Jesus Christ, Doc! I TOLD you it wasn't Gout!

The BBQ Pit
1

Last October, I woke up one morning with my left ankle swollen and hurting like the dickens… So, I dutifully made a doctor’s appointment, and told her how I’d tripped over uneven surfaces in my back yard probably four times in the previous month.

Instantly, the doc says, “Gout”… stop eating this food and this food, and don’t drink such and such, and we’ll test your Uric Acid levels, and start taking this painkiller, and these gout drugs right away…

After I insisted that I think it had something to do with falling, she sent me for an x-ray… which showed nothing, so the doc continued to tell me how to eat “properly” from now on… and take my pills…

I did all kinds of research on gout, and don’t eat or drink almost anything on the list of “gout danger” foods… and my tests came back showing my uric acid levels were normal…

When I told her that I REALLY didn’t think it was gout, she told me to take my pills, and she’d send me to a podiatrist to have them check it out…

Went with friends to Disneyland at New Years, and as the day went on my foot hurt more and more… by the end of the day, I was sending friends on rides just so I could sit - anywhere… the pain was unbearable…

So went back to the doc and told her I really didn’t think it was gout, because it felt worse and worse when I was walking or standing… but she insisted it was gout… and to keep taking the pills… At this point, if I walked five feet, it was MAJOR pain, and everyone who knew me asked why I was limping…

But, I dutifully took the pills for the four months it took to get to see the podiatrist, who instantly said it wasn’t gout and to stop taking all the pills… I just needed some physical therapy… so I should book that…

Within a few days the pain was back to major levels, so it was back on the pills… but only the pain killers… I figured the gout pills weren’t working anyway, so why keep taking em?

I kept researching gout, and finally decided that it was time to find out if I really had gout or not… so I booked an appointment with a rheumatologist… I had horrible visions of needles in my ankle to test for crystals, and barely slept the night before… but dragged myself to the appointment…

The rheumatologist talked for a few minutes, played with my ankle, and asked me about things like falling. I told him about all the times I twisted my ankle in my yard, and he told me there was no reason to do a test for gout, he wanted me to go have an MRI on my ankle…

For the first time since my ankle had started to hurt, a doctor actually told me he was sorry that I had had to put up with pain for so long… and had me send in to the state to get a temporary disabled placard for my car… he suspected I had a torn tendon or ligament…

Flash forward to last week - I went for my MRI which said that I DO have a torn ligament in my ankle… which I’ve had for 8 FUCKING MONTHS… Next stop is an orthopedic surgeon… and I’ll either end up with a boot or an operation… but NO FUCKING GOUT…

I actually still like my doctor a lot, but I think I’ll be bringing my “Gout” up for a LONG LONG time when I go in for other things…

2

Yeah, a lot of doctors have “pet” diagnoses, and when you couple that with the usual human inability to admit error…

3

All my sympathy there, especially if you got the old ‘which one of us is the doctor?’ speech.

I developed stress-related eczema around the time my father died. I knew it was likely eczema and went in to ask about such at the GP. According to him, it was scabies.

I’ve seen people with scabies. The rash from that is unmistakable. I did not have that rash. I did not have the right exposure to have contracted scabies. He said it was impossible to tell with the rash, as I’d scratched so much I’d likely obliterated it. And everyone said they couldn’t possibly be that ‘dirty’. After all, he was the doctor.

Round of anti-scabarics. Nothing happens. Back at GP, he says ‘definitely eczema’. Get steroid cream. All clears up. All in all, a rash that should have been gone in a week took a month.

I can only imagine having their screw-up mess with something like walking. Or, in the case of my old teacher, your sore back from old age actually being a horrible cancer that spreads uncontrollably in the time it takes to work up the nerve to say ‘you’re wrong, doc’.

4

Wait…she still insisted it was gout when the uric acid levels (presumably) were normal and the anti-gout meds (colchicine?) failed to lessen the pain???
mmm

5

Time to shop for a new doctor, methinks.

6

A good doctor doesn’t have to be always right. A good doctor has entertain the possibility that he might not be not always right.

Sorry for your pain!

7

I have one doctor that I could probably go in and say “Hey, I got hit in the face with a soccer ball and my nose is all swollen and it’s hard to breath” and he’d say “Nah, allergies, take some Zyrtec”.

He’s an ENT, I like him, been seeing him for years, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen him without him telling me that my allergies are acting up.

8

Just for balance, I had a similar experience disbelieving my GP’s immediate diagnosis of gout when I had extreme foot pain after using a treadmill. It turned out (as a specialist later confirmed) he was right.

9

Yeah, she insisted that people with normal uric acid levels could still have Gout… Funny thing is, she’s normally really with it, so I trust her - other than her “Gouty tunnel vision”… Maybe I need to rethink things…

She had me on allopurinol which supposedly lowers your uric acid levels, so maybe that’s why she figured my levels were normal… except she did the test BEFORE I started the drug… I must have had AMAZING uric acid levels when I started taking the pills!

I’m looking forward to being able to walk without a limp again some day! It’s just not a good look for me… for EIGHT fucking months…

10

I’m really not sure what Gout feels like, it turns out, but I feel for ya!

11

Down but not gout.

12

Years ago, not long after I moved to a new city, I got a pretty nasty ear infection and was looking for a doctor. I picked one to try based on a list from the HMO and the recommendation of a coworker. I explained my symptoms, and he instantly said, “TMJ.” That would be a diagnosis of temporomandibular joint issues.

Understand that, in addition to pain when I closed my jaw, my symptoms included dizziness, severe swelling in my ear canal and around my ear, and gross black goop coming out of my ear. Even the most casual inspection should have told him where the problem was, but he was insistent on diagnosing a problem in my jaw joint. I called him a quack and went to another doc, who immediately said it was–wait for it–a nasty ear infection. He prescribed some ear drops that cleared it up in short order.

Doctors can be as weird and fixated as anyone, and need to be called on it.

13

My doc is an old “Marcus Welby” type. I kid with his nurses that you could just picture him making house calls with a little black bag. His favorite phrase is “Wellll, I’m not worried by that…”

He’s usually right, and whatever it was goes away in a few days. But the times it SHOULD have worried SOMEone, I’ve had to find a specialist and get some real expertise in that specific field (one of which sent me right from her office to the intensive care unit, where i just managed not to die).

14

I can relate. I had to pay over a thousand dollars to an orthopedist to have him misdiagnose me with cubital tunnel syndrome. I told him that I knew about that disorder, and knew what the risk factors were, and I didn’t see my symptoms get work by doing things bending my elbow. He just laughed and wrote me off. Suffice it to say, it isn’t cubital tunnel.

Doctors can be hard to deal with sometimes when they develop a knee jerk diagnosis then ignore all the signs you have something else. The human body is insanely complex and a doctor isn’t going to have the motivation to deal with your problems as much as you will.

15

My doc (general practitioner/internist) seems to be hung up on bowel issues and refuses to believe mine are fine. Maybe because I’m in my mid-60’s? He hectors me endlessly with questions about regularity, texture, etc. to the point of squickularity.

Seriously, dude. They’re textbook good. He didn’t believe me, apparently, and sent me for another colonoscopy after one 3 years ago found no problems. This also one came up fine, and the gastroenterologist said I can wait 5 years for the next one. Nope, internist says 3 years “just to be on the safe side”. My crappy Medicare Advantage coverage means each one of these procedures ends up costing me $300- plus.

I do like him but he spends most of my routine visits for other issues (cholesterol, arthritis) focusing on my digestion, which is the very least of my complaints.

16

I went through something like that a few years ago. I got sick and my doc figured out I had hepatitis. (In my case literal inflammation) So I ended up getting hospitalized over it and a gastroenterologist took over from there. Loads of treatment and eventually I got put on steroids since it might have been autoimmune hepatitis. Anyway a year or so later I went back to my regular doc and he finally had the report from the gastroent and I kind of found out what he really thought it was. OD’ing on Tylenol as I was trying to self medicate migraines. What was the problem? Well the gastroent didn’t ask one specific question. That question is of course “When this started were you taking acetaminophen?” (And yes the answer to that was “No, when this started I was taking ibuprofen which I had recently switched to. I didn’t know what it was at first so I switched back figuring I was having a bad reaction to the ibuprofen.”)

17

I took my little’un to the doctor when she was just about two-ish. She had been complaining her knee felt “wiggly” and she had large, swollen patches on her leg.

The doctor said, “Spider bites”

I commented how odd that was, considering our climate and everything, but he insisted. Since she had several, he went on to say that it must be nest in her room. I went home and searched her entire room, even taking her bed apart.

Nothing.

More patches. Knee became worse to the point she was limping.

Different doctor - juvenile rhematoid arthritis. Some physio and a shot of anti-inflammatories and she hasn’t had a symptom since.

My sister went to that same doctor for an infection? Spider bite. Her son had a severe, but localized infection on his arm? Spider bite.

18

Deer tick, bullseye rash, aches and pains - nonspecific allergic reaction to something … :dubious: Next doctor, blood test, lyme disease, antibiotics. :stuck_out_tongue:

[on the plus side, the second doc is our current PCP, and mrAru has poison ivy allergies so bad that we joke he could look at a picture online and get a rash :stuck_out_tongue: - all he needs to do is call in and he can get a prednisone scrip without even being seen. I have seen him go from 7 or 8 blisters to 80% coverage in 12 hours.]

19

I had a scaly patch on my wrist that didn’t go away, so asked my PCP about it. He diagnosed it as a rash one time, and eczema the next, but creams he gave me didn’t help. Next PCP thought it was fungal infection, but that treatment didn’t help. All in all, about three years go by with this thing getting better, then worse, and never really healing. Finally, on my own accord, I went to a dermatologist. His first question as he enters the room? “Are you here about that skin cancer on your wrist?” Luckily, it was slow-growing and not dangerous.

PCP who thought was fungal infection also misdiagnosed my shingles as spider bite. The last straw was when he misdiagnosed my late husband’s kidney cancer as bronchitis, although since the damn tumor was so big it was attached to his diaphragm and cough was the presenting symptom, I couldn’t blame him too much.

20

I must be lucky, because almost all the time the doctors I see are right on target. But there was this one time:

I have a condition called lymphocytic/microscopic colitis which results in diarrhea. The first gastro doctor I went to diagnosed it fine, and recommended a treatment, which worked for a fairly long time, until it didn’t. Went back, and his recommendation was a steroid. I was not enthusiastic about that, but he insisted it was the best treatment and was not dangerous.

Unconvinced, I got a second opinion. Second doctor, on hearing the history, said, “Oh, no, you don’t want steroids. It doesn’t work.” He prescribed Cholestyramine, a cholesterol-lowering remedy that also happens to cause constipation in most folks.

The interesting thing is that when the first doctor got 2nd doctor’s request for medical records, he called me (personally) to ask why, and seemed quite sad that I was getting a 2nd opinion. Not angry, just sad.