What’s Up, Doc? These Medical Mistakes Were Mind-Boggling
Doctors have a really tough job. They hold people’s lives in their hands, and their split-second decisions and diagnoses can completely change patients’ futures.
This also means that sometimes, they make colossal mistakes that they can never go back from. Here, doctors and patients share the worst screw-up diagnoses they’ve ever given or gotten.
1. Do Panic
My mom was always exhausted. Like, she’d have a bath and get so worn out from it that she’d sleep on the bath mat when she got out. She went to her doctor and he told her, “Oh, you’re just depressed, go get a haircut!” She did.
but she was still exhausted. So she went back to the doctor, but he just continued to tell her she was just depressed.
He told her to get a hobby; that it was all in her head, etc. He never sent her for blood work or referred her to any specialist. Months later, she went back. That’s when everything changed. Her regular doctor was on vacation and the physician relieving her doctor took one look at her eyes and nearly gasped. He said, “It’s your liver. Get these blood tests now.”
Some blood tests and a liver biopsy later, she was told she had autoimmune hepatitis and was three months from dying. After she improved with medications, she went back to the original doctor and said, “I didn’t need a haircut.”
27 years later she still suffers from lingering effects; though, all things told, she was super lucky.
2. A New Lease On Life
I’m a lawyer. I had a client who was given a devastating diagnosis of an extremely rare heart condition. The doctor told him he had six weeks to live. He contacted me to make his will and set his affairs in order.
Thankfully, he sought a second opinion with an extremely well-known cardiologist who was intrigued due to the rare nature of this heart condition.
THERE WAS NOTHING WRONG WITH HIM. HE WAS FINE. This poor guy and his family were so tortured over this; so devastated and terrified FOR NOTHING.
He actually called me to tell me all of this, and he seemed to be still in a joyous mood, but I imagine anger comes at some point when you take stock of what you went through.
I don’t know how a doctor screws up that massively, or if somehow my client’s results were mixed up with someone else’s. Hopefully, it's just the former.
3. Soon You’ll Get Better
Well, when I first started feeling sick in my first year at college, I had a non-productive cough, night sweats, trouble sleeping, and I had lost some weight. The school nurse gave me some Claritin.
All of those symptoms only got worse; plus, I was incredibly fatigued. My lymph nodes swelled up and I had pretty bad backaches.
My doctor took a chest X-ray and prescribed antibiotics for pneumonia. At this point, I had almost failed out of school because I was only managing an hour or two of sleep per night. It took until spring break for me to go see a pulmonary specialist. He could instantly tell that it wasn't pneumonia. Then, it suddenly got worse.
He told me I had stage 4B Hodgkin's Lymphoma. My first PET scan showed cancerous cells in lymph nodes in all four quadrants of my body. By then, I had lost about a third of my body weight.
The cough, weight loss, and back pain were my swollen lymph nodes pressing on my lungs, stomach, and my back. They gave me my first round of chemo and I genuinely felt the worst I'd ever felt.
I felt so awful that an IV mixture of (carefully measured) toxins was what gave me improvement. I went home and ate a whole pizza. Chemo got worse but it worked, so I guess I can't complain too much.
4. Not So Mellow Yellow
I was the patient. When I was in college, I went to the doctor because I was peeing razors. It progressed pretty rapidly and by the end of the week, I couldn’t walk or even sleep.
The doctor asked me about my bedroom life when I went in for a consult. I told him the truth: That my girlfriend and I had only been with each other, and we had been together for many years.
He sort of scoffed at that and told me it was likely chlamydia that was bothering me. He had a long, condescending speech about safe intimacy with me and sent me home. That was that. Well, a week later my urine tests came back.
Turns out I had the worst bladder infection they’d ever seen. I had to have a camera shoved up there, multiple rounds of antibiotics, and to this day I struggle to urinate due to the irreversible damage the infection caused. Thanks a lot, doc.
