I’ve never tried this, but advice I’ve seen online is if your doctor won’t order testing, ask them to note in your chart that they are declining testing. Apparently the implicit threat of a lawsuit if they’re wrong is enough to kick at least some of them into CYA mode.
On that note, why would they decline tests in the first place? You’re the one paying.
Pharmacist and 4th year medical student here. Medical tests are ordered based upon their statistical ability to alter your likelihood of a diagnosis. No test is perfect in either direction (negative result meaning you don’t have disease or positive result indicating you have disease). Tests cost money, take resources of the healthcare system, and have the potential to be wrong. When a test is wrong, it can result in financial, emotional, and physical harm to an individual.
Example: you’re an otherwise healthy 34 year old and you feel a little under the weather and are coughing. It’s only been going on a few days, mild fever, but you’re worried and you go to the doctor. Your doctor thinks this is most likely a viral infection, recommends Tylenol and ibuprofen and sends you home. You imply to the doctor you’ll sue if you don’t get antibiotics and a chest x-ray just to be safe. The doctor, rather than argue with you when they have a dozen other patients to see, just orders the stuff and moves on. The chest X ray doesn’t explain your cough, but there’s a small lesion of undetermined significance on the X-ray. Now you need a CT. The CT says “probably a self-limited granuloma from a fungal infection, can’t rule out cancer, correlate with biopsy”. Then you have to go get sedated, put a camera down your throat, and have a pulmonologist take a sample of your lung to see if you have cancer. Maybe you end up with a complication from the sedation or a pneumothorax. Meanwhile the antibiotics you took didn’t really improve your cough but now you have this uncomfortable itchy rash. Are you allergic to the amoxicillin? Or did you just develop the typical rash seen in people who have mononucleosis that also take amoxicillin? Will you get allergy testing for the amoxicillin? Just avoid amoxicillin, an awesome antibiotic, for the rest of your life?
We are restrictive in our prescribing of medications and tests not because we don’t care about you, not because we want to save the hospital or the insurance company money (in fact the hospital prefers we order more things because they make money on testing). We are restrictive because we want to maximize benefit while minimizing risk, and everything we do has risks and benefits.
doctors dismiss womens pain so often and with such regularity that I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often. Almost all of medical research is done in regards to how it affects a white male, neglecting to take into account differences between that of a white man and literally everyone else.
additionally this is another symptom of Americas sexism, which is just as prevalent than its racism. the fact that black men got the vote before white women did should tell you how little conservative republicans think of their “better halves.”
I have to fight every time I am suffering. It’s ridiculous.
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Bad cramps; must be normal period pain… Nope! Severe Endometriosis that required surgery.
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Exhausted all the time; must need to exercise more… Nope! Narcolepsy!
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Joint pain and weakness; you could afford to lose 10lbs… Nope! Ehlers Danlos Syndrome
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Passing out going from heat and movement; change your diet and drink more water… Nope! Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome
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My feet are always freezing; wear more clothes… Nope! My veins are literally leaking (found this out on the 30th)
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Headaches where I blackout and slur words; must be hormones or poor nutrition… Nope! Hemiplegic Migraine Disorder and TIA(mini strokes)
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Getting spacey, dropping things, memory issues; must be a hypochondriac… Nope! Seizures.
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I fought for 7 years to get sterilized because my health problems are genetic and was told I was too young to make that decision (at 24) and that my ex husband might change HIS mind about wanting kids so they wouldn’t do it.
I’m so sick of doctors not listening to me because I’m a woman who is not even remotely fat, but has a pronounced hourglass figure. (Size H chest)
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What I think is more serious and affects all sexes and races equally is doctors dismissing all medical complaints if you are overweight. It’s like it’s the only thing they can focus on and their only thing they will talk about until you lose the weight
it’s because obesity is a comorbidity that causes a LOT of problems. it’s adding chronic stress to your metabolic system, your skeletal system, just… everything.
however, what a lot of doctors fail to realize, is that obesity can also be an addiction to sugar. Eating disorders are common, and it’s one of the hardest things to correct, because with most every other addiction, you can stop and avoid it. Can’t do that with eating, you HAVE to eat. the amount of sugar in American foodstuffs is criminal.
I like how r/mildlyinfuriating is full of injustices and crimes instead of like, a slightly misaligned tile.
People just completely lost track of what “mildly infuriating” meant, maybe because there’s no venue for r/IncandescentRage (who would want to mod that?).
It’s like when the tiles in the floor are crooked, and it’s making you angrier than it ought, lady, that’s mildly infuriating. This? You need to sue this motherfucker, so the settlement pays for the hopeless surgery you’re about to have, for fuck’s sake. This is not mildly infuriating, you should be screaming and punching the walls.
Who else saw a space ship going into space??
I see it now and I can’t unsee it
This happened with my mum but with breast cancer, ended up dying because of it, very infuriating
I know someone who has been having all sorts of medical problems for the last few years. In and out of ER every few days sometimes, always got discharged with “idk”
They finally did a biopsy and It came back cancer.
They’re probably fucked with mets as it took so long to diagnose. No full body scan yet but it’s not going to be good.
Fuck cancer.
Removed by mod
