At first they thought it was the result of a rare infection caused by a fungus that is only found in the Mississippi River valley, but eventually the consensus was serpiginous choroiditis. Fat lot of good a name did, though.
I quite enjoyed the neon yellow pee. :dubious:
Happened to my father and me too, but apparently in our case it was a matter of injecting in a different spot. Doc’s explanation was along the lines of “you guys are so weird you even have your nerves flipped” (which would have been unacceptable from anybody who wasn’t a friend of the family). I don’t have the same problem with the sprayed anesthetics.
I’m very, very glad that I got my first filling over Easter vacation, as it gave my mouth time to wake back up.
Another one that wouldn’t be acceptable from anybody who didn’t qualify as a family friend. The doc in question was two years ahead of me in high school, though, so we can be rude to each other:
Me: “I’ve come because I’ve got gastrenteritis, so I need the certificate to take days off.”
Doc: “And when did you get authorized to diagnose yourself then, eh? I’m the doctor here! Tell me the symptoms.”
Me: list of symptoms.
Doc: “It’s gastrenteritis all right. I don’t know what’s worse, that your family self-diagnoses or that you freaks get it right. If I hear that you’ve set foot at work before coming back in a week I’ll spank you from here to Cadiz.”
Me: “Oh, no, the plan for the next seven days is a diet of weak broth and hugging my pillow like it can fly.”
Oo, tough one to diagnose. Sorry you had to go through all of that.
Yeah, the fluorescein angiogram is a great test but pretty annoying. Even though my eyes are fine* I’ve had nearly all of our diagnostic tests done on me as a guinea pig for equipment calibration or personnel certification - except for the fluorescein angio. They’re apparently adverse to sticking a dye IV into a perfectly fine person, and I suspect there would be potential for legal issues if I did have an allergic reaction.
Back on topic - Working in the field really readjusts your standards for what’s “fine” or “great.” I’ve heard our doctors tell people with glasses that they have great vision, which typically earns a double-take from the patient. That’s because the doctors are judging by a “is vision corrected to around 20/20 and otherwise considered stable? Yes? That’s excellent!” standard. I’m not sure it’s really bad bedside manner on their part, as frankly, as eyes go, having no ongoing problem and corrected-to-20/20 vision is pretty awesome. There’s a whole world of crappy diagnoses with bad prognosis out there.
I had a butchery UTI a few years back, the absolute worst of my life. That barbed Amazonian hellfish that swims up urethras? Yeah. It was… Not nice. Weeping and frantic, I medicated myself with some leftover antibiotics and some else’s post-operational dihydrocodeine, which I know you’re absolutely not meant to do, but when you’re immobilised on the lavatory, teeth chattering, grey and passing bloody lumps of bladder, your options are limited. Option two, I should say, was “If this doesn’t improve matters immediately, I’m going to Casualty”. I thought I was pretty resourceful, given the circumstances.
Anyhoo, miraculously, it did improve matters immediately. I spent the night comparatively pleasantly, absolutely ratlegged on painkillers. Come the morning, the pain was gone, the blood was gone, I was feeling better. Nevertheless, I took two buses to the drop-in centre, hoping for sympathy and a proper antibiotic prescription. Not so!
After explaining the symptoms of what was absolutely, unequivocally a repeated groin-kick of a UTI, Nurse first chides me for using antibiotics not prescribed to me, which I guess is fair enough but not exactly top-hole helpful at the time, performs the mystical ritual of the urine dipstick and says “There’s no bacteria in this sample. Antibiotics don’t work that fast. It must have been your period”, and refuses to prescribe antibiotics, re-test the sample, give me any more of her time or in fact concede that a twenty-three year old non-menstruating woman might know the difference between her vagina and urethra, or between period pains, say, and having your kidneys taken out and stamped on.
… Which was an interesting perspective. And the UTI came back at the weekend, and then I did go to casualty. So, yeah.
Ugh - a woman I know from a pregnancy message board has something similar happen.
At six or seven weeks, she had some cramps/bleeding so she headed to the ER. The idiots tried to listen to the the heartbeat with a doppler, couldn’t find it, and didn’t bother doing an ultrasound. As with your co-worker, the baby turned out to be fine.
Now, an ER doctor should be aware that at 6 weeks, the heartbeat has JUST started, the fetus is about 1/4 of an inch long, and there’s no way on earth you’re hearing it with a doppler - most OBs/midwives won’t even bother TRYING a doppler until 11-12 weeks, because the heartbeat is too hard to find before then, and they don’t want to freak out the mother if they can’t.
I was born with club feet, and had multiple operations on both legs before I was 6 months old. I spent a lot of time in casts as a baby. The nurses learned to hold my legs down when they were examining me because I was eventually able move them around despite the casts.
At one point I saw a new doctor, and his nurse was examining me. My mother told her that she should hold my legs down or she might get kicked. The nurse condescendingly told my mother that there was no possible way I was strong enough to move the casts much less kick her. She continued her examination, and I kicked her. The nurse held my legs down after that. My mom said it took everything she had not to burst out laughing when it happened.
I don’t have anything as bad as the stories in here, but I still remember two weeks of horror having malaria in this country, and no white doctors being able to diagnose it at all. Doctor after doctor said I had hepatitis, or anything else they could come up with. They kept asking my mom if I was sexually active - I wasn’t. No one even listened to her when she said over and over I had spent two months in India.
I don’t remember a lot of it since I didn’t eat and slept most of the time, except to get in and out of the car, but 103 fevers and chills and dropping 20 pounds was not making my mother happy.
(Finally we got a correct diagnosis from an Indian doctor. Turns out most white/American doctors don’t even know how to identify malaria and many have never even seen it in their lives. That kind of boggles my mind! Anyway he got me on some quinine and I was better toot-sweet.)
This is a bit of a hijack because it’s not about doctors, but I had a similar experience when I had to take a drug test for a prospective job. At that time in my life, I dabbled a bit with pot and 'shrooms, but I hadn’t done anything in over a month before the test so I thought I’d be ok.
I pee in the cup, and I later miss a call from HR at the company I was trying to get a job at. They leave a message asking me to call back because there’s “a problem” with my drug test. I thought I was busted. I was also wondering whether or not they would call the cops, as this was my first experience with an employer drug test, and I didn’t really know how it all worked.
So I call back a bit freaked out. Turns out the “problem” was that I had drank too much water before the test (I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to pee) and the specimen was too diluted to test. So I just had to go back and do it again.
12 years old, I went in to the Gyn with absolutely killer Menstrual pain. (Years later it was finally diagnosed as Endometriosis.) Idiot newbie GYN (male) tells me that I may as well get used to it, because menses are going to be painful for many women, nobody knows why.
Now, I was a ballerina and an Army brat, and far from whining about minor pain, and I told him so. I even showed him the blood blisters around my eyes caused by the extreme retching which always accompanied my periods. I told him there was no way I could face a life in which this level of pain was simply expected four-five days out of every month.
Then I asked what I could possibly do? He shrugged his shoulders, laughed, and said “Get pregnant?”
:eek: Yikes! What did they say after you complained?
:eek::eek::eek: How did you react and what do you have?? :eek:
I got into a pretty heavy accident (my car was T-boned, totalled) and as I was still lying in my car, the Emergency Services arrived. They asked me if I thought anything was broken and I told them my right leg didn’t feel right.
So, the paramedic checks my leg and says, quite alarmed “Wow! You have an exposed fracture down there!”
Luckily for me it turned out it wasn’t exposed (albeit it was a fracture). But I don’t think it’s good bedside manner to tell the shocked patient they have an exposed fracture!
Just remembered another bit of military medical jerkery. By way of background, the first time I’d had a pelvic exam, I was very scared and it hurt. Because of that, I avoided getting physical exams at all cost. But prior to being commissioned, I had to get the whole shebang done to ensure I was physically qualified to be a Navy officer.
When it came to the girly part of the exam, I told the nurse who was going to be doing it that I’d had a bad experience in the past and I was really uncomfortable with the pelvic exam. That bitch proceeded to stick her fingers into my girly bits, then lecture me!! Being young and intimidated (she outranked me by a lot) I pretty much just lay there and cried. yeah, that helped…
I swear, I would have bet any money that the only people that went into the medical corps were those who couldn’t get a job in private practice.
Not that my civilian doctors have all been exemplary. Like the guy who, when I told him I was having back aches, just wrote me a 'scrip for pain meds without examining me. He’s the same one who literally stood at arm’s length when listening to my heart with a stethoscope. That was the first and last time I set foot in that practice.
This happened to my brother when he was a kid.
My mom took him in to see the doctor about a large wart on his knee, which was troublesome as it was always getting scraped and hurt when he played. Wordlessly, the doctor pulled the wart slightly up, and then before my mom or brother could react or protest, cut it off with a scissors. With no anaesthetic.
Here’s my story on my first pelvic…
I was 15 and was having a lot of pain that was worse when I walked around. Being new-ish to menstruation and not being on my period, I made no connection with my pain and my uterus.
My mom takes me to the doctor and while we three are in the exam room he asks if I’m sexually active. I say no. He says, “Can you be honest with your mother in the room?”
:rolleyes:
Then he tells me he wants me to disrobe, take off my underwear and put on the robe, lie down on the table, he’ll be back. He and mom leave the room.
I’ve never had a pelvic, so am wholly unprepared for what’s about to happen. My mother, of course, gives me no warning about what’s about to happen.
Doc comes back in and tells me to put my feet in the stirrups and starts the exam.
Yeah, I’m a little tense. You want me to what? You’re putting your hands where? Plus, I’m in pain! And he’s up in me to what feels like his elbow and it fucking HURTS.
He got mad at me and yelled at me, “RELAX, or I’m not going to be able to do this exam!”
Well, then get your elbow out of my uterus!!
So, after the trauma I get dressed and he and mom come back into the exam room for my diagnosis.
“Well, you have PID but,” he said very smugly,“I don’t know where you *got *it.”
Implied: lying teenage whore.
(There’s no way I had PID. I had to explain what PID was to my mother as we drove home.)
Maybe this thread should be required reading for all residents. 
All the hospital administrator did was apologize to me. :rolleyes:
I have had several very excellent doctors in my life (I feel like I should just say that).
My first labor was all night. I had a bitch for a nurse (who, ironically enough, turned out to have the same name we gave our daughter). Although I am a nurse, I have never worked OB. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. I knew that meconium stained amniotic fluid was BAD, but that’s all I could remember. Well, my water broke and yup, meconium. My heart rate (and anxiety) went waaaay up, so of course, the baby’s did, too. She did nothing to reassure me; she said nothing to support me throughout my labor (the subsequent nurses with my other 2 kids were much better). And of course, the OB I loved was not on call that night or day. I got the oldest partner-an old time physician who was also (I swear) a misogynist. He came into my room (to the doorway, not the bedside) and said, “you can have this baby in 20 minutes or 2 hours.” and turned on his heel and walked away. Of course it took me 2 hours.
He retired shortly after that. What a jerk. I found out later (with my next pregnancy) that he gave me the world’s largest episiotomy. This was 1989 and birthing rooms and pt empowerment was evolving. I also got to stay in the hospital for 3 days (a minor miracle for a normal, spontaneous, vaginal delivery and probably impossible nowadays).
Missed the edit window. I wanted to add that my brother also broke his arm when he was a kid and the ER doctor set it without any painkiller or anesthetic. Gotta love the 1970s. Many physicians believed (it was widely believed not just in medicine) that kids either could not or did not feel pain the way adults did. That was incorrect. It can still be hard to get pain relief for kids in ER even today. I had to insist that my daughter get Tylenol #3 when she tore her ACL in a skating accident at age 13. The ER doc was reluctant and acted it. :rolleyes:
I was giving blood in a hospital in Dublin. A young doctor comes over, checking the bags of blood sitting on each bed. He gets over to me then says - ooo, I’m feeling a bit dizzy and sits down on my BAG OF BLOOD! He shifts his arse and slaps the bag over onto my leg.
Bit of a heavy night doc? I inquire.
Well, it wouldn’t be prudent to say that, he replies. He fumbles with the bag and decides it’s full. I ask him gently if he could get the nurse to pull the tube off and he reliefully (new word) agreed.
When I was a college student I was walking and slipped. I felt my right ankle go CRACK. When other students asked if I was OK I said “No-call an ambulance, I think I broke my ankle.” They called campus security who took me to the infirmary. The nurses there gave me tylenol and insisted that I spend the night and wait for the doctor in the morning. This was Thursday night. The following morning, the doctor came in, quickly glanced at my ankle and said “I hope you’re not staying in the infirmary just because you sprained your ankle”. I told him that the nurses had made me stay and he told me to go back to my dorm and come back on Monday when the orthopedists would be there (They came Mondays and Thursdays). I asked if we shouldn’t get an X-ray and he said “If you absolutely insist I guess we could get an ambulance to take you to the hospital for an X-ray but even if it’s a hairline fracture they won’t do anything for a few days until the swelling goes down”. I went back to my dorm room with the crutches they provided. (It took me a day or so to realize that they were different sizes and that is why I kept falling to the left). I ordered in pizza and stayed in bed until Monday. Monday, I went back to the infirmary where they did an X-ray. The orthopedist took one look at it, then said “Wait until everybody else is done and then I’ll talk to you about this”. Meanwhile, even I, a college student, could easily see the broken bone. When everybody else was gone, and it was about 5:30 PM, the orthopedist said “You have until tomorrow morning to decide whether to have surgery here or fly home to California” (3000 miles away and school was 1 1/2 hours from the nearest airport). Anyway, I had the surgery there and it required a metal plate and 7 screws to put my ankle back together. The last thing the anesthesiologist said before he put me under was “I saw your X-rays. That’s a bad break. You’re going to have arthritis in your 30’s.”
I did get my revenge by staying in the infirmary for 2 weeks after the surgery. (My dorm room was on the third floor with no elevator and it was January in New England). The story also has a coda. When I finished my medical training, I received the usual deluge of mail from recruiters about jobs. One of them was from a familiar name. It wasn’t until I opened it and read “Have you ever considered a job with a Student Health Service?” that I realized that not only was it from my alma mater, but it was signed by the infirmary doctor who had initially sent me home.
Oooh, if we’re telling our “first pelvic exam” stories, I have one.
I was 13 years old and was watching Teen Wolf at the theater with my dad (I was on summer visitation with him, though honestly I doubt anything would have been much better if I’d have been with my mom) when I started feeling extremely ill–bad enough to leave a movie (that’s really, really bad). Later that evening I was puking my guts out and was literally doubled over with pain–I could not stand up straight at all. Dad calls my grandfather, who was a pediatrician, who advises taking me to the ER.
So we get to the ER and it’s… let’s say 2am? Something ungodly late like that. They say I probably just have the flu at the triage desk, but send me back to be seen by a doctor anyway. The doctor says that it could be an ovarian cyst, so they have to do a pelvic exam.
So they put me in a room with whatever fossil was on-call for gyn in the ER at 2am that night, and this grim-faced matronly nurse. I was put in the stirrups with nothing on but the gown, feeling horribly exposed. The doctor is sitting with his face down by my crotch, and the nurse is just standing behind him with her arms folded, staring at my crotch. I’d never felt so humiliated.
Then the exam started. I spent the entire thing screaming and crying into the pillow because it felt like he was taking a carving knife to my vagina and stabbing the hell out of me. He kept barking at me to “relax” and the nurse kept telling me “you have to relax!” Both of them sounded pissed off.
I was 13 and had never even used a tampon before. I’m in massive pain from what turned out to be appendicitis, and I’ve got some old guy’s arm jammed up inside me and I’m supposed to just relax? God I was so scared and in so much pain, and they were so mean and insensitive. Gah.
I had my appendix out the following morning. I spent a couple of days in the hospital (with ants in my room! They kept telling me I was imagining getting bitten until I started showing them the dead ant corpses and pointed out the crack in the wall where they were streaming in!) and then went home, but was never given any pain killers. That sucked, too.
That is brutal, man. I tore my ACL three years ago and I was embarrassed about how much I cried. I was telling my surgeon the story much later, and he said, “Look, NFL players scream like little girls when they get ACL tears. Don’t sweat it.”