Bad Beside Manner

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
41

Oh, one that happened to my mom:

I got frequent ear infections as a kid, and so my mom quickly learned to recognize that a cranky feverish toddler pulling at her ear was almost certainly yet another ear infection. She brought me in to see our regular pediatrician and said that she thought it was an ear infection. The pediatrician sarcastically asked her if she’d gone to medical school. :mad: There was no demanding of antibiotics for the ears, nothing like that, just her opinion. And yes, it was an ear infection.

42

This for me, crosses the line from bad bedside manner to damn near malpractice…or …something.

Preeclampsia is extremely serious and something the dr. should have picked up on over the course of your pregnancy. Eclampsia is deadly serious, complete with seizures and comas! Of course the pre-eclampsia goes away as soon as you have the baby, but for the dr. to miss it was crazy. A simple blood pressure check should have caught it.

43

I thought it was aiming for the doctor to say ‘Now look here little buddy, I’m telling you, turning 5 is great. You’re becoming bigger and stronger, just like Spiderman! And as your doctor, I think it’s best that you turn 5. There’s nothing to worry about, and in all my years as a doctor, I’ve never seen anything bad happen from turning 5.’

44

That’s a good follow-up if the kid doesn’t really elaborate, but it’s worth trying to get a reason if you can. If the kid finally spits out that a TV show depicted kindergarten as a terrible place or some mean kid from across the neighborhood goes to that school or whatever, then that’s something specific to comfort him about. If he just says that he likes being 4 and what he’s doing now, then a more general “5 is much better than 4, 5 is fun!” pep talk is cool.

45

Boy, have ***I ***got a doozie! My older sister (#2 of 4 kids; I’m #4) was born with all sort of physical maladies, many of which weren’t discovered until she was older. But this story takes place when she’s about a year old. After all sorts of medical tests, and my sister seeming to not develop quite “right,” my mother ended up sitting in a psychiatrist’s office with her daughter. The doctor held up my sister with his hand, looked at my mother, and told her that she had a bad baby here. He then proceeded to describe her medical condition. She was mentally retarded, blind since birth, and probably wouldn’t live into her teens. Okay, the medical conditions may be FACT, but there’s GOT TO BE a better way to break such news to someone.

BTW, my sister just celebrated her **53rd birthday **in March. She’s cheerful, always singing along with her radio (which she WILL NOT be without), and recognizes just about everyone by voice. She has a condition that was “named” in the '60s - Rubenstein-Taybee syndrome. She has had a whole host of physical ailments, but I’ve learned SO much from her.

46

I had a doctor say to me this:

Are you a praying person? I said, Yes. He said good because there is no cure for what you have and we also don’t know what causes it. You are going to have this condition the rest of your life but it won’t kill you or shorten your life. I don’t treat it so you won’t need to see me again.

He then got up and handed me my chart and left. :dubious:

47

Joining the “what’s wrong with that?” chorus. Are we missing something?

48

Mine may not be the winner, but it’s gotta be in the top ten.

Several years ago I worked in a medical setting. I accidentally got stuck with a used needle. Of course, I had to go to the hospital and get blood drawn to see what sort of cooties I acquired. I called after a few days for the results and was told I had to come in person to get them. Now, I’m thinking, “uh-oh”.

So I go there immediately. The receptionist notifies the nurse that I’m there for my lab results. The nurse ushers me into a little office in the back and shuts the door. She asks me to sit down; she is sitting at her desk. She looks at me and says, “there is a problem with your blood.”

Then she pauses for what seems like an hour and a half. My breathing has now ceased, my heart has stopped pumping. Finally, she says, “we’ve lost your specimen; you’ll have to get it re-drawn.”

I seriously, honestly wanted to strangle her.

mmm

49

Thanksgiving weekend, 1997 - I am lying on a bed in the ER near my aunt’s house in Florida, having slipped, fallen, and shattered my left tibia and fibula. The orthopedist on call that weekend, after reviewing my X-rays (quite impressive they were, too; when I looked down after I fell, my foot was pointing backward - it looked like I had an extra ankle), was explaining that I was going to need surgery, and that it would involve a fair amount of followup, ideally with the same doctor who did the surgery, and I should consider whether I wanted to stay in Florida for at least the next couple of months, or get home to Chicago somehow and have it done there.

All well and good, except that a) I was essentially unmedicated, because they hadn’t decided yet whether to rush me into the OR; and b) he was punctuating his sentences by banging his fist on the edge of my bed for emphasis.

That was not fun, to say the least.

50

Most 4 year olds cannot articulate reasons behind thoughts or emotions. And that was the only question the resident asked him. Once #1 son said, “I dunno”, the resident turned to me and said, “you heard him–he doesn’t know.”
Maybe the story would have been better if I’d included that… Note to self: be comprehensive in relating anecdotes. :smack:

51

When I was 13 I broke my left arm in a biking accident. The ER docs chose not to set the bone that night because they wanted to wait for the swelling to go down. So they just a bunch of padding on it and gave me a sling and painkillers. They wanted to give my that prescription strengh super-Tylenol shit, but Mom very forcely argued with them until they wrote out scripts for real painkillers for then the Tylenon didn’t work (it didn’t) and some kind of sedative (in case couldn’t sleep).

The next day Mom took me to an orthopedist who’s office was in the building right next-door to the hosptial. He was nice, but it when it came time to actual set my arm didn’t give me any anaesthesia. He explained that he “didn’t think it was necessary” and that they’d have to go next stoor, book an OR, put me out (apparently the quack never heard of a local). He also told me I needed to “be a man” and it would be over quick. Mom reluctantly agreed. So his nurse in to hold my legs down while Mom took charge of my torso. Here my memory get’s a little hazy. I remember the pain, I remember screaming every profanity I could think of, and I how he pulled my wrist out, up, then shoved it back. :mad: I jerked around alot and my spine arched. Then he put my cast on (purple, and it wasn’t plaster).

Then, while the cast was still wet and flexible he told me he needed to set it again in case it shifted. Lather rinse repeat. The second time hurt even worse. While he was resetting it one of my legs got free and I ended up kicking his nurse in the face (I guess they should’ve removed my shoes first :smack:). :o She ended up with a nose bleed. After he was done he started to lecture me (it wasn’t that bad, look what you did, etc). According to Mom I sat up and while screaming more profanity kicked right in the groin. He ended up on the floor cupping his nuts. :slight_smile:

His nurse was quite understanding that I didn’t really know what I was doing and just reacting to the pain. Turned out she was the mother of one my classmates. :o The doctor not so much. My check ups were all with another doctor at the practice (though that could’ve been at Mom’s insistence). The nurse and the other doctor also though it was odd the way he set my arm without painkillers. So did my grandmothers, my GP’s PA, as well as the school nurse and several teachers when school resumed.

52

Ok, that would have been time for the “buck up, little camper” story. :smack:

I forgot, my sister got a cavity drilled and filled minus anesthesia when she was a kid. It was in one of her “baby teeth” and the dentist didn’t think it was needed for a drill-and-fill in a baby tooth. She was not a happy camper, to say the least.

53

Didn’t happen to me, but I read an article in a magazine once about a guy who went to the eye doctor for a check-up. After all the vision tests were done, Doc says to him, “Your eyesight is great, no problem. By the way, did you know you have HIV?” Guy becomes terrified, doctor nonchalantly says, “Yeah, shows up in the eyes first, y’know.” Guy agonizes over this revelation (admitting in the article that he “hadn’t always been safe”) before finally going in for a test (this was back in the early 90’s when people didn’t know as much about HIV and AIDS as we do now). Test result comes back negative and guy is naturally quite relieved. Several years later he found out that that eye doctor had died of AIDS.

If that story is true, and it may not be, that goes far beyond the realm of “bad bedside manner.” “Using your authority as a doctor to scare the hell out of someone on purpose when you know you’re wrong” has got to be illegal.

54

I’ve always had an unfortunate reacton to novacaine in the dentist’s chair — not in the “anaphylactic shock” sense but in the “SHIT, the tooth you’re drilling still hurts like hell and now my mouth & tongue are all swollen and numb for the next 6 hours” sense.

When I was 13 or so I had been in braces for 4 consecutive years; the insides of my mouth were torn up like hamburger meat from those damn little tie wires that hold the tension bands in the grooves of the indivudual braces on each tooth, and I had a cavity in one of the back molars and every suction hose and probe and clamp and mirror and drill bit and light and gloved finger he inserted, he managed to bang into some kind of raw mouth tissue. He banged me in about 6 places with one of those stainless-steel enclosed needles that had a barrel about 2 mm wide, and each jab felt like an entire straight pin had been shoved into my gum. Then he went to drilling and on short notice hit the nerve and I pulled away & arched my back.

“Hey, can you try to cooperate a little? I bet you close your eyes when you go to the eye doctor!”
:mad:

Look, Dr. Marathon-Man fuckwad dentist. Let’s put this into perspective. My eye doctor doesn’t HURT ME. You are HURTING ME.

55

I like my family doctor a lot, but I cannot abide his partner. Sometimes if I’m not quite firm enough with the front office staff, or it’s urgent, I have to see the partner anyway. I went in once for something else, but had an odd rash that I asked him about. He looked at my arm and said, “Oh, yeah, that’s AIDS. HAHAHAHAHAHAHAA!”

Never mind that I have no risk factors for AIDS and wasn’t worried at all that it might be true. That’s not funny. Not even a little.

I really can’t stand that guy.

56

My co-worker had extremely bad luck with two different doctors in a short period of time.

She hadn’t been feeling well for a few months, so she went to see her GP. Her GP says it’s her thyroid. She says, you know doctor, I remember feeling sort of like this when I was pregnant with my daughter. Do you think I could be pregnant? Nope, says the doctor, it’s your thyroid.

So a few weeks later, she was feeling extremely unwell one Saturday night. Her husband took her to the ER. They do an ultrasound on her and the ER doctor says, well, you’re pregnant, but we can’t hear a heartbeat so that means the fetus is dead. Go on home, and if you miscarry, put the fetus in the freezer. :eek: Whah? I guess they thought they should test it or something?

My co-worker cried all weekend until she got in to see her OB/GYN. The OB said, you’re pregnant and you’re perfectly fine, it’s too early in the pregnancy to hear a heartbeat. Holy cow. What if she had a perfectly healthy fetus evacuated because the ER doctor told her it was dead?

57

WTF?! Where the hell do they find these people? That’s one of the most ridiculous things I’ve ever heard.

58

Partly bad bedside manner, partly just a douche doctor.

I was nineteen years old and I’d been having intermittent but severe pain in my lower left flank. No matter how I moved or what I did, I couldn’t make it go away. It happened every morning, weirdly enough, for about a half hour. I don’t much like going to doctors – I spent years around them when I was small and had back trouble – but I finally went to the student health center to find out what might be going on. I suspected that I might have a kidney stone since my best friend in high school had pretty chronic ones. Her pain had been pretty extreme, and I had never experienced anything quite so painful as these intermittent episodes.

I explained this to the doctor and he shook his head. “You don’t have kidney stones,” he said. “You’d be in more pain.”

I explained again that the pain was really intense. “You’d know,” he said. I said I suspected, which is why I was asking.

“But it would be constant pain. You wouldn’t just have it for half an hour every day. No, the problem is you’re having muscle pain because you’re fat.”

Now, I was fat. I was about a size sixteen. But I’d also been in track and cross-country in high school and I’d played soccer before that. I knew what muscle pain felt like, and this was far, far deeper and more unpleasant. I tried to explain that I had experienced a great deal of muscle pain in my life and had been fat for a few years now and pretty much knew what it had to offer.

“No,” he said, “it’s because you’re fat. Do these stretches and talk to a dietician.”

A week later, I passed a kidney stone. The really serious pain started in the afternoon. I walked the few blocks from where I’d been sitting on campus to the campus medical center (about half a mile, so Google says), dizzy and sweating and staggering. I must have looked pretty deranged.

Had I been diagnosed properly earlier – if my doctor had taken me seriously – I would have avoided the most embarrassing, disgusting, and degrading three hours of my life. I wouldn’t have lost control of my bodily functions on the floor of a public bathroom. I wouldn’t have had to wait in the sports medicine wing of the health center for two hours, first for my father, then for a bed and pain medication. I could have just taken painkillers and gone home. I wanted to take that stone and jam it somewhere uncomfortable in the doctor’s anatomy. :mad:

59

Bolding mine.

Yes, totally. Not only is it not funny, it’s also unprofessional and horribly insensitive. Don’t doctors realize that, even without tests or risk factors, patients still take most anything the doctor says seriously even if it’s just an off-the-cuff remark? That white lab coat and the diplomas on the wall of the office and the two letters after the name project an image of authority that shouldn’t be made into a fucking joke. I assume that doctors probably have a certain kind of “doctor humor” that they share while out having some beers with other doctors, but keep that shit away from the patients, man! You don’t have to be a doctor to know that.

60

I had to go get an ultrasound on my liver. The guy lubed me up and then said “Now let’s see if it’s a boy or a girl”. Uhm, dude. I know I have a stomach, but the hairy nipples and the penis should have tipped off the fact I may not actually be pregnant. I was already angry at having to be there so I didn’t laugh, but later I saw the humor in it.