Going to the doctor is bad enough but imagine being gaslit into thinking nothing is really wrong. Only to have another doctor find something seriously wrong.
When you have a medical issue, you either wait it out until you can't bare the pain anymore or you head to the doctor right away. Whatever you do, once you get to the doctor, you assume they're going to tell you what's wrong and do something about it.
What you don't expect is a misdiagnosis.
Your doctor sees a serious problem presenting as something minor. Maybe they tell you it's hemorrhoids but in reality you have rectal cancer. Maybe it's something like on House. No one can figure out why you're dying and House comes along and realizes you have a toothpick stuck in your intestines.
Here are some of the worst stories from a r/AskReddit thread...
However, before you read these, please, if you are concerned about your health in any way or are not happy with your doctor/care, obtain your medical records and bring them with you to a different doctor. Don’t solicit medical advice from strangers on the internet that know nothing at all about your medical history. That is very dangerous to your health.
"I found an obvious huge rectal cancer on a patient who was previously told over and over again that she had hemorrhoids."
This would be terrible news. I wonder how much damage the cancer had done before being found. There is no elaboration but I hope it was still at a stage which could be cured. Sadly, this doesn't seem to be an isolated incident...
"I run into this a lot as a surgeon. Very few primary care providers will do a rectal exam. Just tell the patient that rectal bleeding probably hemorrhoids and give them ointment. If it doesn’t resolve within a few months, I get the referral for “hemorrhoid surgery” and find the rectal mass. Either that, or find a colon cancer on the colonoscopy that they should have ordered months ago."
-You think you're just clumsy but then you find this out...
"Once when I was a medical student on surgery rotation, in trauma, we had a patient come in after he fell on the street and bonked his head. Well apparently he had fallen once earlier that day and was discharged when the trauma workup at the other hospital was negative for injuries. We examined him and noticed his eyes were kinda...Yellow. so as part of our trauma workup, given that he couldn't give a great story and we couldn't be sure what happened, we CT scanned his abdomen, and saw his common bile duct was like 3 times normal size, could drive a truck through it. About that time, next set of vitals his temp was 103F. Guy was floridly septic from ascending cholangitis which is why he was falling down. Big miss and that is an emergency."
- Oh, you haven't been breastfeeding for 14 months? It's just residual...
"Patient was lactating but not pregnant or breastfeeding. Previous doctor told her it was residual from her baby that had been weaned for 14 months. Sent her immediately for a brain scan, brain tumor. She had surgery a week later to remove it and is doing very well now."
This one is quite sad
"I was working nights and a patient came in for a nailbed repair under general anaesthesia (it was a slow night). As they're anaesthetising him, he aspirates so we do a chest X-ray to see if he's got any spit/blood in his lungs.
What we didn't know is that prior to this emergency surgery, he'd been going to his GP for over 6 months complaining about chest tightness. They'd put him on various different asthma medications, but none had any effect on him.
The X-ray showed a massive dark mass in his left lung. We kept him asleep and transferred him to ICU.
His wife and three year old daughter were waiting for him on the ward. We had to tell them where he'd gone, why he'd gone there, and what was going to happen.
He died from lung cancer within the month."
I hope this guy is okay...
"Young student from, I think, Pakistan. He was complaining about his neck feeling stiff, he went to a doctor some days before and he was told he was having "joint pains" that would pass with some common anti-inflammatory drugs. When I visited him I saw many of the lymph nodes in his neck were swollen (which probably caused the stiffness) and not painful (not a good sign). Sent him right away to have a chest X-Ray that showed a huge mediastinical mass, suggestive of lymphoma. Sadly I don't know what happened to him..."
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