It took years, and many tests, to get a POTS diagnosis as a male. It was a Dr. that trained at the Cleveland Clinic who finally did the right tests. This is with 2 sisters that have POTS. Apparently rare = impossible to a lot of Docs. I bet it is just confirmation bias that makes it rare.
I wish this had been my experience when I had a mystery illness (the bottom panel.) My Dr. jumped almost immediately from "it's an allergy" to "you might have a very deadly cancer that can be hard to find." When I finally saw a new Dr. he practically swooned when he heard what I had been through.
Literally the bottom half is what I was told for The first 5 years I had cancer and didn't know it. I had all the signs and my blood work was even showing tumor markers. They told me that it was probably nothing and that I was young so there was no way I would have cancer. Turns out I do.
or live in uk and the doctors dont look at value of the treatment just what is best to treat you, or in my case what is best to try to figure out waht is causing the problem regardless of visits to MRI , specialists or other other things
I’m so blessed to have a great doctor. If you can, get a D.O. That is not narcissistic and listens to your issues. Have been with this HMO doctor for over 14 years. I’ve been blessed!
This was 100% my experience when I had UHC insurance back in the 2000's. I'll be honest I have Kaiser now and it's NOTHING like this. They will test you until they find something wrong. That's my experience. Love Kaiser Norcal.
Me too, I wouldn’t go again if my Dr would just prescribe my thyroid medication regularly.
They want me to se Dr 2 times a year, I’m looking for another practice. I don’t need to go into your practice where nobody masks to be told they can’t fix my issues and to lose weight.
Same. I tell my docs that I'll come in once a year. My oncologist wanted 2x yr + seeing an NP yearly for "survivorship" whatever. Told him he gets 1x year, and pass on the NP. If the cancer is gonna come back, it's gonna come back. It's not going to stay away because I keep having meetings about it.
I totally get it. I see a naturopath now, and only once a year for labs, and even then she has no idea why all my labs say I'm in amazing health and everything is "normal" but I am exhausted, can't lose weight, and my thinking is foggy. On my own I did manage to reverse my hashimotos though...
I’m switching practices and when I see them, I’m telling them they get me 1x a year to run my labs. There is no treatment for fibro and ME and they won’t do anything about my hip and back pain
Oof. Hits hard with my current mystery neurological chronic illness. “It seems like it might just be in your head” Well, no shit Sherlock! Next you’ll tell me my menstrual cramps are all in my uterus 🙄
Thank you! Fortunately I have a great healthcare team, it’s only when I need to go to the ER or interact with bureaucrats that it’s an issue. I have it pretty good all things considered haha
Well, that's something. Waiting in ERs or Emergency Clinics sometimes for hours is definitely a big problem as well. My coworker went into an ER with a broken back and was almost turned away. They didn't believe she could get there on her own (not a severed spine) & the nurse never apologized.
That’s so awful!!! I literally had an ER doctor ask if my pain was really at a 9/10 because I was smiling and seemed cheerful. I had to list my pain credentials to get through to him. Chronic pain means learning to function through it; being functional doesn’t invalidate the pain
Very true. I had a teacher in middle school who used to pinch our shoulders to make us flinch. It frustrated him to no end that it didn't bother me because I have a high pain tolerance. Of course... that turned out to be abusive and he was fired but you get my point.
The hardest part is getting put next the the correct doctor, took me 3 years to get the official diagnosis of #CRPS, but that was confidence in my GP knowing that the is a serious problem, which took a report from another doctor that the problem wasn’t acute, then seeing a chronic pain doctor
Yes I have had high blood pressure all my life and I had one doctor refuse to give me blood pressure pills because I was too fat..needed to lose weight. Well I lost weight and it went up even higher..go figure.
Human bodies are intricate and complex systems, so if you change one piece without checking to see if it will change the others you're likely to mess things up. Maybe that's why we wanted medical professionals to study medicine and help us make decisions? Smh how out of touch can they be?
I have a genetic disease and sometimes my joints get sore and swollen for no apparent reason. Once, as a teen, a doctor literally told me I was making it up to get attention.
How do they think that you are making up swelling? So many people say that doctors tell them this, but how do doctors not see swelling? It's an obvious symptom!
Too bad you couldn't kick him in the nuts and say, "Well thanks for the magical cure. Now stop rolling on the ground like your groin hurts. It's all in your mind."
I woke up 4 wks ago and my right ankle was swollen, Achilles too, I’ve been using crutches still. There’s no point asking the dr for help. This is life with chronic illness.
Oh my goodness. You would not believe how many times I have heard this 🤷🏻♀️since I was a little girl. They would blame everything on my being overweight and depressed. Come to find out decades later I have rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, and polycystic ovarian syndrome/ metabolic syndrome.
We (orthopedists) overprescribed opioids for decades, creating a huge problem.
Now that you’re here with a complex fracture, you have to just take acetaminophen abd ibuprofen because we were irresponsible.
🤷♀️
Thank you. Come again.
So true. Hospital told my husband he had allergies when he had Bronchiectasis. He couldn't walk two feet without his pulse going to 190 and him collapsing. Yeah. Allergies.
My Mom went to a doctor for weird symptoms like hearing things, headaches, etc. with no previous history of mental illness. Gave her some psych meds and sent her on her way. They didn’t work. She went to a different Doc who found the brain tumor that killed her.
They assigned me a new doctor at my clinic. He told me that I should get up real early, fast, and report to a lab where they would do a sonogram on my belly to check for aneurysms due to my having smoked. My last cigarette was about 35 years ago. I declined.
Especially if you're a woman and a person of color. If you're a white male, you'll get the best treatment. The medical system is biased towards white men.
No actually, Mitch. They're saying (along with 90% of the comment section) that medical practitioners usually blow off their symptoms in favor of telling them a. You're fat b. You're a woman, period c. You're making it up. Also, x-rays, testing, and cat scans are not dangerous
The Grey's Anatomy and House teams would have fixed my problem up so fast that I wouldn't even know what hit me.
Reality: Loses me in the system for a simple surgery, and despite my GP angrily telling them I need one, they still haven't set up an appointment. (I guess they ignore GPs too)
In my early 20s, I seemed to have to urinate often. I was told I “have a small bladder.”
In my 40s, I got a kidney infection that almost killed me. Turns out I have a congenital problem and the kidney had been deteriorating for years.
Just some doctor ineptitude. 🤷🏻♀️
This resonates so completely with me. Whenever I go to the doctor for anything, whether it's a skin rash or ear ache, the "solution" is always "Lose some weight."
I just found out today that you can file a fair judgment which will put a judge in charge of whether or not the insurance covers the thing they denied you for. The judge usually rules in favor of the patient and forces the insurance company to cover their necessary medical care. I just learned this.
I had a bit of column A and a bit of column B. I was having unexplainable vomiting in the mornings. Would wake up with no signs of nausea, throw up, and then go on with my day like nothing happened. Doc ran lots of tests. Everything he could think of. Gave up and asked if I could live with it
I've lived through this twice. First after being diagnosed with Crohn's (turned out to be a very, very, slow cancer) and then just high blood pressure. Turned out to be five years of low grade anaphylaxis from air pollution (I have a chlorine allergy/sensitivity)
Testing is relatively cheap, American insurance based healthcare will keep on testing even though they are 98% sure what the problem is in an attempt to rule out the 2% and more importantly delay doing the expensive operation, which will cost the insurance company much more money than the tests.
Depends on the testing. When I worked in healthcare it was a battle to get insurance to approve most imaging. I need a genetic test they won't approve. I've even seen them argue more complex lab work.
Also, "We know that most minor things will go away on their own, so take this pill for two weeks while your body does the work. I get money, Big Pharma gets money...everybody wins"
I taught CPR and I did teach this, but also that it often came down to knowing the person and their usual behavior. We need a medical system where you can build a relationship with your doctor so there is trust and history.
I was in nursing school in 1970s when professor announced that all FDA-approved medication had been tested on college age males (except birth control pills).
I thought it was the most astonishing thing I ever heard…until she told us about Tuskegee
study, which had only ended a few years previously.
This is very true. I see it in myself, friends and family. I literally have esophageal ulcers, forming and i’m prescribed an anti-anxiety/depression med 🙄 I have to go through these steps until I can get the medicine my doctor wants to prescribe.
What I have learned from being (far too) exposed to the medical community. Doctors do not know all the causes of illness. Case in point. I had a rapid heart beat. 115 resting. Every test, nothing nada. Underwent chemo for my cancer. Now 70 resting. Go figure
This is why House was the most popular show on TV. Pure, escapist fantasy. Doctors don't have time to be curious, and nobody would pay for it if they did.
Oh, and by the way, your insurance won’t cover this, hope you’re independently wealthy!
See, this right here is why I didn’t break out the tissues when that insurance CEO got shot in broad daylight in the middle of NYC.
Keep shooting comrades.
Yeah. Became deaf in 6 days in ‘87 after having my ears flushed. Vertigo so bad I couldn’t walk, projectile vomiting, insane pain… They said I was faking or had conversion hysteria, forced me to admit myself to the psych ward. Took 3 months to get a test. I was deaf. And it’s too late to treat it.
Anti-opiate medication hysteria is driven by the DEA, prosecuting MDs prescribing safe & effective opiates as they were trained-
Based on false statistics about addiction to prescription opiates the CDC invented, it’s actually rare. Suicides & OD deaths are skyrocketing.
A friend died of liver cancer last year. They didn’t want to give him opiates because it’d hurt his liver despite end stage cancer and weeks to live. I’m disgusted by the medical community.
There’s a booming business in a very old drug, Suboxone that is indicated for withdrawal. It was never indicated for pain, causes tooth loss, cardiac problems, psychosis. Now being prescribed for pain in expensive brands. Don’t get gaslighted.
Matthew Perry lost his upper teeth from it.
Went to the doctor once because of repeated horrible migraines. Doctor said “It’s all in your head.” And that was it. No sheet Sherlock. That was my diagnosis when I wasted my time and money going to the doctor.
As a woman, this has happened to me numerous times. When they find out you have a mental condition they blame everything on that. I was literally told by a Dr that I was making up my illness to get out of work. She begrudgingly did a chest Xray, which showed I had pneumonia with pleurisy.
I go to the VA for care. For years I had 2 doctors who didn't question if I went to them with a problem because whenever they ran a test they found there was a reason for my complaint. Now I have a new doctor who wants to question the validity of my complaints w/o running tests. It's infuriating.
You forgot the, "In a few months, we'll recommend some procedure your insurance company will just keep denying anyway until you give up trying to seek treatment, expire, or going postal."
There is NO way this should be true. I’m surprised they’re not telling us to apply poultices and roll naked in the moonlight. The same amount of medical expertise is in both.
How many times I had this happen to me..until I finally had a cardiac arrest..fortunately in a hospital er because my brain told me I was about to die..no joke.
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I loved watching "House", and was under the impression that the cost of all the outrageous tests etc were part of the costs of the diagnostic department were covered by the hospital .
Sadly disillusioned 😬
Comments
They want me to se Dr 2 times a year, I’m looking for another practice. I don’t need to go into your practice where nobody masks to be told they can’t fix my issues and to lose weight.
"I'm not looking into this problem until you lose 20 pounds, stop smoking and drinking, and cut sugar out of your diet.
No, that perfectly reasonable diagnosis you spent the last 4 months learning about is invalid because I didn't come up with it.
I diagnose you as woman."
Now that you’re here with a complex fracture, you have to just take acetaminophen abd ibuprofen because we were irresponsible.
🤷♀️
Thank you. Come again.
Reality: Loses me in the system for a simple surgery, and despite my GP angrily telling them I need one, they still haven't set up an appointment. (I guess they ignore GPs too)
In my 40s, I got a kidney infection that almost killed me. Turns out I have a congenital problem and the kidney had been deteriorating for years.
Just some doctor ineptitude. 🤷🏻♀️
I also had my primary care Dr. tell me last year about a chronic cough I had for over a year “Yeah, old people get that a lot”. 🤦♀️
(The cough did finally stop about 3 months later).
And I’m real tired.
"Prolly best not to remind your PATIENT of that time he almost sued your hospital" sure shut his arrogant mouth.
https://www.heart.org/en/health-topics/house-calls/women-vs-men-heart-attack-symptoms
According to my mom and sister, it's because of periods.
I thought it was the most astonishing thing I ever heard…until she told us about Tuskegee
study, which had only ended a few years previously.
JESUS CHRIST! HOW IN THE HELL ARE YOU STILL UP AND WALKING AROUND?
Hummm, I have a job and I need to work, so I can pay YOU to fix what you just found.
See, this right here is why I didn’t break out the tissues when that insurance CEO got shot in broad daylight in the middle of NYC.
Keep shooting comrades.
What is this magical medical insurance? Lol
Thanks dude. Didn't help at all
Based on false statistics about addiction to prescription opiates the CDC invented, it’s actually rare. Suicides & OD deaths are skyrocketing.
Matthew Perry lost his upper teeth from it.
Me: I’ve had a period for three solid weeks. Dr: You need to lose weight.
Me: My ear hurts, lots of pressure. Dr: You need to lose weight.
Infuriating.
Sadly disillusioned 😬