Bad Beside Manner

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
81

I had horrible periods for years. I spent at least one night a month balled up on the bathroom floor, sobbing. I missed at least 1 day of school every month. My mother had the same problem and when she was in her 40’s she finally found a doctor who put her on birth control, which made her problems so much better.

So, she tried to get me birth control. My GP refused to give them to me and he referred me to a GYN. In spite of the referral, it took my mother months to find a GYN who would even agree to see me because I was only 16.

The one who did see me used a much too large speculum and only moved to a smaller size when I started bleeding quite profusely. Then, he refused to give me birth control because I wasn’t sexually active.

My mother asked him if he’d like me to go find a random guy to take my virginity. I did end up with the pills and they did work.

I am another one with Novocaine problems. My root canal was bad enough but it also didn’t solve my problems. After being told by my dentist that my problem was beyond his skill, I went to an endodontist who sprayed canned air on my tooth (without warning me first), yelled at me after I screamed, and then told me to get the tooth pulled. The doctor who was to pull it refused to believe that Novocaine doesn’t work on me and refused to sedate me. He also yelled at me for screaming and then when the tooth was half out, he stopped and told me to come back in 2 days to be sedated. I walked around for 2 days with a tooth half out, and in excruciating pain. The actual sedation extraction went fine but I ended up with a dry socket and he refused to give me any pain killers. I ended up taking some random prescription painkillers my sister had lying around the house. Before the root canal, I was not afraid of the dentist and I didn’t complain too much about the Novocaine not working. After the extraction, I am now terrified of the dentist and I haven’t been back in over 2 years. I have cavities that need to be filled but I am too afraid to do anything about it. When I have some extra money saved up, I’m going to get myself sedated and have them all taken care of at once.

I have suffered from very bad heartburn my whole life. I started babysitting when I was 11 so I’d have money to buy antacids. Every time I told a doctor about it, they insisted it was because of the food I was eating. The fact that I woke up with heartburn, got it even after eating plain bread, and didn’t get relief even with Zantac, didn’t mean anything to them. When I was in my 20’s I finally found a doctor who listened to my symptoms, told me I had GERD and send me for tests. She read the Upper GI results to me when I went back for my followup. It said, “Rather severe GERD with a hiatal hernia”. I asked her what the next step was and she told me to change my diet and it would go away. ***

*** Yes, she was kidding. No it didn’t piss me off. She sent me for more tests to make sure I didn’t have ulcers or esophageal scaring, put me on Protonix (for 5 years), and it eventually got much better. It’s back now but at least now I know that it it’s because I gained a lot of weight recently.

82

Only tried? I’m really, really annoyed that you didn’t succeed. Ass.

When I was in labor with my son - induced, because my water had broken oh and my cervix was nowhere NEAR ready to give birth, so it was a hard labor… I asked for pain relief about 5:30 AM. After some argument over what narcotic I could have (being somewhat sensitive to a preservative in the first option - doc said “what’ll it do to you?” and I said “not sure, but this is NOT the time to find out”)… about 90 minutes later the doc said “we found something but how about an epidural instead”. Foolishly, I said yes. An hour after that - during which time they kept cranking the fucking pitocin - the anesthesiologist showed up.

As he was about to install the catheter, I said “I’m having a contraction, can you stop for a minute?”. He said “If I stopped every time a woman had a contraction, I’d never get done”. Oh, and then he botched it causing me to scream in agony. I really really regret that that ass left the room still attached to his testicles.

Oh, and the epidural didn’t work, and they didn’t believe me.

Then there was the L&D nurse who YELLED at me to RELAX.

The OB, on the other hand, was someone I’d hated from the beginning - her response to questions was to make you feel like you were a bad mother who WANTED to harm your baby for even DARING to ask questions. She lied to me to make me come to the hospital sooner than I wanted to, she told me one thing and expected me to do another, and during the “baby’s heartbeat doing BAD things” she kept jamming two fingers into my solar plexus. Hard. Repeatedly. Without explanation. I kept telling her it hurt. The last time she did it I smacked her hand away. I really regret that.

No, not that I hit her.

That I only hit her once.

But I’m not bitter.

83

Then there was the family practice medicine resident. I went into the clinic with a severe, intractable, unproductive cough. He prescribed antibiotics (suspecting it was a mycoplasm infection). I asked for cough suppressant. He said - and this is quite reasonable - that if the gunk needs to come up, we don’t want to suppress it because it could turn into pneumonia.

I begged - as at that point I hadn’t slept in several days - so he somewhat reluctantly gave me a scrip for codeine cough syrup to be used at night.

I took it that night and it didn’t touch the cough. The next day, however, the antibiotics were starting to help so the coughing was diminishing.

I saw him a week later and said that the abx had really helped. He said “Really??? After you left, we all decided it was just viral”. Then I said that the cough syrup hadn’t helped and he said “Oh, I wanted you to take a single triple dose”.

Er… then why wasn’t it written as such???

So, not awful, but a couple of pieces of boneheaded advice. I went to a different person after that.

84

never mind

85

BRAVO!!! (on kicking the doc in the nuts).

My broken arm - age 6 - was also set by an ass of an orthopedist. Technically very competent, but when he waltzed into the room, without a word to me, grabbed my arm, and YANKED it to set the bone… well, it was unpleasant. Then he did it again a few minutes later because he didn’t like how it looked on X-ray. Other encounters with orthopedists have given me the impression that by and large, they have LOUSY bedside manners. The one I’m seeing now for my knee appears to be an exception - brusque but at least not outwardly an ass.

86

Not really a doctor’s bad bedside manner, but the school and school nurse. I was in Grade 3 so I would have been 8 or 9 and I fell during morning recess off the top of the teeter-totter. We had 2 people on each end and the other girl on my end landed on my arm. I went to the nurse and she decided I was playing it up so she wouldn’t call my parents. I sat in the sick room all day whimpering and crying. At dismissal time they decided they couldn’t send me home on the bus so they called my parents and before they let them come and get me, met with them in the principals office and told them I was faking it. So, all night I whimpered, whined and basically hid in my room. In the morning my dad decided that I wouldn’t continue a charade that long so they took me to the hospital. Doctor checked my arm and swore there was no way it was broken. After xrays and apologies I was casted and sent on my way.

Best part about the entire experience was the sucking up my parents did for days because they didn’t believe me. I think I milked it for several toys and treats.

87

Not really the doc, but an amusing story. . .

I had dislocated a hip. After convincing an HMO referral nurse to get me in for x-rays same day, I came out with a diagnosis and an x-ray in my hand about 4:50pm. Walked (well, moved under my own volition, anyway) down the hall to the orthopedist’s office, and most of the staff had already gone home.

There was a whole waiting room full of EMTs though, who were waiting for a buddy who’d been hurt on the job.

The kindly Dr. asked the EMTs if one or two of them would be willing to help out, and of course four of them ended up helping me down to the treatment room. One held my middle down, while three grabbed my arms and other leg. The Doc lifted the hurt leg and steadied himself. All had happened very fast and I was seriously nerve wracked by it.

I looked over at the head of the EMT team and said “Isn’t this how they used to question witches?”

to which he replied: “Have you been a good girl?!?” right as the doc yanked and twisted my hip back into place.

It’s not as much fun without the tone of voice, but suffice it to say he would have made a great Inquisitor! LOL!

88

Interesting that so many of the stories in this thread have been about OB/GYN practice. (I stopped reading them after the first few - forgive me, but there are some things that, as a dude, I just don’t need to know.) Is this field known for a lower level of professionalism, or is it just that a bad OB/GYN is going to stick out more than a bad practitioner in more or less any other field?

89

I wonder if it’s because at some point, most, if not all women, see either a gyno or an OB - or both? So there’s just a much larger sampling of doctors, and of course a much larger number of bad ones, too. Aside from an OB, I’ve never seen a specialist of any kind, and I don’t think most people do, either. Dentists seem rather sadistic, too, but I think bad experiences tend to stick in your mind more when somebody has their hand up your vagina, or you’re in the middle of pushing out a baby.

ETA: I meant to add this site: My OB said WHAT?!, a collection of things women have had OBs, doulas, midwives, etc. say to them (usually during labor). Some are funny, but some make me wonder why the doc/midwife in question went into obstetrics in the first place.

I’ve never had a bad OB or gynecologist, fortunately. However, there was that bitch of an ER doctor who laughed at me and told me I had a cold when I came in after fainting several times, having been sick for awhile at that point, and had white blisters all over my throat (I was in college and the clinic wasn’t open). She sent me home with a few giant ibuprofen pills I couldn’t even swallow due to the pain :rolleyes:

Of course, I didn’t get better, so I went to the school clinic a few days later. They actually did this things called lab tests, to determine that I had both mono AND strep throat, instead of just deciding I was a whiny college student. And they gave me antiobiotics! And stuff to make my throat feel better! I loved my student health services.

90

This isn’t a story about a bad doctor so much as a stupid dad, but it fits in well with the bone-setting stories.

When I was in the third grade, I did a header over the handlebars of my bike and busted up my left arm pretty good. Went to the hospital, got it set and put in a cast. A while later, my dad takes me so they can see how the break’s healing. Turns out, the bone had shifted and it had started healing crooked. The nurse who’s telling my dad this asks, “Do you want us to give him a shot for the pain?”

And instead of answering, my dad looks at me.

Now, I’m not really clear what they’re talking about. But I do know that I don’t like needles, so I shake my head. And my dad, who is at once both the smartest and stupidest man I’ve ever met, says to the nurse, “He says he doesn’t want the shot.”

So, they lay me out in a bed, and have me hold my arm out over the edge. Just the weight of my arm on the partially healed break hurts. And then they start adding weights. Every few minutes, the nurse comes by, and adds a little more weight to my arm. It’s the most excruciating pain I’ve ever experienced. Finally, the doctor comes in. Now, this all happened more than twenty years ago, but I swear I could pick that doctor out of a line-up today. Doc’s carrying a clipboard. He looks at the board, looks at me. Looks at the board again, sets it down, and reaches over and snaps my arm like a twig. My dad says tears shot horizontally out of my eyes a good three feet.

When my mom found out what happened, she tore my dad a new one. I believe that was the point where it was decided that my dad would no longer be responsible for taking me to doctor’s appointments.

91

Ooooo, did someone say student health services???

The following all happened at one student health center my freshman year of college:

I’m having pain while urinating. Bad, really bad, pain. I go to the student health services and they ask me to fill the cup. I bring back a cup full of dark red, bloody urine. Doc laughs and says, “I’d say you have a UTI!”

My friend has something illness of some kind where she can’t have sex for a week, ten days. The doc (different doc, not the pee doc) tells her that there are many ways she can “satisfy your boyfriend” without having vaginal sex and starts tell her what they are in slimy gross way.

I was in for some other problem and this same doc points out to me all the girls walking around with really tight jeans and do they know he can see everything? (This was a total non sequitor. My complaint that day had nothing to do with pants in any way.)

Lastly, same friend, later that year. She’s a little stressed out. She looks down and her glass eye falls out of her head. She whips on a pair of sunglasses, wraps her eyeball up in a tissue and tells me to take her right now to the student health center (thankfully next door). We walk in, explain the problem to the receptionist, who tells us to take a seat and takes the eyeball back to the docs. What my friend can’t see (well, because she’s facing away from the docs. I mean, she still had the one good eye) but I can (because I’m facing the other way, looking back into the treatment area) is a group of doctors and nurses all conferring animatedly, shaking their heads and throwing up their hands in defeat because no one knows how to put her eyeball back in her head.

92

frantically taking notes of what NOT to do when I have my RN

My teacher is fond of reminding us that “Why?” can be a very threatening question, especially in a medical context. It tends to put people (even little ones) on the defensive faster than just about anything else.

What I might have tried instead (tell me if I’m WAY off base here, Nurse Rigs) is “What do you think being 5 is like?” and hope that his answer might reveal some of his fears.

Did you ever find out what was so scary about being 5?

93

Does this mean you’ll be changing your username? :slight_smile:

94

Plus - especially if you’re younger - you can have a lot of shame/embarrassment issues tied up with your body, and gynecology has all kinds of sex-related issues that can present problems. So you get a lot more potential for stuff like young teen girls being harangued by their mean GYN, in front of their mom, about having had sex, that kind of thing.

Oh yeah, I had a male gynecologist do a pelvic exam on me when I was a young teen and having abdominal pains. Not a whole lot of explanation or comforting words involved, and I just remember it hurting and feeling vaguely ashamed afterwards. Having a nice gynecologist do the manual exam can be uncomfortable/annoying enough even when you’re a mature, sexually active adult woman who set it up as a regular annual checkup; when you’re a hurting teenage virgin who meets some strange “old” man who’s poking around in there, it adds a whole new dimension of badness to it.

95

I once had a gyn describe my girly bits to the resident, all the while ignoring me. I felt like a slab of meat. Never saw him again.

96

My sister had an emergency room doctor laugh and flippantly tell her, “I don’t know what your so worried about. You just have a virus. It’s not like you have a brain tumor or anything.”

She had a brain tumor.

97

This one happened to my mom.

She was in her hospital room after getting her second knee replacement. Her first knee had needed some work as well, so she’s pretty much immobile. She wasn’t responding very well, was restless, and not really coherent. I had stayed with her overnight to keep an eye on her. All night, she would keep waking up, trying to get up out of the bed, didn’t understand what anyone said. It was kind of scary, but the night nurses didn’t seem to think anything was out of the ordinary.

Well, the surgeon came in the next morning and started telling her all about what had been done, etc. All through this my mother was very lethargic and glassy-eyed. The surgeon asked her a question, and when she didn’t answer or even look at him, he looked at her, and said something about how she wasn’t being very cooperative and that she really needed to pay more attention.

Turned out she was drugged to the gills and beyond. Nobody at the hospital, not even her medication specialist, seemed to notice anything wrong.

It was discovered a few years later (well, verified, anyway - the family had been concerned for years about her pain med intake) that she was addicted to her pain meds, and that was why she never got any relief. They’d just up the dosage until she quit complaining. By the time we put a stop to it, she was on the 100 microgram fentanyl patch.

Nowadays, she sticks to Tylenol. She still has pain, but at least she’s awake and aware.

98

Again, didn’t happen to me personally but I remember reading an article in the newspaper when I was a kid about a dentist who was being investigated by the cops. He had this young boy in his office who wouldn’t stop squirming, right? The dentist decided the best way to get this kid to sit still was to show him a picture of a woman with an axe in her head, tell the kid that he (the dentist) had killed her, and that he’d do the same to the young boy if he didn’t stop moving around. I remember a follow-up article a couple weeks later saying that the police dropped the investigation because it was just a photo from a book or something (that is to say, a real photo of a murdered woman, but nothing to do with the dentist) and the doctor was just guilty of being a creepy asshole. His office closed down the same week, IIRC.

This sounds like an urban legend, but I seem to remember it being real.

99

When I was about four I went to the dentist. I was very afraid and always made a big fuss. It was know that I did so there were big talks, bribes and threats made by my mother before we went which just guaranteed that I’d fall apart the second we walked into the room. But this time the dentist said, “If you don’t sit still I’ll hit you.” And then he did. Hard. My mother told me it was my fault and I deserved it.

100

It was probably in the 80’s, I guess; I was working at a small factory. That night I was on a hot stamp machine, and I backed up, not knowing that someone had scooted an empty wooden skid up closer behind me. I tripped over it andd went down HARD on my tailbone, on the concrete.

I was hurting. Bad. I was sent home from work and told to go to the workman’s comp doctor the next morning.

So… I did. He was the gruffest, most uncaring doctor I have ever had the misfortune to meet. He told me in no uncertain terms that the reason I was hurting was not because of a fall, but because I am fat. Then, with the nurse in the exam room with us, he made me strip down to my underwear and stand in front of the mirror to look at myself, telling me how disgusting and repulsive I looked. I was, at that time on a diet, and tried to tell him that, and he interrupted, saying it obviously wasn’t working and if I was eating one sandwich a day, I needed to cut it down to a half a sandwich.

He refused to sign any papers that I had been hurt at work and I left there humiliated, in tears. It was a horrible experience.
Another bad time was when I was thrown from my horse and broke my arm between shoulder and elbow. It was a VERY bad break, very close to compound, the shattered ends of the bone cutting the tissue in my arm with every movement. When theey were doing the x rays, the nurse kept banging the machine against my arm, which hurt like hell. I was crying from the pain, and she snapped at me to just knock it off, it didn’t hurt that badly.

Really? Let me break YOUR arm then continue beating it and see how bad it hurts, um kay??