Wait, so you’re telling me my doctors won’t actually break into my residence illegally and discover that my wife is cheating with me with an opossum, making me contract a rare amoeba that can only be cured by injecting my spinal cord with pastrami?
Best we can do is have your doctor cripplingly addicted to vicodin
sigh
. . . Fine.
shrugs
HMO, what can ya do?
Have you tried getting more vitamin d?
What did you just call them??
getaloada this fancy pants with his primary care physician
Yeah it was a bit unbelievable how they would get involved with the patients personal life. I worked with a guy a while ago who I was very confident was cheating on his wife. I didn’t call his wife to tell her or tell him to knock it off.B
Pretty sure it’s lupus
It’s never lupus.
In the US medical system, the people are represented by two separate but equally important groups: the HMO’s, who perpetrate crime, and the pharmaceutical companies that profit from it. These are their stories.
DUN DUNN
I’d watch that show.
The craziest thing that demonstrates how shitty our healthcare system is, is that they made a goddamn movie 25 years ago about a guy holding people hostage in a children’s hospital at gunpoint to get his child a surgery when payment was denied and nobody found that premise outlandish.
The movie was generally underrated, sadly.
Did you sit down and watch the whole movie and not just the dramatic moments as YouTube clips? Outside of a few good Denzel moments, the movie was just awful in terms of dialogue, pacing, and blunt ‘foreshadowing’
Yea message was important movie was meh
John Q was not a good film.
An adult friend made me watch that as a kid. I do not like thrillers, and I have cardiophobia (I can’t look at, listen to, or be too aware of biological hearts), which is very relevant to that movie. Also I was too young and wide-eyed to appreciate those kinds of systemic issues. So that was not a fun time, and I won’t forget it.
Or if you’re a woman, they won’t bother trying and tell you you’re imagining things. Because a medical degree can’t cure being a jackass.
You have sudden onset chest pains and lethargy? Well I see your boobs are nicely sized but the rest of you could lose weight, I prescribe you with diet and exercise and diagnose you with anxiety because you thought you needed to come in. I can prescribe you both control if you continue to be anxious.
I believe the hospital in House was also a college and the cases were for study purposes. Patients getting treated was just a side effect of the experimentation…
And there was an oft-maligned “clinic” where stupid people would go to be harassed by House when he was being punished with working a shift there.
Yes. Basically, doctor House had enough of a reputation to justify having a whole team.
I had a couple seizures several years ago. Full on grand mal with an ER trip and all that fun.
The response from doctors has consistently been “yeah, sometimes people just have seizures.” They did CT scans, didn’t see anything abnormal and aren’t really interested in investigating more. Solution was that I’m just going to take anticonvulsants for the rest of my life.
I’m going through a very similar thing except with blood clots and anticoagulants. I was in the hospital for 3 days for a pulmonary embolism, but the docs couldn’t figure out why. Instead, they just put me on the blood thinners for life.
This is a big bummer because I have a pretty active lifestyle (cycling, caving, scuba) and being on the meds means I can’t feel safe doing these things anymore.
I’m trying right now to talk to different doctors and see if there’s a way to safely stop the meds but I’m fighting against their flow charts that simply say this is the reality from now on.
Sorry to hear that. Are you better now?
Yeah - as long as I’m on Keppra I don’t have them.
It was just terrifying to wake up out of nowhere being carried by EMTs, spend a day in the hospital, be told “yeah idk go see a neurologist” and then just have to figure it out? Follow up with a neurologist was “yeah sometimes it happens, just don’t drive for the next six months.”
Don’t forget “you’re over 30, your body just does that now”
There is a lot of truth in that though haha.
But yeah, it sucks seeing stories of people getting told that it is just growing old, while they have a chronic illness.
I mean, this but unironically. There’s a lot of muscular-skeletal issues that you get from… sitting in an office chair for 20 years. Or not getting tons of physical activity for most of your adult life. Or various deterioration of this or that bodily function from over/under-utilization or simple wear-and-tear.
Ask a Sports Medicine doctor what to do about compounded injuries and most of what you’ll get is “We can replace the part that’s broken” or “Stop doing the thing that’s causing you injury”. After that, there’s no miracle cure that’s going to make decades of strains and bruises and stress injuries just vanish.
I’ve sustained far more injuries sitting at a desk than I ever did as a soldier, or manual laborer.
Then you were very lucky.
Met a guy last week who found himself next to two different IEDs while in Afghanistan and then Iraq. He had far more scars to show for it than I ever did as a desk jockey.
Obviously war time duty in a warzone is far more dangerous. I’m not trying to imply that sitting at a desk is more dangerous than fighting in a war. I’m saying that physical labor is better for your body than sitting on your ass.
I got “don’t worry, it should go away by the time you’re 30”
I was 19 at the time, and it did not
Nichojou?
I haven’t seen it (don’t watch almost any anime), but I tracked it down. Here’s the link timed to the start of the conversation: Azumanga Daioh Episode 4 Subbed - Pool Pool Pool (HQ)
Oh thanks!
… I mean, have you tried diet, exercise, and sleeping more? For more than a week or two?
Outside of a drama TV show where a 1 in a billion case shows up once a week, that’s usually a good start.
Not sure if you’re in community with many women or POC that feel comfortable speaking to you about these things, but VERY basic issues aren’t even being looked into. PCOS and cancer are two common ones. Things can vary place to place, but it seems like a pretty universal experience in my circles.
I mean I’m not a woman or PoC and I still get that same advice from doctors.
And as someone that’s worked in healthcare before, a lot, if not most, of what people go to doctors for is trivial or psychosomatic, so if they did a full range of tests for everyone that says they get headaches, then people with genuine conditions would be in an even worse place as they need to wait for resources to free up.
I did not say that only women or PoC get this suggestion, just that it’s common for their issues to be dismissed. I don’t know your personal medical history, but sometimes it is just that people need better diet and exercise. That does apply to women and PoC too. It’s possible that advice is or is not salient to your health, but I can speak from personal experience that it is used to dismiss life threatening conditions.
I don’t know where you live, but 1/3 of Americans don’t have a primary care physician and almost half of Americans didn’t get medical treatment due to costs in 2022 from a cursory search. This is not a population that can afford frivolous medical visits. I don’t know where in the medical field you worked, but your assertion does not seem evidence based. That may well be your personal experience, but that is subject to so many biases and if you were not giving people a full range of tests, how could you even know you weren’t turning away legitimately sick people. Maybe the medical field was not right for you if you truly believe it’s possible that most issues people seek treatment for are trivial or psychosomatic.
That is a very good point.
Appreciate your willingness to see things from another perspective and update your thoughts based on that.
Fun fact, both pcos and cancer have strong links to obesity as a major aggravating factor.
Then they should potentially be even more likely to be correctly diagnosed in people that are overweight. Having issues exacerbated by your weight does not mean that your weight is the issue. Additionally, PCOS and cancer can both cause weight issues, so it’s even less helpful to suggest that the weight is the issue if the weight could be caused by an underlying disease.
I did, it made my condition worse, thanks.
I sincerely doubt that, but if you’d like to elaborate I’ll listen.
They made a top level comment about a previously-unknown heart defect. Diet and exercise doesn’t fix a hole in the heart
Did they post anything to support that claim?
Diet and exercise can fix most “holes in the heart”. Even if they are the 0.01%, that doesn’t change my message for every single other person.
My previous misdiagnosis put me on meds that hid my symptoms and covid had my doctor’s office telling us that if we had no concerns, to not come in. By the time my symptoms began to show even with the meds, my heart was the size of a football (gridiron football, not association football) and required a transplant. Any increased effort made me nearly pass out.
I get where you’re coming from, MOST OF THE TIME diet and exercise are better than not. My circumstances were pretty atypical too, but lets not act like telling anyone that walks into a hospital just needs to jog their ailments away is the way to go. A lot of doctors would do well to try just a little harder, it likely would have saved me from needing to wait for another person to die to be able to continue to live.
I’m very sorry that happened to you. My problem was with your phrasing. As I’m sure you know: eating better, working out, and sleeping more did not make your condition worse. I interpreted that as what you claimed.
You were a victim of malpractice and negligence, not living a more healthy life.
Yeah, I know that. I just bristle at the thought of being told to lose weight instead of actually getting the help I needed. I don’t ACTUALLY think that stuff made me worse off. It was mostly the look on the doctor’s face when I told him I WAS working out and eating better, and he laughed in my face because I was gaining weight. Too bad I was retaining fluids… There’s a lot more to the story, but I don’t care to get into it.
Can you tell I’m a bit salty? Sorry for the trauma dump.
I don’t know what their situation is like, but with ME/CFS, for example, anything more than light exercises will actively make things worse: https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Exercise
I lost 80 pounds and my stomach still hurts a ton when ever I eat, what’s the next step doctor?
Doc: *surprised Pikachu face *
“Uhh cigarettes are bad for you?”
I was told by a doctor at 12 that I should never drink soda, caffeine, alcohol, or smoke to try to reduce stomach pain.
Also I’m a male so it can’t be period pains or pregnancy.
Haha oh yeah and I was in character responding to your fake useless doctor.
The things lazy doctors always wanna blame: Weight Pregnancy Period Smoking Lack of sleep Stress
The last one is fun, because how do you argue you’re not stressed? I can prove I’m not the other ones. But I’m here for the 4th time this year, I spent all last weekend vomiting after following the laid out diet perfectly, yes, yes I’m stressed!
I’m just playing off the fact that no matter what your problem is doctors will always tell you to stop smoking.
Broke your arm? Stop smoking.
Etc etcIt’s really fucking shit honestly, I’ve left doctors over that.
Yes, I know I need to quit smoking, but that’s an entirely separate issue from whatever the fuck is causing my foot to swell up like a balloon
I know what you say is true in your case.
But it is unfortunatly not that uncommon that people have to amputate a leg or 2 due to complications from smoking.
Fuck off.
Sounds like you need a poop transplant
My, at the time unknown, genetic heart defect was treated with “lose weight, fatty.”
My, at the time unknown degenerative collagen coding defect was also treated as “lose weight fatty”, I lost weight, without even trying, because it turns out collagen is an important tissue structure in a functional digestive system. I lost weight too fast, I lost a lot of lean muscle as well as fat.
Turns out muscle is important for holding your joints together if you don’t have quality collagen to do that job.
Suddenly the real cause of my symptoms was evident, but I never got an apology for years of misdiagnosis and being blamed for my own illness.
Fun fact, one of the many things I was told to do as part of proper treatment was gain weight! (albeit, muscle weight)
Now I’m starting to get cardiopulmonary symptoms, which makes sense, your heart and lungs also have collagen. I don’t have a specialist at the moment, and recently had to find a new GP because my old GP said I need to “exercise more” to prevent my new symptoms… Even though my physical therapist says my level of activity is more than enough and if my lungs aren’t physically structured properly, no amount of cardio workouts will help me breathe properly.
I actually know people who died because they had cancer, but the doctor kept refusing to do actual examinations and just said “Oh uhh… just get more potassium or something…”
Not bothering to look further until it was too late… It’s very sad
Sleeping more isn’t always possible, but if you haven’t tried diet and exercise, that should be your first move.
People think that question is not taking their disease seriously, but it’s the other way around. People don’t take diet and exercise seriously enough. They’re ultra powerful determiners of health, including mental health.
Binging Chubbyemu vids last night sure makes it seem like that’s not exactly true… There are far too many that begin with “presenting to the ER visibly fucked, the doctor just tells them it’s anxiety and to stop being a little bitch about it. But it wasn’t anxiety and they were not, in fact, a little bitch.”
You forgot the inflection. “Pre👆🏻SENting to the emergency room…”
“Let’s do some imaging on you that will cost you hundreds of dollars and pay me thousands”
Alternatively
“Have you considered that you’re faking it?”
