The Coldest Doctors
In an ideal world, doctors would be empathetic and have a good bedside manner. But that's not always the case. When asked what some of people's coldest interactions with physicians were, they did not hold back.
After reading these stories, there's no doubt that these cold-hearted doctors deserve to get a taste of their own medicine.
1. Heart Pumping Head Case
I was in the second grade when I got really, really sick to the point that I was hospitalized due to dehydration. I couldn’t keep ANYTHING down for days on end, not even water!
Even so, I got better, and I was discharged from the hospital with flying colors on all the tests.
I was healthy by their standards, yes. ButI was never the same after that illness. Even though the illness was gone, I began to get odd symptoms. I began to experience chronic nausea, acid reflux, and stomach pain. I had regular cluster headaches that didn’t respond to any pain medication.
I was dizzy and tired all the time, especially when I stood. I was unable to run and play like a normal kid; I would pass out or throw up. I began not wanting to go to school, not wanting to see my friends, to leave the house, to do anything.
I couldn’t eat much, I couldn’t sleep much, and I couldn’t play much.
I would cry to my parents and the school, telling them how sick I felt and how I just wanted to go home and go to bed. It was brushed off as anxiety. When I was nine, my parents finally took me to a doctor to see what was happening. The doctor looked at me and told me one thing that changed my life forever. "It’s in your head”.
After that tiny statement, I was told I had anxiety. I felt like I was crazy for years and YEARS! Finally, I began to believe them. I started to develop actual anxiety due to being told I had anxiety all my life.
I went to therapist after therapist, and none of them could help me.
Then when I was 16, I went to the doctor for a routine check-up when he noticed my heart rate was 101 bpm. He decided to try something to see if standing and sitting affected my heart rate, and it did!
When I went from lying down to standing, my heart rate rose from 100 to 160. My doctor knew something was wrong.
Finally, he ordered tests for me. Apparently, I developed postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome after being sick, a chronic illness that causes every symptom I had. Being validated was the most wonderful feeling in the world.
I was sick, and it wasn’t in my head. There isn't a day that goes by when I am not angered by this man for not believing me.
2. A Real Pain In My Gut
I was hit by a tractor-trailer on the side of a highway while working as a firefighter. The impact almost ended me, leaving me with crush injuries and fractures to my femur, hip, pelvis, eleven ribs, and clavicle.
The back of my knee had been ripped open, big enough for you to fit your fist in it.
I also had abdominal injuries with severe internal bleeding from a liver laceration. I was in a coma for several weeks, during which time my abdomen was cut open and packed to stop the bleeding. When I finally woke up, I was in horrible pain.
I wasn't going to be able to walk for several months, I couldn't lay on my side, and everything I did caused me the worst pain I could imagine anyone going through. Almost immediately, a select few doctors told me, “
We need to get you off pain medication”.
About a month after my crash, I was discharged from the ICU and sent to a rehabilitation center to try to help improve my ability to care for myself and transfer myself to a wheelchair.
I ended up developing pain in my abdomen that was worse than any of the pain I had previously in my recovery.
I was transferred to the ER because of how bad it was. Tons of IV pain meds would not touch it, and the pain was not going away. Scans and blood work were performed, but I was told nothing was found, so I was sent back to the rehabilitation center. Then disaster struck. I was sent back to the ER after hours of worsening pain and screaming for them to help me.
When I arrived back in the ER, I was treated coldly by the doctor and the nurse. Eventually, I was told point blank, “Nothing is wrong with you, you are a healthy young man with no reason to have abdominal pain.
You are obviously looking for pain medication, but we will not give you any more”. My wife and I were flabbergasted.
My injuries were still fresh and something was very wrong inside my abdomen, but I was being treated as an addict. Luckily, I saw a different doctor walking by and we caught her attention. She was the Director of the ER and looked into the situation.
Apparently, the treating doctor did not even read my file, so he had no idea about the injuries I was healing from.
I was assigned a different doctor and nurse, who did a thorough assessment and found a huge amount of blood in my stool and fluid in my abdomen. I ended up being diagnosed with a rare type of infection in my small intestine.
Needless to say, I will NEVER go back to that ER.
Freepik, freepik
3. Normal Suffering?
From my middle teens onward, I had bad menstrual cramps. Nothing helped, but I got through life the best I could. I graduated high school and my cramps got worse and worse.
I couldn't move when they hit me, and I decided to see a gynecologist about it.
He merely did a general internal exam and said my cramps were normal and to try not eating meat. Meat doesn't affect cramps, as far as I know, so I just suffered. I lost many jobs being unable to work due to the severe pain.
I went to many different gynecologists over the next ten years, all to hear the same story after a simple inspection.
They would say, “It's normal period cramps”, and the one that made me fully give up said, “It's all in your head”. I believed them and life went on. Years later, I moved to a small town in Illinois.
By that point, my cramps were going on for 23 to 27 days of the month.
The only time I didn't have pain was during my three-day super ultra-heavy period. I couldn't stand, squat, lie down, or sit. Something had to be wrong because no one else I knew suffered as I did. So I went to desperate measures. I found one of the top women's health centers and made an appointment.
I went in and, to my shock, the gynecologist listened to me and did an ultrasound. Instantly, I was told they were going to set up a laparoscopic surgery to see more, as the ultrasound showed things weren't very good inside.
I got dressed and burst into tears, telling the doctor she was the first person to take me seriously and not say it was normal or all in my head.
A few weeks later, I got my exploratory surgery. I was called in for the results and was told that I needed a hysterectomy immediately. I had a severe infection around my uterus, massive endo, and huge fibroids.
My uterus had a huge internal fibroid that was the size of a 6-month pregnancy, and the endometriosis had petrified my uterus rock solid.
My gynecologist/surgeon said it was the absolute most horrific thing she'd ever seen and she'd been doing that kind of surgery for 19 years.
4. Wasting My Breath
I was in 6th grade and had recently been diagnosed with asthma. Our pharmacy took about two weeks to fill a prescription, so my mom had planned to pick it up that afternoon. On this particular day, we were taking the pacer test in PE.
I was in the twentieth lap, and I started to feel out of breath.
My PE teacher noticed, and she wrote me a nurse pass. When I got to the nurse’s office, I told her that I had asthma and that I needed to call my mom so she could bring my inhaler to me. “There’s no mention of asthma in your file”
she said as she looked at me skeptically.
I told her, “Yeah, I know. I just learned that I had it a few weeks ago”. She told me, “Go back to class, Scarlett. You’re fine”. So I went back to class and started the test over.
Around the fifteenth lap, I felt the same tightening in my chest, but I convinced myself it was fine.
By lap twenty, the tightening was really bad, and by lap thirty, I was struggling to stay upright. I went to the nurse again. It was even worse than before. She looked at me with angry, judgmental eyes and asked what I needed. I told her I couldn’t breathe and that I needed to call my mom.
She looked me right in the eyes and said, “You know, I’m really tired of kids faking asthma for attention. YOU ARE FINE. I do not want to see you in my office again, Scarlett. Do I make myself clear”?
I ran out of the nurse's office, struggling to breathe with tears in my eyes.
I turned around, determined to talk to the principal, and that is when I supposedly passed out. I woke up in the ER and was told that I had only had 18% lung capacity when I came in due to asthma.
