Not everyone's perfect, but these doctors really dropped the ball. From a disgusting lack of empathy to some serious mistakes, these medical encounters are truly disappointing.
1. Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number
I once had a doctor say to me “You’re too young for that sort of pain, so I don't think you really have pain, do you?" I went to another doctor and they also said: “It’s growing pains”.
I was 23, and by the time I was 28, my liver was so damaged that I almost died from an autoimmune disease.
2. A Waste Of Time
I went to the doctor's to get my chest checked. He basically just held and caressed me in a seemingly unprofessional manner, but at the time, I didn't realize it. Due to my chest causing me a lot of physical pain, I asked him about my options regarding a reduction surgery. His response shocked me. He got visibly angry and told me to never even think about it.
He even went as far as to call them "beautiful and tender". He was well in his 50s, and I was 18 or 19 at the time. So basically, I paid like 50 dollars for Master Roshi to ignore my health issues and leave me no choice but to find another doctor who actually wanted to help me find a solution.
3. A Weighted Issue
I’ve been overweight my entire life. I gained 65 lbs on top of my 220 lbs with my first pregnancy. I didn’t care for my OB. He was very arrogant and talked down to everyone, including his staff. I gave birth to a 10 ½ pound baby boy.
At my six-week check-up, I was sitting on the exam table in the quiet room. As I was waiting, I heard papers rustling outside the door. Then I heard a man’s voice ask a question that made my heart sink. “Is this my fatty?"
I heard a mumbled reply. I wanted to cry, yell, and scream, but I kept quiet. The doctor came in and did his exam. He was removing the staples from my belly when he gave a little chuckle. I asked why he was laughing, and he said, “You’re crooked". I said, “Excuse me," as I had no idea what he was talking about.
He said, “You're lopsided down there". I didn’t know what to say, so I said nothing. After a minute of silence, he said, “Well, it’s not like you’ll ever be wearing a bikini!"
4. That’s Your Opinion
I would constantly complain to my doctor that I couldn’t breathe when I would walk and I would get shortness of breath, I was always tired and fatigue, I would get dizzy if I walked too long. She always brushed it off and told me to get more sleep or drink more water even though I was getting plenty of both.
Finally I made an appointment to talk to her face to face and she flat out just told me I was lazy and needed to exercise more. I was so embarrassed because I went with my husband and she made me feel like I was just this lazy couch potato. It took so much for me not to cry.
I switched doctors and my new doc decided to do blood work, which is something that other lady should have done in the first place. They found out I was severely anemic to the point of needing blood transfusions. I felt so much better after I got my infusions. Some people just shouldn’t be practicing medicine!
5. A Real Pain In My Gut
I was hit by a tractor-trailer on the side of a highway while working as a firefighter. The impact almost ended me, leaving me with crush injuries and fractures to my femur, hip, pelvis, eleven ribs, and clavicle. The back of my knee had been ripped open, big enough for you to fit your fist in it.
I also had abdominal injuries with severe internal bleeding from a liver laceration. I was in a coma for several weeks, during which time my abdomen was cut open and packed to stop the bleeding. When I finally woke up, I was in horrible pain.
I wasn't going to be able to walk for several months, I couldn't lay on my side, and everything I did caused me the worst pain I could imagine anyone going through. Almost immediately, a select few doctors told me, “We need to get you off pain medication”.
About a month after my crash, I was discharged from the ICU and sent to a rehabilitation center to try to help improve my ability to care for myself and transfer myself to a wheelchair. I ended up developing pain in my abdomen that was worse than any of the pain I had previously in my recovery.
I was transferred to the ER because of how bad it was. Tons of IV pain meds would not touch it, and the pain was not going away. Scans and blood work were performed, but I was told nothing was found, so I was sent back to the rehabilitation center. Then disaster struck. I was sent back to the ER after hours of worsening pain and screaming for them to help me.
When I arrived back in the ER, I was treated coldly by the doctor and the nurse. Eventually, I was told point blank, “Nothing is wrong with you, you are a healthy young man with no reason to have abdominal pain. You are obviously looking for pain medication, but we will not give you any more”. My wife and I were flabbergasted.
My injuries were still fresh and something was very wrong inside my abdomen, but I was being treated as an addict. Luckily, I saw a different doctor walking by and we caught her attention. She was the Director of the ER and looked into the situation. Apparently, the treating doctor did not even read my file, so he had no idea about the injuries I was healing from.
I was assigned a different doctor and nurse, who did a thorough assessment and found a huge amount of blood in my stool and fluid in my abdomen. I ended up being diagnosed with a rare type of infection in my small intestine. Needless to say, I will NEVER go back to that ER.
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6. Surprise!
I’m 33, had a yearly check-up, and all that. I told her I was having to pee frequently and my stomach hurt, she interrupted me and said it was normal. She did a pap that day and made a joke about my cervix being closed…I bled during the pap which I don’t usually do. I started having pains a few days later and I’m thinking UTI. I called the office they had me go pee in a cup, didn’t hear back for a few days and called again to find out they destroyed the sample because I wasn’t scheduled correctly?
They called in antibiotics and I was still having pain and the symptoms of a UTI so I went up there. They didn’t allow walk-in appointments but had me pee in a cup again. This time it was positive for a UTI so more antibiotics and the pain still didn’t go away.
I made myself an appt at an OB-GYN and had an ultrasound—and they made an incredible discovery. I was 6 months pregnant by that point. I found out I was pregnant and found out the gender on the same day. I genuinely had no idea and I didn’t really have any of the normal pregnancy symptoms.
If she had listened to her patient we could have caught the pregnancy at 3 months rather than 6. I was high risk because of her negligence. And the stress of having 3 months to prepare for a baby did not do me any favors either.
7. All Pain, No Gain
When I was 13, I was rollerblading and I dislocated my knee. I didn’t have a cell phone, and I was in a secluded residential neighborhood alone at like, 1:30 in the afternoon on a weekday. So, I just laid there for a couple of hours until an adult found me and I called my grandma. Because I’d been laying there so long, by the time I got to the hospital, I was still in a lot of pain, but I had pretty much calmed down.
My knee had popped immediately back into place, so it was not visibly dislocated. They took my blood pressure, and it was normal. Between my lack of tears, my normal BP, and the fact that my knee was only swollen, the doctor refused to do any imaging. He told me nothing was wrong with me, and then lectured me about wasting the ER’s time.
He told me if I had truly suffered that injury, he would be able to see it and that I'd be howling in agony. His mistake will haunt me for life. I kept going to the doctor to have it looked at though because it kept hurting. Every six months for two years, I was still in a lot of pain. The doctor refused to ever do any imaging and just kept telling me there was nothing wrong.
At the year-and-a-half mark, he told me that I was never getting my hands on pain pills and he even went as far recommend that I see a mental health therapist. Turns out, I have a connective tissue disorder that both makes injuries like mine more common, and also causes me to have low blood pressure, meaning that my “normal” BP in the ER was actually an elevated one for me.
I was 15 when I finally got them to see something was wrong, and I was referred to PT. My knee never went back to how it was before the injury, and the PT told me I could have regained all my strength if Id pursued PT right away.
8. Not So Cute
I had HPV and CIN3 pre-cancerous lesions on my cervix, which was the last stage before actual cancer, when I was 25.
The doctor who did my LEEP surgery says, and I quote, “Well this disease you have will probably make it very hard for you to have cute little babies in the future. Do you understand what I’m saying?" I could have slapped her right there.
I was 25, had already completed a master’s degree, was well-traveled, educated, and spoken. I also knew nearly as much as the doctors about cervical cancer, as every woman on my mom’s side of the family had had it. In no way did she need to speak to me like was 5 years old. Nor did she have to refer to HPV that way.
She apparently did a decent job with the procedure, as the margins were clear and I went on to have 2 cute little babies. But seriously, her bedside manner needs A LOT of work.
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9. Wasting My Breath
I was in 6th grade and had recently been diagnosed with asthma. Our pharmacy took about two weeks to fill a prescription, so my mom had planned to pick it up that afternoon. On this particular day, we were taking the pacer test in PE. I was in the twentieth lap, and I started to feel out of breath.
My PE teacher noticed, and she wrote me a nurse pass. When I got to the nurse’s office, I told her that I had asthma and that I needed to call my mom so she could bring my inhaler to me. “There’s no mention of asthma in your file” she said as she looked at me skeptically.
I told her, “Yeah, I know. I just learned that I had it a few weeks ago”. She told me, “Go back to class, Scarlett. You’re fine”. So I went back to class and started the test over. Around the fifteenth lap, I felt the same tightening in my chest, but I convinced myself it was fine.
By lap twenty, the tightening was really bad, and by lap thirty, I was struggling to stay upright. I went to the nurse again. It was even worse than before. She looked at me with angry, judgmental eyes and asked what I needed. I told her I couldn’t breathe and that I needed to call my mom.
She looked me right in the eyes and said, “You know, I’m really tired of kids faking asthma for attention. YOU ARE FINE. I do not want to see you in my office again, Scarlett. Do I make myself clear”? I ran out of the nurse's office, struggling to breathe with tears in my eyes.
I turned around, determined to talk to the principal, and that is when I supposedly passed out. I woke up in the ER and was told that I had only had 18% lung capacity when I came in due to asthma.
10. Falling On Deaf Ears
I messed up my knee in a crash. I saw a physiotherapist who said it appears the muscle is in a dormant state and the joint is twisted. They gave me a few exercises but never made a follow-up appointment.
A few years later, my knee was in the same condition but I decided to play rugby—stupid, I know—where I did some more damage. I could barely walk 20 feet without it swelling and the muscle going into spasm. I saw a doctor who kept saying I'm a lazy couch potato and need to lose weight. I was over 200 pounds, so a little on the large side. He arranged an appointment a little over a month later, telling me to try to lose 6 pounds or more.
Fast forward to the following month and I was 12 pounds lighter than last time. The doctor’s reaction was devastating. He just looked at me in disgust and said he refused to help me if I'm not going to lose weight, opened the door, and shouted into the hallway that my elbow won't get any better if I won't lose weight. I told him I have not mentioned my elbow, I have lost weight, and if he wants to start shouting stuff like that into the hallway, he can eat me and I want a second opinion.
I was blacklisted from that surgery. I lodged a complaint and appealed it with it being overturned. I spoke to someone else who put me on a waiting list to see a physiotherapist again. It's been nearly 10 years and I have not heard anything more about it. I've asked about it and they said I needed to speak to the doctor who put me on the waiting list, but they've retired and when I spoke to someone else, they said there's nothing they can do but recommend I stop being a bloody couch potato.
11. Last But Not Least
When I was having my last child—number eight—I had a screening blood test to check for abnormalities. The results came back that my baby had a 1:25 chance of having Down syndrome, so the hospital booked me in to see the specialist. I went in to see the doctor and he told me that he had booked me in for nine days' time.
I asked what I was booked in for. His response stunned me. He said: “A termination”. I asked him what made him think I wanted one and he answered, “You have seven kids already, you don't need this”! I just stood up and walked out.
The attending nurse followed, apologizing profusely for the doctor. I just asked her when my next prenatal appointment was and I went home. Every time I went in, the doctor threw comments around about parents who were going to have disabled kids and how mean it was to the child.
I ignored him. I went into labor and had a normal and healthy child who did not have Down syndrome, not that that would have mattered. He was mine and I would have loved him no matter what.
12. Willful Blindness
I fell over and immediately knew something was terribly wrong with my knee. Then I waited for hours in A&E with it out straight propped up on a wheelchair. A doctor comes, takes a cursory look at an x-ray, and tells me: “Stop crying over a small scrape”—but then it got worse.
She then violently tries to bend my knee, which had totally seized up. They told my mum she had to make me walk on it.
A week or so later there's clearly some kind of review of X-rays, and I'm called in to see a specialist. It turns out I'd fractured my leg and chipped my kneecap, and the chip had damaged my cartilage. I pretty much had to learn to walk again with over a year of physio and hydrotherapy. The specialist asked if I could see what was wrong with the X-ray and even a child could spot the problems. I have no idea how the doctor missed it.
13. Words Of Encouragement?
When I was applying for admission to medical school, I went for my first interview at a school in Cleveland. The first words out of the Dean’s mouth were, “Why are you wasting my time? You’ll never get into any medical school, and even if you did, you’d flunk out within the first six weeks”.
After the interview, I was totally crushed. My lifelong dream of becoming a physician was seemingly gone forever. Fortunately, I had a wonderful physician father who encouraged me to keep pursuing my goal.
I got into medical school and didn’t flunk out in the first six weeks. I finished in the upper third of my class. When I was selected by New York Magazine as one of the top doctors in my specialty, I sent the Dean of Admissions copies of the magazines, letting him know how wrong he had been.
He claimed to an intermediary that when he told me that, he “was just trying to encourage me”.
14. Creep Doesn’t Quite Cover It
When I was 19, my primary care doctor (male) told me he could do a pap smear for me at my physical. When I told him I already had a gynecologist he said: “I can do it professionally or personally”. Needless to say, I never saw him again and reported him.
15. Haste Makes Waste
I heard this story repeated while I was working in a hospital. A guy was gravely injured due to being shot in the face. There was no chance of recovery and he was expected to die within a very short period of time. An intern walks in and, without realizing it, says the most horrible thing.
He asks: "Is this the guy we are going to harvest the kidneys from”? The doomed patient was reported to have reacted by briefly bolting up into a sitting position. I hope it’s not true…but I heard they did get the kidneys.
16. No Quitting Until I Found A Cure
The doctor called to tell me what was wrong and prefaced it with, “Give your kids to their father. Quit school. You’re way too sick to do either”. This was said over the phone. I was a grad student at Stanford, single parenting, broke, had just started my dissertation and now I was diagnosed with “severe and crippling rheumatoid arthritis”.
I told the doctor his bedside manner sucked and hung up the phone. I didn't give up the kids, I refused the steroids, spent hours at the med school library reading texts and journals to understand RA, and devised my own protocol. It was slow, but it worked and in a year I was pain-free.
17. I Had A Bone To Pick With That Doc
My 16-year-old daughter was kicked by a horse while working at a stable. It was not a vicious hit, however, the fact that he was a Clydesdale cross with saucer-sized hooves probably made a difference. At the ER, they found a fractured fibula.
Other than a few stitches, no one thought much about the quarter-sized plug of skin and tissue that blew out of the front of her shin from the force on the side. The follow-up appointment was made with an orthopedist. He gave her a prescription for ibuprofen, and she was not permitted to ride or shovel manure.
A few weeks passed, but she was not feeling better; she still had considerable pain. Her leg would get cold, but she attributed it to being encased in a cast. She tried to be stoic, but we wondered if something else was going on. The orthopedist spent barely two minutes with her, told her she was fine, to stop complaining, and to return in a few weeks for cast removal, which we did.
The wound in the front of her shin had scarred. The leg looked pale, a little wasted, and hairy. Just the usual, except that it wasn’t. The pain didn’t stop. She tried stretching and exercising, but it only increased. After another month or two, the pain continued, increasing to sharp, burning, and electrical jabs.
The pain was constant and debilitating. She was whimpering in her sleep. We took one last trip to the orthopedist. She described the burning and electrical pain, the periods of cold-feeling flesh, and the hair growth. I explained about her whimpering and tossing and assured him that, for her to do that, it’s got to be severe.
He rolled his eyes and whipped out a tape measure, encircling first one calf and then the other, and pronounced both legs exactly the same in girth and told her there was nothing wrong with her. I asked, “But what about all of this pain? I mean, she’s actually whimpering in her sleep”. He said, “Tell her to bite her lip”, and with that, he was gone.
We thought that there was nothing else that could be done, so she went on this way for months. One day, it was so bad that we headed to the emergency room. After examining and actually listening to her, the Head of Orthopedics said, “It’s obvious. She has Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy stemming from the fracture and the tissue damage over the shin”.
18. Fuming With Age
I had my first miscarriage at 40 years old when I was eight and a half weeks along. It was BAD. It happened in the bath but was in too much physical and emotional shock to think that I should probably call an ambulance or go to the ER.
I cleaned the tub and then went downstairs to make my kids dinner, all while still bleeding profusely. I put the kids to bed and my boyfriend called to say goodnight, as he was out of town at the time. I told him what happened and he tried to convince me to go to the ER.
I played it down, thinking that if I made it the last couple hours, I was fine, and didn't need the ER. The next day, I went to my OB/GYN for a follow-up. First, he told me I was overreacting, and if I was bleeding that bad the night before, I would have gone to the ER. He quickly changed his tune.
After getting some bloodwork results back that showed I had lost a lot of blood and was severely anemic, he yelled at me for not going to the ER. All while he did the exam and acted like I was wasting his time. But then he truly infuriated me. As I was bleeding on the table, mourning the loss of my baby, he started lecturing me that, “at my age", I shouldn't be having any more kids.
He said it was good I miscarried, it was probably deformed, and started talking about how he can make arrangements for me to be “sterilized” as soon as possible, and was practically standing over me demanding I sign the papers consenting to surgery. I did not.
19. Heart Pumping Head Case
I was in the second grade when I got really, really sick to the point that I was hospitalized due to dehydration. I couldn’t keep ANYTHING down for days on end, not even water! Even so, I got better, and I was discharged from the hospital with flying colors on all the tests.
I was healthy by their standards, yes. But I was never the same after that illness. Even though the illness was gone, I began to get odd symptoms. I began to experience chronic nausea, acid reflux, and stomach pain. I had regular cluster headaches that didn’t respond to any pain medication.
I was dizzy and tired all the time, especially when I stood. I was unable to run and play like a normal kid; I would pass out or throw up. I began not wanting to go to school, not wanting to see my friends, to leave the house, to do anything. I couldn’t eat much, I couldn’t sleep much, and I couldn’t play much.
I would cry to my parents and the school, telling them how sick I felt and how I just wanted to go home and go to bed. It was brushed off as anxiety. When I was nine, my parents finally took me to a doctor to see what was happening. The doctor looked at me and told me one thing that changed my life forever. "It’s in your head”.
After that tiny statement, I was told I had anxiety. I felt like I was crazy for years and YEARS! Finally, I began to believe them. I started to develop actual anxiety due to being told I had anxiety all my life. I went to therapist after therapist, and none of them could help me.
Then when I was 16, I went to the doctor for a routine check-up when he noticed my heart rate was 101 bpm. He decided to try something to see if standing and sitting affected my heart rate, and it did! When I went from lying down to standing, my heart rate rose from 100 to 160. My doctor knew something was wrong.
Finally, he ordered tests for me. Apparently, I developed postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome after being sick, a chronic illness that causes every symptom I had. Being validated was the most wonderful feeling in the world. I was sick, and it wasn’t in my head. There isn't a day that goes by when I am not angered by this man for not believing me.
20. We’re Done
In middle school, I was seeing a psychiatrist for generalized anxiety and panic disorder. I had been struggling with my weight because I was too anxious to eat, and at one point I was about 15 pounds underweight. I started taking antidepressants, and I gained weight once my anxiety started improving.
One day, my psychiatrist brought me over to a scale so he could weigh me. He told me that I needed to watch what I was eating because I was “starting to get fat”. I was FINALLY at the low end of a healthy weight after struggling for months, and it was such a hit to my self-esteem after all the progress I had made. I broke out in tears as soon as he said it. It crushed me. My mom yelled at him, and we walked out of his office and never came back
21. Mistaken Identity
I once told the wrong family member that her mother was coding. I have a decent excuse, but it was horrible.
It was late enough at night that I was the only doc on, with just a handful of nursing and tech staff. As we go into those quieter hours, one by one the other doctors sign out their patients to the overnight staff and leave.
I got called into a room to run a code. They had already worked on this woman for twenty minutes en route in the ambulance. It wasn't looking very hopeful for a meaningful recovery. A woman in her 40s appears in the doorway and says she's the daughter.
If I'm the only doc on, I have to do the intubation, run the code, and speak with the family, sometimes it's all at the same time. Since she turned up and appeared to recognize the patient, I failed to confirm the patient’s name with the daughter, and instead launched into the delicate questions—how long had she been ill, how did this start? But I was making a terrible mistake.
It turns out, the daughter was actually the daughter of the previous patient in that room, who had been moved out to accommodate the arrival of the coding patient. When she came in, she told the front desk that she didn't need any help finding her mom's room, so she brought herself back. This was very unusual but the code was monopolizing the staff. Her mom had the same hair color, and there's all kinds of tubes obscuring the face during these times. Her actual mom was just fine, two doors down.
Well, the daughter didn't have a heart attack, so that was nice. And never will I ever again gloss over confirmation of identity, no matter how obvious it seems.
22. The One-Eyed Monster
I lost the sight in my eye when I was 11 years old after a car accident. I went to a check-up when I was 18, only to be told that the eye itself was shrinking and would continue to do so. This was a shock in itself. Then the doctor said, “Don’t worry though, we can always whip it out if it becomes an issue”.
The casual way he said “whip it out” was what did it. I left the hospital and promptly burst into tears. Thirty years later, I still have the eye.
23. Imagine That!
When I was 9 years old, my mom got pregnant. I was soooooooo excited to have a sibling. But a few years later, my mom finally told me what had happened before she told me she was pregnant. When she first found out, she was so happy. Her first check-up was fine.
She went back about a week after, and the doctor (a different one) did the ultrasound, looked at my mom, and simply said, “I’m sorry. You lost your baby". There was no explanation, nothing. My mom cried but went back home as if nothing had happened.
She told my stepdad but not me; I had no idea. But then came the "miracle". In the next two weeks, she realized she still had all the pregnancy symptoms and the same cravings. She was sure she hadn’t lost the baby. She went back and got an appointment with the same doctor as before.
When she explained that she was still experiencing all the pregnancy symptoms, he denied all of it. He told her she was having a phantom pregnancy, that she was too old—37—to have a baby, so she just imagined she was having one. She refused to accept it and demanded another doctor to do the ultrasound.
It took a while but finally, another doctor came to see my mom. It took him about a minute to find my brother with the ultrasound. The first doctor was so embarrassed, he didn’t even apologize. The first thing my mom did when she came home was tell me she was pregnant.
24. Second Opinions Save Lives
When I was 5, I woke my parents up in the middle of the night by yelling out to them. I woke up with my entire body hurting too much to even pull the covers off myself, never mind trying to walk, they came in and I was burning up, rushed me to the ER. The doctor looked at my mother and said: “He has a fever, haven’t you heard of a cool bath and a popsicle”? I've never seen my dad turn so red.
S as to not punch the doctor, my dad left the room and called my GP at home, who is a family friend. I was friends with his son, like sleepovers and all that, close.
My doctor called the ER. I have no memory of the next parts, but I was rushed by ambulance—the weather was too bad for an air ambulance—to the nearest capital city, 350km away, to a pediatric ICU. I had meningitis.
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25. If It Looks Like A Duck And Quacks Like A Duck
My doctor immediately said my symptoms were from an STI. Then doubled down saying I was lying about my bedroom activity.
Like, dude, I'm a grown adult. If I thought I had an STI, I would have said so. I told him I thought I had a kidney infection, he said it didn't make sense.
They did all the blood work, all negative for STIs. What was it? A freaking kidney infection.
Although he asked me before I left how I knew it was a kidney infection. I knew just what to say to make him even angrier. I told him I had been watching House MD and the symptoms matched.
26. Listen Up, Doc!
My infant son had chronic ear infections and persistent fluid build-up behind his ears. He had been on many courses of antibiotics and antihistamines, to no avail. He was now approaching eight months and I was telling the family doctor that I wanted to check into ear tubes because I was afraid he would lose his hearing. His response was, “You only need one ear to hear”.
27. A Sad Excuse For A Physician
I was 15 and going to see a gynecologist to get birth control. I had really heavy periods and chronic ovarian cysts, which going on the pill was supposed to help. On my first visit with my new OB/GYN, he looked me straight in the face and said, “Honey, I think you’re just depressed. Do you feel sad”?
I told him no, I was just in pain from the cysts rupturing. He proceeded to tell me, “Maybe we should do a hysterectomy. Sad girls like you shouldn’t be mothers, so it’s probably best”.
28. The Truth Hurts
After a horrific car accident, I was in unbearable pain. My doctor puts up my X-rays, looks down at me, and in the most condescending way said: "I hope you have a good attorney". He followed that up with: "You may never be the same again". I went from being in the best shape of my life to losing more than 50 pounds after the accident. I looked like a prisoner.
After months of painful physical therapy at a place I referred to as "Land of the misfit toys," I eventually made it back.
29. No Ibuprofen Is Going To Fix That
"Just take an ibuprofen". This was 3.5 months into what ended up as a 5-month stint with appendicitis. By the time they agreed to do surgery, my colon had fused to my abdominal wall from the scar tissue. It was such an intense layer of scar tissue that the surgeon bent the surgical tools trying to separate them during my first operation. Luckily the second operation was much more successful at actually removing my appendix and the lasting effects have been relatively minimal.
30. Teed Off
When my now 13-year-old daughter was about five, we were going through chronic UTIs. She had been hospitalized at about seven months with a kidney infection and, from that moment, she had a UTI about every three months. So, every time she ran a fever of 102 or higher, I would take her to the doctor so they could check her urine and put her on meds.
My ex-husband was in the service, so when we went to the clinic, it was very rare that we would see the same doctor. On this occasion, my daughter was running a fever, so I made her an appointment and brought her in. The doctor came in and said that it was probably a virus and to let it run its course.
I asked her to please check her urine. She told me it was unnecessary, never once pulling up her medical history on the computer. I proceeded to argue with her and explained why it needed to be done. She then told me that she would do it to appease me and told the nurse to get a catheter, as my daughter refused to go in a cup.
When the nurse came back with the catheter and they started to put it in, my daughter started to cry. Getting a catheter is not the best feeling. The doctor looked her in the eye and over and over again said, “Your mom is causing you this unnecessary pain. I’m so sorry. She is the reason why we are doing this and hurting you. You poor thing”.
I was LIVID and completely shocked. Needless to say, they checked the results and lo and behold she had a UTI and was put on antibiotics.
31. Never Too Young To Recognize A Jerk
I was 19 years old, married almost a year, and ten weeks pregnant back in 1972. I started bleeding and called my family doctor. He told me if I miscarried anything, to save it and bring it to the emergency room. I cried as I sat watching TV, and late that evening, it happened. I didn’t want to do it, but I brought it in.
In the morning, my husband had to go to work, so I went to the hospital alone. The emergency room doctor examined me and pronounced me, “Too young to even know if I was pregnant”. He did not believe I had even been pregnant. No one even wanted to see what I brought. I left in tears.
32. Lost And Found
The worst thing that a doctor said to me was that I had Bipolar Disorder. I was medicated for it, it didn't work, so he kept increasing the dose. Eventually, I was taking 800mg of Seroquel a day. I was so doped up I couldn't read. Dropped out of college. I couldn't sleep without it anymore, and when I tried I stood up for almost a week. Had to move back with my father, because I wasn't able to care for myself anymore. Ended up under observation. Doctor considered shock therapy.
After almost 10 years, 10 years lost, I had switched doctors, found a good therapist, and started the process to remove the meds.
It turns out I'm not bipolar, I'm autistic. I don't have mania, I have sensorial overload and hyperfocus. I act "weird" when put in chaotic situations because they overwhelm me. After 2 years of therapy, neurologist and psychiatrist appointments, and hundreds of pages of diaries and reports written, I finally got a proper diagnosis and I'm free from that.
But I'll never forgive my first doctor. I'm not getting those 10 years back. My mom passed on during that time, and I'm not getting her back either. I'm in college again, but the opportunities I lost are gone forever.
And the doctor? He's still out there.
33. Vindicated
Years back, I had surgery on my pinky finger to reattach a tendon I tore off the bone.
Surgeon gets in there finds no tendon to reattach and with permission from my wife takes a portion of the tendon from my wrist to replace the missing one and completes the op.
Being the klutz I am, I fall down some concrete steps and feel some pain in my arm, go to open the door to my house, and feel a POP in my forearm. Immediately know what it is and call the doctor’s office to see if there’s anything to be done.
I get the surgeon's assistant/trainee and tell them what happened and ask what to do as I have a lump in my forearm and pain. Her reaction was infuriating. She says they didn't operate on my wrist/forearm and basically, my pain medication is making me confused and no matter what I say keeps dismissing me.
So I call back and make a regular appointment for the same day and turn up. Guess who comes into the room with the hand surgeon but the assistant/trainee I fought with earlier.
She hears me retell my story and the whole time is looking at me like I'm wasting time and am what’s wrong with the world.
After I finish telling my side of things, I just say back and waited for karma to hit her. The surgeon says: "Well the lump, pop, and pain are probably the stitches in the tendon in your wrist coming undone". Making full eye contact, I just say "Oh really”? Very pointedly. The assistant didn't apologize but never met my eyes for the rest of the visit.
Unfortunately, I was the ultimate loser as there was nothing to be done to fix the "spare" tendon in my wrist, so I had to just let it shrivel up and be absorbed. It was really creepy having a lump slowly shrink up to my elbow and disappear.
34. A Stage 4 Stooge
I was 49 years old. I was at work, came home, and was told by my husband that the doctor called and told him that I had cancer. Yeah, huge breach of ethics, but that was far from all. He said I was Stage 4.
In any case, I soon went to the emergency room with a bucket in my lap because I was puking so bad. I needed emergency colon surgery as a melanoma was blocking my colon. The doctor started screaming—and I mean SCREAMING—at me that I wasn’t going to make it and I had only three months to live.
He kept on for what seemed like hours. I was terrified and helpless. He did the surgery and left for vacation. I was beyond sick. Hallucinating, they sent me home with a small bottle of Percocet. No counseling, no compassion, nothing. It was horrible. That was ten years ago. Obviously, I did fine.
35. Playing The Blame Game
After 20 years in the Army, some of us are going to develop a few issues along the way. I’m not too proud to say that it didn’t happen to me. I had kept all of my issues neatly compartmentalized for a long time. It was tough to seek help, but I went to my VA psychiatrist. What I encountered was her blaming me for my issues.
She said, “It’s all your fault, you know". I asked, “What is”? She replied, “Your anxiety, your PTSD. What did you expect, given the life you chose”? Her words were cold, and unexpected. I fired her and got another doctor as soon as possible, and am much better off today for cutting her loose.
36. Cold-Hearted
I was 19 years old and 21 weeks pregnant. I’d just been told at my 20-week scan that my cervix was dilating so I needed to take it easy, but baby was perfectly fine and healthy.
Not even a week after the scan I was in hospital with bleeding and contractions. A “threatened miscarriage” they called it. It was April 1st and I wished I was being fooled.
The next day the OB in charge came in to discuss the situation and I asked him if there was any way to stop the contractions and keep my baby in until he was viable. What she said made my blood run cold.
“Miscarriage is just natures quality control”
I gave birth that afternoon and my son survived for an hour before passing.
I complained and received a written apology from the doctor and in my subsequent pregnancy I refused him for my care.
37. Dissed & Dismissed
When I was 19, I had a UTI. I knew it was a UTI. I went to urgent care to get antibiotics as I hadn’t established a new doctor where I was going to school. He asked me if I was sexually active, I said yes and explained I had one partner and we used protection. The doctor insisted I had an STI, not a UTI, told me again that I definitely had an STI and when he got the labs back he’d send a prescription for antibiotics. I never did a urine sample or anything.
I felt so mortified. Labs came back within the next day or two negative for any STIs and I never heard from them again. The UTI spread to my kidneys and I was in terrible pain but was so beyond mortified and anxious about what happened in the urgent care that I didn’t follow up with anyone else until over a month later when I ended up in the ER on the verge of sepsis. My right kidney still has degraded function almost a decade later.
38. Focused On My Face
I woke up one day and found my arm was swollen to three times its normal size. I couldn’t bend it. I could barely move it without screaming. I made an emergency appointment with the physician who had taken over my doctor’s practice.
Luckily, my best friend was able to go with me. When we got there, we were called in fairly quickly, but when the doctor came in, I realized he wasn’t looking at my swollen arm. He zeroed in on my face. I hadn’t applied my makeup that morning.
He immediately started going off about my adult acne. I snapped after he literally told me, “This is why you are single”. I said, “I’m single because I choose to be. Get off the topic of my face and look at my arm! Did you go to Hollywood medical or what?"
He refused to do anything until I agreed to see a dermatologist. There was only one thing to do. My friend and I exchanged glances, stood up, and walked out. There was a hospital on our way back to my place and we decided to drop in. The second the triage nurse saw my arm she gasped, “Oh my! That looks painful”.
When the ER doctor came into the exam room, he was shocked. I was diagnosed with cellulitis and spent six days on IV antibiotics. Thank God my friend and I decided to go to the ER and get assessed there. Another day and I could’ve gone septic, and lost my arm or my life.
39. A Sick Joke
After a night caring for my miserably ill and hurting patient, I approached her physician before he started rounds, as he was running behind. I wanted to speak with him directly about her before I left. I said, “Do you have a moment to talk about Mrs Y in room 999? She’s had a really bad night and is still in a lot of pain”.
I was going to continue with relevant specifics to the case when he turned and snarled at me, “Well, DUH, she’s SICK”.
40. Cutters Of Contention
I had just birthed twins, a healthy baby boy, but we lost our twin baby girl one day and six hours after. They were born at 32 weeks, so my baby boy was in the NICU, but doing well. My OB/GYN was personally wheeling me down to X-ray because the post-op C-section X-ray showed a pair of surgical scissors.
They suspected they were on top of my body when the scan was taken, but they couldn’t say without certainty that the scissors weren’t left inside my body during surgery. My doctor, who was wonderful, went straight to the radiologist who did the scan and made him do another one.
Instead of apologizing for causing undue stress on me, the doctor showed me the X-ray, which confirmed that no surgical scissors were left inside me. Then he said something completely unexpected. In hindsight, it was probably to redirect the negative attention on him.
He said, “See right here in the scan, you can see more than an inch of fat on your back, which indicates that your BMI is high and you are obese. Do you know what BMI is”? Appalled, my doctor was stern and angry for me when we said at the same time, “She (I) just had twins”!
My doctor apologized the whole way back for the guy's insensitivity, what a jerk he was, and how that was the last thing I needed to hear or stress about after all I had been through.
41. Mind Your Mouth
I had escaped a really bad relationship and found myself always on the edge of sudden anger. I had never been an angry person before. I was having uncontrollable outbursts at my children, who didn't deserve it. I tried everything to stop but couldn't, and finally went to a psychiatrist and what she said to me was infuriating. “Just be mindful”. I audibly rolled my eyes at her and never went back.
It turns out it was PTSD. You don't "mindful" that away. With actual, useful help, I managed to get past it before I destroyed my children. I still feel bad for having put them through it, and I learned a valuable lesson that psychiatrists are people too, and they don't always have the right answer. It's okay to quit that one and go to another.
42. Beating The Odds
I had a bad reaction to Covid, and the doctor came in and sat down. I was on a bi-pap, so I couldn't really hold a conversation. She talked about the weather and some things that didn't really matter. Finally, after about five minutes she took a deep breath and said, "This is such a messed up time, and so much is going on and I have had to tell families this for months now and you are the first I am telling that can still listen. You aren't doing well and are only getting worse. We expect you to die in the next day or so”.
Long story short, I made it through, but it seriously messed me up. I don't have a bad thing to say about her at all. Just the bad news I got. The medical team did a great job, and she was just human. She was probably getting tired of seeing people die. This was in the early stages before we even had a clue how to handle it. I couldn't imagine having to give this news to families daily.
43. Double Dismissal
I went to see the doctor as I suspected I was pregnant, even I was on birth control. She did the test, confirmed I was pregnant, and handed me a leaflet for a termination clinic. I know I was on birth control so obviously wasn’t planning to have a baby, but to straight up just go, “Yep, you’re pregnant go get it taken care of” was shocking.
The following year, I went to see the same doctor with a lump in my bosom and she just said, “You’re too young to have cancer, and you’ve just had a baby so your [girls] will be lumpy” and showed me the door! I spent the following year having treatment for cancer. I have never seen that doctor again.
44. Giving Up Without A Fight
When our son was two, he got meningitis. At the hospital, the doctor took my husband out into the hall and told him to go home and make funeral arrangements. Our son was in the hospital for 10 days, but responded really well to the medication and totally recovered. He is now 39 years old and just fine.
45. A Dimwitted And Dismal Diagnosis
When I was 19, I had extensive periods, then none, then pain, then periods of bleeding for 25 days, then nothing for 45. Finally, I went to the OB/GYN and they found nothing. I felt really weird one night and I passed a huge blood clot.
I went to the ER and the nurse came in and checked me with a manual exam. Her words nearly made my heart stop. She told me, “It looks like you have beginning stages of cervical cancer. You need to see your doctor again”. Then she just left the room.
I sat and cried but then went back to the OB/GYN...nope, it turned out I just never ovulated properly. No cancer.
46. Can’t Unhear That
I got a cyst removed from my tailbone. After removal, the area kept getting agitated/developed some inflammation and would reopen and leak from one spot. I swear to god every single time it happened it was on a Friday and I couldn’t see the doctor until Monday and by then it had healed.
After several Monday trips in with no real signs of my ailment, the dude tells me a horrifying story. A patient would sew excrement into hidden/unrelated parts of his body to force a reaction that required him to be hospitalized. I guess because he was mentally ill and liked that or wanted the attention?
I point blank asked the doc if he was insinuating I was making stuff up just to visit him or because I was mentally ill and he basically told me yes and he wasn’t counting it out as a possibility.
Unbelievable and an absolute headache to have a doctor that operated on you not believe you at your word. I’m a very stable person and this damaged my psyche intensely for several months as a result, but I’m better now. I still hate that jerk though and wish there was something I could do about it.
47. If At First You Don’t Succeed…
We spent 4.5 years trying to conceive and I had several miscarriages. The day after one such miscarriage, that ended my longest pregnancy to date (9 weeks), I had to go to my GP to have a thyroid panel done. The nurse came in to draw my blood, checked my chart, saw the note about the miscarriage and why I was there, and then cheerfully proceeded to tell me "Oh honey, don't worry that this baby didn’t make it. You can always just go get pregnant again”!
I complained as soon as my GP came in afterward. My GP didn't seem surprised and blew me off a bit. I complained to the practice manager though, and I never saw that nurse again.
48. More Than Puberty Blues
I was suffering from severe depression and anxiety and regularly had mental breakdowns. I booked a doctor's appointment to request medication or at least seek treatment because I truly felt like nothing I was doing was helping and I was spiraling. The doctor told me it was "just a phase" and that once I was done puberty, I would be fine. It was "just my hormones”. But the worst thing he ever said to me? He said it was "normal to be emotional on my period”.
Yes, puberty and periods raise hormone levels. Yes, people are more emotional and impulsive during these times. No, they shouldn't want to hurt themselves.
Anyway, several years of self-harm and an eating disorder later, it turns out it wasn't "just a phase”. I have Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) and have been suffering from unprocessed childhood trauma and an environment full of triggers.
I wasn't being a stupid emotional teenage girl, I was genuinely hurting, and I needed help.
49. I Had A Latte To Lose
I had been sick, and my family doctor at the time was completely useless and hadn't gotten a diagnosis yet. I had to start going to the ER, and in three weeks, I had gone a total of five times. On one of my visits, after nine hours of waiting, the IV medications started working, so I went and got a coffee.
When I was called in to see the doctor, he looked at me and then my coffee, and he said, “Well judging by your coffee, you can't be feeling too bad, so we’re gonna send you home”. Three weeks later, I was diagnosed with a rare incurable cancer that was Stage 4 and inoperable as well.
I was losing my life, and because I was having a coffee, that apparently meant I was feeling honky dory. I've made it past the five year mark now, which is amazing, but I'm still considered terminal.
50. Trouble’s Brewing
After my fourth child, I was having some extremely sharp pains in my stomach. The OB said to call my primary.
The primary basically told me that they weren’t going to look at anything because I was probably still bleeding and that it would be gross. Her diagnosis was “Sometimes things hurt after you have a baby”.
It turns out I walked around with a bladder infection for six weeks until my post-partum appointment. It was not all that fun.
The same doctor who told me things hurt after babies told my husband he could fix his panic attacks by relaxing and having a beer. Spoiler: you can’t fix panic attacks that way.
51. All Fired Up
I'm a type 1 diabetic, had some sort of throwing-up virus, was 21, and glucose kept tanking. I went to the ER because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to keep it up and end up seizing/in a coma. The ER doc told me he thought I was lying because I wasn't old and overweight—a common misperception of not knowing the difference between type and type 2.
So, he ordered a psych evaluation.
I had a seizure right as the psychiatrist swung back the curtain. I spent a week in the ICU. But I still got revenge for what he did to me.
I got that doctor fired from that ER, and did my best to try and get his license pulled. They did remove his ER certification or whatever it's called. So he at least can't practice emergency medicine anymore.
52. This Fool Thought I Was Faking
I had to go to the ER because I was in SEVERE pain and felt like I was a goner. The source of my pain was in the pelvic region, so the doctor did an “exam”. He asked if it hurt. I was literally writhing around throwing up and crying, so yes, it hurt. At the time, I was 17 years old and living with my father, so he was the one who took me to the hospital.
The doctor told my dad that he didn't find anything wrong and that I was likely faking it to get pain meds. All he did was a pelvic exam and nothing further. I cursed the doctor out in front of my dad until I was shown out. I called my mom who lived in a different city, told her the story, and in two days she came to get me.
She took me to an OB/GYN for a real check up. It turned out I would've been a goner within the week had I not gotten emergency surgery. I had a cyst on my ovaries that ruptured and caused a massive infection that was shutting down my organs.
Freepik, DCStudio
53. Take A Hike, Doc!
My brother was born with a disability. He didn’t cry when he was born and of course my parents were worried, because my mom had three baby boys before that who sadly lost their lives as soon as she gave birth to them.
After a minute of waiting for any sign that he was alive, he finally cried and flailed his arms around. One year later he would try standing up, but he would fall back down. My mom was beginning to suspect something was wrong, but she didn’t know what.
One day, she was changing his diaper when she tried to spread his legs, and he cried in pain. He couldn’t move his leg any further. This had only happened once, but the next day it happened again. My mom was really worried because he was healthy, and nothing else was wrong with him except him not being able to walk.
We went to the hospital and waited for the doctor. He came in and did what every doctor does at a check-up. When he tried to see how his reflexes were on his legs, he asked my brother if he could feel anything, and he just shook his head no.
The doctor asked my mom if she had any concerns or questions, and she explained to him how he would cry whenever she tried to spread his legs a bit. He ran tests and gave them heartbreaking results. He diagnosed him with cerebral palsy.
The shocking news left my mother and father dumbfounded and speechless. They wanted to know what treatment they could give him. The doctor simply said, “He’s never going to be able to walk, don’t bother with the treatments” and walked out of the room.
My brother is now 21 years old and can walk. After going through 10+ years of pain and therapy, he was finally able to get out of that wheelchair and stopped relying on canes and walkers.
54. Lack Of Privacy
My daughter was recovering from an appendectomy, and, as I was visiting time, I was sitting by her bed. In the next bed was a lady who must have been in her late 30s or early 40s. She was sitting up waiting for her visitors. Up came a doctor who didn’t even bother drawing the screens.
He just said, “We had the tests back, and there is nothing we can do further, OK”? He then turned around and walked away, leaving this poor woman to digest the information that she was going to lose her life. She didn’t even have the privacy to cry, and he didn’t even say he was sorry.
55. Whoops
“That’s not supposed to happen”. That’s what a doctor said after my vasectomy, when within two hours of having the procedure, the whole area down there had grown to roughly the size of a cantaloupe…it hurt like the dickens and I could no longer go to the bathroom, as was now a swollen mass.
I had to have surgery to drain what he said was around 12-16 liquid oz of blood and fluid.
Apparently, I was the “lucky” point 1% of people who experience complications of this nature…and with the extra bonus that the emergency surgery cost me another $4,000.
He intimated I had some form of hemophilia, but I literally cut myself at work like 3 times a week and have no issue with clotting, and it still hurts down there 5 months on.
Still better than having another kid though.
Freepik,tonodiaz
56. The Sound Of Silence
I got tinnitus at the end of high school and it was terrible for me. I could barely sleep at night it when started and I would just try to drown the noise with TV at night. I was so miserable. My parents didn’t understand why this was happening and they didn’t know what I meant by ringing but I was literally crying because I wanted it to be quiet again.
My dad has good insurance so he took me to an ENT who was just really straight up. But that didn’t make what he told me any less devastating. He told me it’s never going away and that millions of Americans have it. I waited for an hour to meet him and he only spent like 5 minutes with me. I was tearing up during it and I didn’t know how to cope with it.
My dad was nice enough to get me another appointment to meet another ENT (I’m so lucky and privileged for that). He was amazing. He said the same things but he definitely more compassionate. He said it just happens and it wasn’t something I did. He recommended a white noise machine to drown out the sound and to avoid loud noises and stuff. It still sucked to have it but I kind of felt better. The ringing doesn’t bother me anymore.
57. Let’s Get Physical
The doctor told me: “I saw you fall asleep in the waiting room. Excessive exhaustion is a sign of sleep apnea, so I’m going to have to fail you on your physical. If you lose weight I’ll reconsider”.
The jerk tried to take my job away all because I had to wake up at 4 am that day and nodded off—and then called me fat.
I had to get three other doctors to give me physicals and override her failing me just to keep my job.
58. Left With A Mess
I wanted to go to my gynecologist, who was originally recommended to me by a friend, because of a painful infection. As usual, I had to wait two weeks for the appointment, despite having said painful infection. The woman on the phone who worked for him was always very unfriendly, so I didn't push it.
Luckily, the infection stopped hurting after one week, but I needed to know what caused it, so I anxiously waited for my appointment. Unfortunately, my period started one day before the appointment, coming a few days early. At the doctor’s, I went into his examination room and undressed, hoping for a meaningful examination to get to know the cause of my infection.
The doctor started examining me and became angry when he saw me bleeding. He made some unfriendly remarks about the mess. After he finally got the swab, I got up and started cleaning myself behind the curtain in the room.
He suddenly let out his anger, while bottling the swab, and said in a really angry and loud voice that I should be at an age where I know not to make an appointment for the time the period is due. On his way out of the room, he dropped the test tube on the floor, and reacted to his mistake with, “We won't get any results from this anyway with all the blood in the way”.
I was completely shocked and hurt. I went back after the results were in. They did find the cause of my infection in the swab despite “all the blood”. I had to take meds for two weeks, and never went back to that doctor again.
Freepik ,DCStudio
59. She Had No Business Being A Doctor
I was hospitalized for a week for severe depression and anxiety. One of the doctors I saw noticed that I was on prenatal vitamins. She sharply asked if was pregnant or trying to conceive. I was also on birth control, which she apparently didn’t notice.
Before letting me answer that I was taking them for the hair/nail benefits, or that I didn’t plan on having more kids, she nastily said that I had no business getting pregnant again, ever, because of my history of depression.
60. Allergic To Anesthesia
I had been diagnosed with cancer in my chest, and was at my first consultation with a plastic surgeon. She specialized in reconstruction that could be done simultaneously with my partial mastectomy. My husband and I listened intently to her explanation of the entire process, which was more involved than I had anticipated, but I needed to know exactly what to expect.
She told me that to find the sentinel node, they would have to inject radioactive blue dye into the tissue, which would act like a road map leading them to the correct nodes. She then told me about the need for a guide wire to be inserted just hours before the actual surgery, and that was actually what they use to pinpoint the exact location of the cancer, so they aren’t just blindly removing tissue.
They use an ultrasound machine to guide them and a fairly large hollow needle. The wire protruding out of your chest is then coiled up, taped down, and sits there until your surgery time. I asked her how they do this—awake or asleep, and she told me that it’s a relatively painless process once they numb your chest, so you are awake for the procedure.
I panicked, as I’m allergic to most of the local anesthetics, and asked her about the kind used. Her answer made me sweat. She told me lidocaine, which I'm definitely allergic to. When I told her that I’ve had a great success rate with other kinds, she shook her head saying no, and explained that they only will use lidocaine.
I asked her why they wouldn’t use something else. She responded with, ”They just won’t”. It started to sink in that she was serious, so I asked her what I was going to do when they can’t use lidocaine. Her response as she chuckled under her breath was, “Well then I guess it’s gonna HURT, ISN’T IT?”
I burst into tears as my husband took my hand and we walked out the door, never looking back.
Freepik, gpointstudio
61. Wake-Up Call
As I’m packing to leave on a business trip across the country, my Doctor calls me and tells me to stop whatever I am doing and go to the ER, I’m gonna die. I had blood work done the day before and had an appointment with him next week, but he had received my results and my blood glucose was over 20 and my A1C in the mid-teens.
I felt fine and went on my trip instead. I learned to regret that decision.
I was a non-compliant diabetic for years culminating in the below-knee amputation of my right foot in 2018. That’s what it took for me to start taking my condition seriously.
62. Can’t Stop Won’t Stop
I have a cyst on my heel so I went to see a doctor. Also, on top of a cyst, I have a random ankle pain when I'm more active (playing basketball, jumping, volleyball, football). And I said this pain is reoccurring for the last two years. The doctor said that maybe it's better to stop playing these sports, because I'm too old for this. I was only 23!
Then, I went to a real professional, paid a lot of money, and he said that I have progressive flat feet and I get inflammation in my ankle.
Freepik, peoplecreations
63. Take A Long Walk Off A Short Pier
I was 16, and seeing a rheumatologist for a bunch of problems, but mainly fibromyalgia. I had lost 60-ish pounds and was finally at a healthy weight. But, my pain had gotten worse along with fatigue. He asked me what exercise I was doing, and I answered walking about 3 times a day (long effective walks). His reaction was brutal.
He looked me right in the eyes and said “walking isn’t exercise”. It wasn’t even that mean of a comment, but it broke something in me, and I felt so angry and discouraged and helpless. I stopped seeing him after that as I had other issues with him in the past and this was the final straw.
64. A Do-Nothing Dunce Of A Doctor
I was working and having accidents on the job—dropping things, tripping and falling, having garbled speech when I was tired, and I was always severely tired. The resident who saw me first was very nice and caring.
However, the neurologist who oversaw the department was outside my door and said to him, “People like her just fake symptoms because they don't want to get off their fat butts and work. They'd rather collect disability and do nothing”. Meanwhile, I had Lupus and fibromyalgia.
65. No Viable Excuses
I was pregnant with my second child and had made my doctor aware that my first pregnancy was rough and I went into preterm labor at 21 weeks. I was on bed rest and heavily medicated, and wanted to do everything I could to not have this happen again, if possible.
Like clockwork, I started having contractions just before the 20-week mark. I went into the hospital and my doctor was called. He didn’t even bother to come in and see me or offer mediation. He sent a nurse to tell me my baby was not viable and to say goodbye.
I lost it and told the nurse he had better get back to the hospital and find out what medication is given for this or I’d be driving three hours to the next hospital and then suing him for negligence. Magically, within 20 minutes, he had answers and was able to start me on medication that allowed me to carry my second to full term.
Freepik, DCStudio
66. His Delivery Was Offside
When my younger brother was 12, he was hit by a soccer ball to the back of his leg. He complained about the pain for days afterward, but none of us thought anything of it because he was a wimp and complained about EVERYTHING. But we were so wrong. After a solid week of complaining, we took him to a doctor who prescribed some medicine and sent us on our way.
The medicine didn't help, so we took him back in. After the doctor performed a more thorough examination, he ordered some X-rays. The X-rays showed some abnormal bone growth, to the point that a bone sliver was growing out into my brother’s quadricep.
A biopsy was ordered at the hospital. Later that night, a new doctor came into the room. He came in and said in the most monotone uncaring voice EVER, “Your son has Osteosarcoma, which is bone cancer. Rare in someone this young. We'll start chemo in the morning. This type of cancer has about a 30% survival rate which will probably be less because your son is so small for his age”.
Then he left. He said this right in front of my 12-year-old, scared, perpetually whiny brother, who went on to live.
67. Less Than Zero
Doctor: You have high cholesterol so you should eat less meat.
Me: Well, I have been a vegetarian my entire life. There must be something else I can do.
Doctor: Meat is definitely the issue here. Just cut back on that and you should be fine.
Me: What should I cut back on? The current amount of meat I eat is 0, but I should eat less than that?
Doctor: Yes.
Freepik,DCStudio
68. If He Only Had A Brain…
I was struggling to regulate my blood pressure due to Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), and I passed out while I was in the shower. I knew I had a concussion from hitting my head during the fall, and my girlfriend decided I should go to the emergency room. I had been fainting on and off every few hours for a few days and with the concussion, we were both worried. I passed out on the car ride and nearly collapsed inside the ER.
After checking in, a phlebotomist came to draw my blood and she was muttering under her breath. What she said was so vile, it’s unforgettable. It was all about how I was a waste of time, saying it was too busy to be taking care of someone healthy, saying I was just looking for painkillers, assuming I was faking everything, and proceeded to tell my girlfriend that she shouldn't have brought me in.
Then, after she left, someone else came in and looked between me and my girlfriend, and said, "This must be your sister, is your boyfriend on his way”? And I had to tell the lady that I am a lesbian and that my partner brought me in. She gave the typical, "Oh, I see” response and left.
I was taken back for a CT and I was told that everyone passes out, it's not a big deal, and concussions happen all of the time, so I shouldn't have even taken up their time. Low blood pressure isn't a big deal, and POTS is just something teenage girls make up for attention.
After the scan, a nurse came in to tell my girlfriend that the doctor would be in shortly, and my girlfriend had asked if there was something they could do because I was still struggling to stay conscious and I wasn't acting right. The nurse told her, "If you notice any changes in her behavior, we'll see what we can do, but there's nothing we can do right now”.
My girlfriend said that nothing about my behavior that day had been normal, and given the fact I don't remember the days prior to the ER visit, I'm going to make my best guess and say something was probably very wrong.
An hour or so later, the doctor came in and looked around the room. He said, "Oh, I thought surely your boyfriend would be here by now”. But then he made it so much worse. He said: “Well, when he gets here, let him know that the doctor says you do, in fact, have a brain. I have seen it firsthand. You must be a smart young lady”. Like...That was the most condescending thing that could've escaped his mouth at that moment. Then he said, "Looks like you have a concussion. There's nothing we can do for you tonight. It just takes time to heal. Go home and rest, and if you notice any changes in your behavior or mood, come on back”.
No. No, thank you. I will not come back, actually. I just spent $1,500 to be told I have a vital organ that he does not have. Cool. That was the most frustrating interaction with a healthcare staff I have ever had.
69. I Can Hear Clearly Now
Every time I went to a doctor, they'd look in my ears and complain they couldn't see anything because of the wax build-up. My mom would tell me I need to clean them more. At one point, I was cleaning them with a Q-tip almost every day.
Finally saw a doctor who said she couldn't see anything, but decided to do something about it. I had said how often I cleaned them, and she warned me against Q-tips. We spent almost 2 hours cleaning my ears. What she found was twisted. My ears bled. She had it looked like I had had an ear infection in one ear for quite a while but it was hidden under the wax. I refuse to use Q-tips now and often have a doctor drain them for me. I had minor hearing loss in the ear that had the infection. It's amazing what having the right doctor can do for you.
70. A Taste Of His Own Medicine
I have suffered from a rare(ish) pulmonary disease since being a baby. When I was two and a half, my pediatrician misdiagnosed pneumonia as a common cold and treated me with nose drops and cough syrups. I became unconscious two nights later, and my parents took me to the hospital.
My heartbeat stopped from lack of oxygen, and a high fever, twice. Both times, doctors managed to revive me, but that night left a permanent scar on my parents, and they worried over me constantly. When I was almost twelve, my condition worsened yet again, and mom took me to a new pulmonary doctor.
He was an old man, dignified in his manner at first glance, but mean to the core. He examined me, shook his head, lifted his eyes straight to my mom’s and said, “She will not see her thirteenth birthday”. I will never forget my mom’s face. The shock, pain, anger at him, and despair were indescribable.
But she collected herself and grabbed my hand, barely letting me dress again, “That is your opinion,” she said, “we will seek another”, and we stormed out of his office. Later on, we learned that he enjoyed telling these kinds of things to his patients. However, a few days after my 16th birthday, my health spiraled down, and I was in the hospital again.
To my dismay, he was the doctor there. He did the check on me, then noticed my name, which was an unusual one. “Ah, it is you”, he said with a sense of wonder. “I was sure you wouldn’t make it this far. Oh, well, I’m pretty sure you won’t make it to seventeen, you know”. I just looked at him in shock.
Then I leaned toward him, grinned in his face, and said, “Well, I’m not a doctor, but I’m pretty sure you won’t last long either, old man. Not when you consider your age and all”. He froze. He didn’t expect that. Maybe a retort of some sort, but not that. I just politely nodded and got out of his office and back to my hospital room.
Later, a nurse laughed and asked what I said to him, as they didn’t like him, either. Apparently, he was still in shock, but I didn’t tell.
71. His Mean Words Were My Motivation
I’ve been overweight for as long as I can remember. I’ve tried every diet, with what I thought at the time to be all my might. I was miserable. I weighed in at a little over 500 pounds. Every warning my doctor ever gave me had slowly come true.
I couldn’t walk long distances, my blood pressure was up, my heart rate was through the roof, and I became a diabetic. I hurt all the time, couldn’t sleep comfortably in a bed, and had horrible cellulitis. I was still holding down a job, but my health continued to decline.
I made an appointment to see my doctor for the third time about my cellulitis. I asked for more antibiotics and a leave from work in order to get rid of the infection. My doctor took one look at me, shook his head, and said, “No. All you are going to do is go home, sit on your butt, and get even fatter than you already are. I’m not having any part of that”.
I left that office in frustrated, infuriated tears. I was so angry and hurt, yet determined to show him how wrong he was. The first thing I did was download MyFitnessPal on my iPhone. I cut all carbonated beverages and fried food from my diet and started counting calories and paying attention to serving sizes.
The first week, I lost 20 pounds. I was 160 pounds slimmer by my next doctor’s appointment.
72. A Pain In My Neck
For nearly a year, I had excruciating pain in my hands, wrists, neck, and shoulders. It would last anywhere from a few days to over a month. The doctor never really put much effort into finding out what was going on and would prescribe pain medications and muscle relaxers.
The second to last time I saw him, he informed me that I was an addict and he was putting that in my file. I had asked repeatedly for a referral to see a rheumatologist, and he flat out refused, even with a family history of rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.
I made an appointment myself and paid for the visit and the labs out of pocket. The rheumatologist’s office was in the hospital, so he requested a blood test. Then came sweet vindication. About an hour later, he told me that I had rheumatoid arthritis, and he got things pretty much under control in a few weeks.
I went back to the first doctor and showed him the lab results and print outs of my X-rays. I chewed him out for letting me not only live with the pain and the permanent damage to my joints, but for accusing me of being a med-seeking addict, particularly since I had never asked him for anything except an answer as to why that was happening. I reported him.
73. Rhymes With Meadow
When I was 14 I was seeing a male dermatologist for bad acne. He told me he was going to write me a prescription for birth control to help clear it up. Then he told me: “Once your skin is all cleared up, then you will really need to be on the pill”! And winked. It made my skin crawl.
The same doctor on another visit was excising a small mole on my back. When he was numbing the area by injecting local anesthetic, I didn’t flinch at all because I had been having allergy shots for years and needles didn’t bother me. He chuckled and said: “Looks like you don’t mind a bit of pain” and slapped me on the back when he was all done.
74. Show & Tell
I now know I have hypermobility, but at the time I was having multiple knee dislocations for unknown reasons as an otherwise healthy 20-year-old lady with high pain tolerance.
The doctor decided that I wasn't having dislocations, despite documented evidence from other medical professionals. According to them, dislocations were too painful for me to imagine and I probably just had bursitis. This absolute reprobate lectured me for 20 minutes about how I couldn't possibly have dislocations while I sat there in sheer shock and horror. That’s when I snapped.
I got so mad I stood up and without a word twisted my right leg hard in just the right way to cause a complete dislocation of the patella. I maintained eye contact, didn't even whimper, and hit the deck like a bag of bricks. I usually have good pain tolerance but the sheer anger made me almost superhuman that day.
75. Worst Case Scenario
"Well, looks like you're probably going to go blind”!
While I have visions of myself walking about tapping a white cane in front of me, he blithely adds, "But don't worry about it. Corneal transplants are 99% effective, you'll be fine”.
I did have transplants later when my eyesight got bad enough to warrant it. They worked a miracle, but man, lead with the "you'll be fine" next time.
76. An Allergy Is Not An Addiction
I'm allergic to most narcotic pain pills. I had never taken those kinds of pain pills until a severe back injury that resulted in a ruptured disc in my lower back. The doctors then had prescribed a narcotic pain reliever for me because it would be many weeks before I could get the surgery required to fix my back.
I took one pill and about half an hour later, I started having breathing problems. My wife rushed me to the emergency room. They told me not to take any more of those pills because I was having an allergic reaction. I went back to my doctor and he wrote me a prescription for a different pain medication, which was also a narcotic.
I took one and again ended up in the emergency room, but this time I was having so much trouble breathing that I passed out. When I woke up a couple days later, I was informed that there was a ventilation tube down my throat for about 36 hours and the medical staff had induced a coma.
They told me not to ever take narcotic pain medication again. I believed them and haven't. Ten years later, I had a fall on some ice and hurt my back. The doctor asked me, “So how long ago was it that you had your addiction and how long has it been since you abused any narcotics”?
I was initially shocked that he would assume that, instead of actually reading my chart and history. I'm ALLERGIC, not an addict.
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77. The Three Fs Of A Total Fool
For years, I'd been plagued with this terrible swelling in my lower legs. My legs hurt terribly and would sometimes get red and hot. I went to dozens of doctors, but none could come up with an answer, they just kept prescribing diuretics. I had tests to rule out heart failure, kidney issues, and everything that usually causes leg swelling.
One day, my legs were hurting so bad I could barely walk. I couldn't wear regular shoes because my feet were so swollen, so I couldn't get them on. I had to wear my husband's old sneakers. I had always been really active, worked out six days a week, and played on a couple of co-ed softball teams, but when my legs started to feel heavy and the swelling got worse, I could barely walk, much less run anymore.
So I went to see my doctor. I told him what was going on and I even said given the choice between winning the lottery and having this swelling go away, I'd give up the money in a heartbeat. I will never forget his reply. He glanced at my legs, looked at my chart, and said, “Well, there's nothing we can do. You're just in the 3 Fs. Female, Fat, and Forty. Stuff like this happens, you just need to go on a diet".
I couldn't even speak. I was so livid. I wasn't even 40, and while my weight was higher than normal, I was far from fat in the terms he meant. A couple of weeks later, I saw a colleague of his who ended up diagnosing me with a condition called Lymphedema.
My lymphatic system does not function properly, causing lymph fluid to build up in my lower body. It can only be managed by constant compression, and has absolutely nothing to do with his 3 Fs.
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78. Labeled For Life
When I was a very young boy, I was really accident-prone. One day, I was playing on the floor with my cars. My sister, who was twelve years older than me, was vacuuming the floor. As she went to lift the vacuum over me to clean the remaining floor area, a massive part fell off the corner of the attachment and hit me on the head, leaving a rather large cut that bled profusely.
My mom rushed home and hauled me to the doctor's office for stitches. This was becoming a weekly event for me. As the doctor inquired about the cause of my wound, mom said she couldn't understand why I was so accident-prone. The doctor then told my mother, with me sitting right there, that I was the type of kid he and his colleagues had labeled a "Mother Killer".
79. The Acid Test
When I was in middle school until 10th grade, I would get violent nausea anytime I got hungry. It felt like my stomach was on fire, and I would miss a lot of school from feeling like garbage, although I was a good student and wasn’t falling behind in any way. After a lot of fighting with my mother who accused me of exaggerating, she agrees to take me to a gastroenterologist to be checked out.
Before agreeing to do an endoscopy, the gastro accused me of exaggerating because I was a teen girl and that’s just apparently what young women do, he suggested I was just making up these symptoms for attention, and then asked me point blank if I was lying about my pain level to skip school and suggested I had a mental health issue I was trying to cover for. I had GERD and severe acid reflux, as confirmed by the endoscopy he reluctantly agreed to perform on me.
Instead of letting it go, the gastro made a point of angrily telling me that I had “the stomach of an 80-year-old man” and must have been intentionally eating in a way to mess up my stomach.
I have a family history of stomach problems and GERD. I don’t understand why it was so implausible that my brother could have acid reflux at a young age, but I must be a liar when I claim to have the same symptoms in my teens.
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80. He Was Thinking Ink
I went to see my doctor about a pain I'd been having in my lower left abdomen for a couple days, and he asked me a few questions and waved his hand and said, "It's just a pulled muscle, don't worry about it. But I AM going to talk to you about that tattoo on your arm”. He proceeded to lecture me about the risks of tattoos and how unclean tattoo parlors are because they use the same needles over and over, the ink is synthetic and I have plastic in my skin, blah blah blah—all this outdated information they used to scare people in the 80s/90s.
I was 31 and he was talking down to me like I was a kid that gave myself an India ink tattoo with a stickpin. Years go by and it turns out the pain was diverticulitis.
81. Not Pulling Their Legs
I was 18 and had just had a baby, and my epidural was taking a long time to wear off. The nurse came in to transfer me to the recovery room and I told her I still didn't have any feeling in my legs. She said, "It should have worn off half an hour ago," and started trying to get me out of bed and into the wheelchair. I said I was going to need help so another nurse came in and they had to move my legs off the bed—which should have been the second clue—and then they hoisted me off.
I of course crumpled immediately. As they're trying to get me off the floor the first nurse yells at me, "You have to try to stand up”! I yelled back, "What part of ‘I can't feel my legs’ did you not hear"?!
When my mom heard about it she went and chewed them out. I didn't see that particular nurse again.
82. I Quit This Doc And His Derisive Attitude
I developed chronic pancreatitis due to heavy drinking. When I had my second pancreatic episode, I didn't know what it was or that it was even the second one I had. The first one was not as painful and the doctor called it acid reflux, I have no idea why.
My discharge papers did list it as a secondary condition, but I was being clueless and in denial. I was told to quit drinking, which I didn’t. About six months later, I woke up with a backache that wouldn't go away. Within a few hours, I thought it was the end. I felt like I was being disemboweled.
When I got to the ER, the intake clerk told me to have a seat and they would call me. I told him, crying, that if someone didn't help me, I was going to walk to the street and step in front of a bus. That was how bad the pain was.
Turns out, I had a cyst on my pancreas that would touch the nerve, which caused even more pain than just pancreatitis. After being in the hospital for seven days without food or water, only IV pain meds, a consulting surgeon came to see me. He said the only way to stop the nerve pain was to have the cyst removed with surgery.
However, he said he wouldn't do surgery, nor would anyone, until I quit drinking for six months, and I had to prove it. He wanted me to see a pain management doctor in the interim. I totally understand about requiring the 6-month waiting period. However, he had no sense of empathy or bedside manner. It made me feel horrible and hopeless.
To make matters worse, when he walked out of the room, he was stopped by the consulting gastroenterologist. I overheard him say, “Yeah, just discharge her and refer her to a pain management doctor. She isn't gonna quit and now she probably gets hooked on opioids too”. It shamed me so much.
A week later, I found a doctor who did the surgery one month later. More than that, I've been sober since my pancreatitis, six years ago. I did not get hooked on pain meds either. The doctor's words weren't what made me stop. Little did he know or care, I decided before he came in that I was done drinking.
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83. Toying With My Emotions
I was scheduled for a Pap smear and had requested a female doctor, since my regular provider was a man. I had done this before with no problems. That afternoon, the female doctor waltzed in and told me how familiar I looked to her. Then she asked if my necklace was an "intimate" toy. Yes, really. But it gets worse than that. I responded, "Uh…no. This is a keepsake necklace, containing my late husband's ashes”.
84. Lack Of Information Led To Her Lack Of Empathy
My annual pap smear resulted in a biopsy and tearful news: I needed to have pre-cancerous tissue removed from my cervix. During my initial visit with the specialist that my family doctor referred me to, we were discussing family medical history.
Mine is like a jigsaw puzzle, and obtaining my family medical history was more than a little difficult. While I stumbled through the surgeon’s questions, answering to the best of my abilities, she interrupted me in a harsh, annoyed, and scoldingly loud voice about why I didn't know the exact three different cancers my older half-sister had battled.
“It is your responsibility to know this", she bellowed at me. She seemed to not understand that in addition to my secret half-sister, nearly all living relatives on my missing birth mother’s side suffered with schizophrenia and did not have the capacity to provide me with their history. She kept insisting that I was at fault for my lack of knowledge.
85. That’s More Than A Bad Day
In 2009 my fiancé of 36 hours passed on from a pulmonary embolism caused by birth control. A few days prior I took her to the doctor for shortness of breath. The doctor said it was an asthma-related issue and not to worry. I said that’s odd because she doesn’t have asthma.
After she passed and services were done, I made an appointment with that doctor. With a straight face, he said, “This is a medical practice and sometimes you have a good day at practice and sometimes a bad day at practice”.
Her father had to grab me before I choked the life out of the doctor. I’ve never heard something so bad come out of a doctor's mouth.
86. The Bearer Of Bad News
I woke up in the hospital and heard a nurse running out saying “He’s awake”. The doctor comes into the room and tells me to move my toes. I ask them where I am and what’s going on, he just gets more insistent that I move my toes. I asked again where I was and what was going on, and he almost yells at me “Move your toes”. I said I am moving my toes. What he said next was horrifying.
Immediately he tells me: “You will never walk again”. That’s how I found out I was a paraplegic at 21 years old. I had been in a single-car wreck and was thrown 70-80 feet from the car and my vertebrae was dislocated and lying next to another one. I don’t remember the car wreck but that exchange with the doctor is burned into my brain, and that was 31 years ago.
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87. Cramping My Style
I developed early and got my period early at about age eleven. By thirteen, I was having a very heavy flow with excruciating cramps. The first OB/GYN my mom took me to was smug, patronizing, and extremely crass. He said, “Don't worry, honey. After you have your first child, those cramps should go away".
At 13, I was not anticipating giving birth. I never went back to that man.
88. Pushed Out The Door
My wife was eight and a half months pregnant with our first child. Her anticipation turned to dread when she realized that the baby wasn’t moving or responding. The doctor determined that she was having a stillbirth, so into the hospital she went to be induced.
To make matters worse, my wife’s sister was in the room right next door, having HER baby. I couldn’t comfort my wife, but I was doing the best I knew how. The doctor came around the corner toward me, and I calmly asked him if there was anything else I should be doing that would help my wife in her distress.
His response was, “This is a hospital. People are dying in here. You just need to stay out of the way” and he led me into the elevator.
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89. The PA Saved The Day
For about 15 years, I suffered from urinary tract infections. Antibiotics would help for only a week and the infection would return. I was miserable and sometimes thought of ending my life. I was grumpy, irritable, falling frequently, and always tired.
Only one particular antibiotic would work, but only for a short while. I went from doctor to doctor seeking a cure. All but one urinary culture came back negative. A urologist examined me and told me it was all in my head. I even caught him doing the motion with his hands that I was crazy.
A few months later, I was examined by another urologist who ran extensive bladder scans, etc, but he didn’t have an answer. Finally, someone mentioned a physician assistant who had a knack for figuring out conditions doctors could not. Before the exam, she said that she thought I had interstitial cystitis, and she was correct. I am a new person; she gave me my life back.
90. Automatic F
I have cystic fibrosis. And while the doctor who diagnosed me was cruel, honorable second place goes to someone who's not quite a doctor yet but well on the way to it.
I went on a Tinder date with a med student who had super liked me and about two sips into my cocktail, he calmly explained that he's not actually here to date me, he just has a medical ethics class he took with our university’s philosophy prof for extra credits. His exam was coming up and it would be on the ethics of pre-implantation genetic testing for cystic fibrosis. I couldn't believe what I was hearing.
As a philosophy student and someone who has that, could I be a bro and explain to him why exactly some people say we should not throw embryos with this condition away? It’s horrible isn't it?! Why would I wish that on others? Really, shouldn't I be in favor of it?
Yep, he really thought he was gonna invite me on a DATE, buy me a drink, and then quiz me on why people with my chronic illness should or should not die before they're born. To pass a medical ethics class because he needs the points to improve his grade a little bit. But he didn't outright ask for that even through text—not that it'd be less rude.
He really made me get all dolled up to ask me about the pros and cons of currently being alive cause it's quicker than a textbook.
91. Too Uncomfortable For Words
I was in labor three months early with my second child, and it felt like my spine was being ripped out of my back. I have had back problems since my teenage years. I was in so much pain, I couldn't move or speak.
My younger brother was in the room with me when the ER doctor started asking questions. When I wasn't responding fast enough, he said, “I can't help you if you don't answer my questions”. My brother said, “Can't you see she's in pain? She can't speak”! He didn't ask me any more questions after that.
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92. She Incysted I Go Home!
When I was about 15, I was having problems with ovarian cysts. I was diagnosed with an almost 7 cm cyst on one of my ovaries. I was scheduled for surgery to have it removed, but there was a bit of a wait. My GP told me to go straight to the emergency room if I started having severe pain, paired with a few other symptoms.
It could mean the cyst had burst, and I may require emergency surgery. One night, it happened. I was in agony; I felt like I was going to pass out and throw up simultaneously. My mom got me to the emergency room, and it was an hour's wait.
A woman who was waiting beside me was in pain, but she said she didn’t care if she was called first; she refused to go before me. I was silently screaming in pain, with tears streaming down my face. Eventually, I was called in and had a lovely doctor. He was male and more understanding than I expected.
He took great care of me. However, there was a change in staff. His shift ended, and another doctor replaced him. This doctor was female, and I was happy because I thought she would be even more understanding. When she came in, she asked about my pain level.
She poked at my abdomen, and I tried my best not to scream and to not pass out from the pain. The doctor stared at me for a moment, then stepped back and crossed her arms. What she said was something that shocked and confused me. “If the cyst had burst, you’d be jumping to the ceiling in pain. Go home”.
Then she sent me on my way with nothing more than Advil. The next day, I had an ultrasound to check the status of the cyst. It had burst, but I never had surgery for it.
93. Nurse Ratchet Was Wrong
I started having odd symptoms doctors couldn't explain. My mouth started to burn and swell, and my tongue, lips, and cheeks were usually affected by this. They gave me four EpiPens in case my throat was the next thing affected, and said, “If you feel anything that usually happens before your mouth swells at school, go to the nurse”.
That’s exactly what I did. When I was in Spanish class, I felt a burning sensation on my cheek, which is usually what happens before my cheeks are affected and swell. I immediately started panicking, and since I was panicking, I couldn’t speak.
I got to the nurse and tried to explain what was happening. She called my dad and my dad brought Benadryl to the school. When the nurse examined my cheek, she just started laughing and put antiseptic on it. It started burning more.
Apparently, I had gotten the tiniest cut on my cheek, which made it burn. Then, the nurse told me, “You’re overreacting. You’re fine. Take your butt back to class and don’t come here stupidly again”. This one time, the "doctor" was right.
94. Bait & Switch
I did a video chat service to talk to a doctor for 15 minutes. I told her my symptoms and thoughts since we were low on time. I had been very sick for weeks, possibly a urinary tract infection and respiratory infection. Also gave the other ideas I had, based on my symptoms. She told me I had valley fever and told me all about it over chat and we got cut off at 15 minutes.
I got her final email which should have a prescription in it. When I read it, I was shocked. It said she actually thought I had somatic symptom disorder aka that I was making all of this up and was perfectly fine. Her prescription was for a freaking psychologist!
She told me in detail about my possible valley fever even though I said I hadn't been to the areas she said it was prevalent. I made an appointment with my normal doctor and had a few tests ran. Had a respiratory infection and a freaking KIDNEY infection! 10 or so days of meds and I was fine.
My gosh I was so angry at that quack.
95. Benadryl-Denying Betsy
This is what a nurse told me after I requested a Benadryl for intense itching post-C-section: "I can't give you anything for random itching. You are breastfeeding and it will cause drowsiness for you and the baby. You'll have to suck it up". She handed my son over to me from his crib and told me skin-on-skin was best. I was burning up and my son, while content, wasn't latching or otherwise interested in eating.
She put the crib just far enough that I couldn't move over to put him back. Every part of my skin burned like stinging nettles. 45 minutes later, I was covered in hives, crying from hormones, itching all over, and I really thought I was having an allergic reaction to something. My son was falling asleep on me while I was itching until my arms bled.
I rang my bell. A different nurse came in and said, "Oh good Lord, you are having a reaction to something! Poor thing, you look uncomfortable, let's get you sorted out!" I asked her about breastfeeding and she was like, "The baby won't starve and you won't be feeling much if you're scratching your chest off now, will ya?" She gave me Benadryl on my IV and a bit of extra pain medication.
I guess I had some weirdo immune response; not an actual reaction to anything like medication or whatnot. She took my son and dressed him all up in a couple of outfits that I brought (he was born on Hallowe'en) and she kept him up at the nurses' station for about 90 minutes while I slept. When my husband came by later (he was taking my older son to my brother's after grabbing him from daycare), the nurses were all taking turns holding my eight-hour-old son and I slept a solid three hours.
I felt like a million bucks. I didn't see Benadryl-Denying Betsy again.
96. Just Plain Useless
My wife had a placental shift when she was seven months pregnant. At 3 am one morning, there was blood everywhere. I put her into the truck and drove as fast as I could to the local hospital. This was in northern rural Thailand. The "doctor " looked about 16 years old. He messed around with an ultrasound machine for a couple of minutes before telling my wife: "Yeah, sorry, the baby's gone".
I put my wife in a wheelchair, took her to the truck, and sped to the nearest international hospital in Udon Thani about two hours away where real doctors stabilized her. My son is now 10 and playing Minecraft.
97. My Boss is a Heartbreaker
I had a doctor that constantly ignored patients in serious pain. He thought all of them were faking it to get pain killers. After a senior director at Microsoft died from a heart attack in our ER that he refused to do an EKG on, I went to management and told them what I had seen.
