remember a few years ago when a screenshot of an actual medical textbook saying that women, especially black women are "more likely to loudly complain about non-issues" was going around? And literally nothing came of it not even a major news story? Yeaaah turns out there's consequences to teaching that drivel. And yet men believe people care more about women's problems...

Everyone wants the money a doctor makes, but fewer people want the responsibility and work ethic required. If there was a way to filter out the latter, we'd have way fewer doctors.

Not to take away from the very real facts and stories of doctors dismissing legit concerns but it is very funny that one of these people tried to equate all of these medical issues being ignored with a claim that black men diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia are ACTUALLY just political dissidents. There's having unusual or fringe beliefs and then there's literal paranoid schizophrenia, and I've met black men in both categories; there is no mistaking the one for the other.

Took me months to get an endocrinologist to see me because my PCP refused to give me a referral. I had to do tons of research and beg an endocrinologist to see me without one. I was diagnosed with PCOS at my first appointment. Well would you look at that. I said something was wrong and SOMETHING WAS FUCKING WRONG. Also (this one angers me so much), I went to the ER a few years ago after having a nine day migraine. The doctor working that night is known to be a dickwad. But I told them I was allergic to a specific medication. Doctor comes in to inject me with something. I stop him and ask what it is. It’s the med I’m allergic to. I tell him so. He rolls his eyes and says, “yeah I’ve heard that one before” and injects me anyway. Well wouldn’t ya know it, I had a fucking allergic reaction and had to stay for four hours connected to a bunch of heart and BP monitors until I was stabilized. Fucker.

My dad was a white dude. He was having some stomach pain. Back and forth for months about diet, indigestion, his weight, h. pylori tests. Finally they settled on gall bladder. They opened him up to take it out, turns out it was actually cancer all over his insides and he died a few months later. Different doctor found cancer early enough in my son to save him, and he’s still alive 6 years later. Obviously just anecdotal evidence and a small sample size, but I think it’s just that some doctors suck more than anything else.