People Are Revealing the Absolute Weirdest Thing a Doctor Has Said to Them

First time something weird was said I was 14. Pulled foot out of sock.
Doc:"WHAT THE HELL IS THAT!!"
me: idk doc kinda why I came to see you
Doc:" I have an idea but normally you don't see this in teenagers from this time period."

He saw my skin peeling off from the bottom of my foot no pain just moist tissue filling off. Turns out it was trench foot. I was in marching band and my practice field was in the baseball field about ten minutes after the sprinklers went off every morning.

My feet were sitting in soaking wet shoes all day long. Started out just kinda itchy(athletes foot) then it got bad, and then it got really bad quickly. Just dried my feet out and got waterproof shoes. And a new pair of shoes. My mom was pissed.

Second time I was an adult and had some groin pain. Went to see the doctor as a twenty three year old man and the female doctor I've never met before tells me to pull down my pants and sees my junk and says

" Well" Immediately I was like omg is there something I didn't see I check my self regularly figured I'd notice something off. She lifts up my penis inspects all around feels up against my pelvis near the vas deferens puts my scrotum in her palm and gingerly squeezes the testicles .

Looks up at me past her glasses and says "Have they always been this big"
I say "in my adult life? I think so."
Doc: " these are some of the biggest I've seen."
In my head I'm like "wtf why would she say this?"

Doc: "but nothing seems to be wrong with them seems you've just pulled a muscle. Do you exercise a lot? (I point at my long board next to me) she goes "oh yeah I could have probably told you ,you just had a pulled muscle from that. But you know, gotta be thorough!"

I left feeling like the doctor was a total weirdo for awhile. But if a doctor says something like that it's not them being weird it's something you have that's medically fascinating.

Username: GrandpaMuenster

Told me I had tarsal tunnel. He overdosed me on steroid injections and nearly necrotized my talus bone. I followed up with a different doctor about a year later bc we moved and the shots didn't do anything. I had a shattered foot. I'd been walking on it for a year.

There were a lot of fragments of bone in my MRI. Why the first dr never ordered one idk. Anyway, had arthroscopy by 2nd Dr. Went through several months of pt, nothing changed. I still had intense pain. We moved again, and I went to another doctor.

This doctor told me that he thought I had rsd, which is a disorder that makes you hurt all the time because you've got messed up nerves. He referred me to a pain doctor. I am firmly and adamantly against the use of opiates as a first resort.

This pain doctor insisted that he put me on percocet, fentanyl, oxycontin, lortab, lorcet, I told him no. I did not want any of those. I never been to a pain clinic before but I knew how they operated, it was shameful to have to come in and take a drug test honestly. I felt like I was being treated like a child.

The last time I saw this doctor he told me that he wanted to put a nerve stimulator in my back. And I told him no. I told him if we didn't know what was wrong, then how can you do an unnecessary, potentially very dangerous surgery.

I guess about 10 minutes after talking, he said well you failed your drug test for nucynta. I didn't even know what that was at the time, it's a very strong narcotic. If I wouldn't take any of the other pain medications you offered me, why the hell would I take this? I went out to my car because I was mad.

I sat there for a second, I went back in I sat down and waited on him to finish seeing his next patient. I walked into his office I told him either he was lying, or his staff was incompetent and didn't know how to perform a drug test and label it properly.

Either way he was fired and I was going to file a report against him. I did follow a report against him, I did leave him bad reviews, it turned out he's running a pill mill. So about 3 years into this ordeal I finally just took it upon myself and went saw rheumatologist.

It took one appointment, just one for her to tell me what was wrong. I have sorry. Prior to treatment I was walking on forearm crutches. I couldn't walk more than a foot without extreme pain. I was terrified of taking narcotics because I didn't want to be addicted to them. I have a family history of addiction, why tempt fate?

I've worked with a lot of doctors, a lot. And it's always men that are most f****** arrogant doctors. I don't know why. That's why I pretty much refuse to see male doctors these days. And don't hand me the s*** like oh they're not all the same. I know they're not. But the ones I have seen are so I'm going based off of statistics about my own self.

Username: [deleted]

"Man, I've been trying to do that to her for the last year." Background: I have chronic testicular pain. I was going into surgery to cut the nerve to my testicle. (It only sort of worked made the pain go from a 10 most of the time to a tolerable 6). Due to the pain I hadn't had sex or even masturbated in 6ish months. They gave me a bunch of drugs in prep and numbed up the area. For the first time in for a really long time I was pain free.

The nurse who had shaved me kind of did a poor job because she didn't want to hurt me. The drugs hadn't fully kicked in yet. The urology resident came in and was like, this won't do.

She was a hot young resident. Like smoking hot. Like 9 when she gets out of bed in the morning and a 10 without trying hot. She was also exactly what I considered to be my type. Anyway, she grabs a shave kit from the supply closet and since I'm an ass man while she turned around I pop a raging boner. Like rock hard, full military attention hard.

She's like, it happens, don't feel embarrassed. It makes it easier to shave actually. So she's going to town with the shaving cream and is kind of just handling my cock to get to the side so she can shave. My cock hadn't been touched in so long even this clinical touch was send me over. I'm pretty sure she thought I was just uncomfortable from pain and that was the cause of the clear signs something was about to happen.

I can feel things building up. I ask her to stop for a minute. I figure I can get things settled back down. But she insists saying she only has a little bit left. To this day, I've never cummed so hard in my life. It was like those fake porno cum shots. Just absolute ropes of white semen.

It shoots all over her hand, arm, scrub top. And you top it off, she let go in shock and the last big squirt went into her hair. She apologized quickly and left with zero eye contact. Nurse came back in, said something about having a little accident and cleaned everything up again.

Post op: In comes my urologist and he is very much a fuck boy. Tall, handsome, single. Basically the nightmare of every woman. Charming, does everything right, but once you have had sex, he's gone. Having known a lot of docs at this hospital I knew the gossip.

He was basically trying to fuck his way through every attractive doctor married or single in the hospital. (He ended up getting fired a year later because he fucked the wrong guy's wife). I had known him before this vaguely, so we were on friendly terms.

He gave a guest lecture on the evolution of the penis to a class I was teaching during the evolutionary biology section. (Topics like this keep horny young college kids engaged and interested, and perhaps dupes them into a career as a biologist, God bless them. Also, one of the more interesting topics honestly)

He sits down next to the bed to talk about post op stuff and he says, "I heard you had an incident with (insert hot resident's name). I've trying to do that to her for the last year."

My wife who wasn't in the room during pre op was confused. He then says something to the effect, just make sure you don't do that with your wife until I see you in a week.

Username: UtahCyan

When I was 23 I woke up one day and had these weird red dots on me on various parts of my body, that were slightly raised & not itchy so I just went to work as usual. I worked with a close knit group of women & men that ranged in age for 18 to 56 & as the day progressed the dots changed their positions on my body.

I didn’t get more it’s like they just decided nope don’t want to be on my wrist let’s go to checkout the elbow then stay a while get bored and try my neck instead. My co-workers thought it was hilarious and were all giving their own diagnoses of what it was, as it moved throughout the day.

Honestly it was bizarre & one of the oldies told me that I ‘should really go to the Doc and get that checked out cause in this day n age it could be anything’. It was 1993 but it was said with such conviction that I felt I probably should go.

I couldn’t get in to see my regular doctor so as my last resort I ended up at a 24/7 medical centre that I had previously been given a dubious diagnosis at, as they regularly had Drs on that had just graduated.
So being newly married, my husband decided that he should probably come with me ‘just incase’ & I was like ‘incase of what?’ & he says ‘I dunno, just in case’.

So feeling slightly concerned now & with my husband by my side we walk in & the Dr sits quietly as I explain what my symptoms are, asks me the normal questions like have I introduced anything new like washing detergent etc etc, I replied no, no and he sits back in his chair and after about a minute, and with all seriousness says.

“Do you have ants in your bed, did you wash the sheets and they were present when you made the bed? They look like ant bites’ I nearly burst out laughing, my husband did, & I replied ‘I’m pretty sure we’d know if we had ants in our bed’ to which he replied, still with all seriousness, ‘ they could be very small ants & you didn’t notice them, go home check the sheets, see how you are over the next week & come back & see me if they get worse’

So with that my appointment was over & we walked out with no explaination of why the dots changed position, & we joked all the way home about red ants etc. & I told my husband that I was so grateful that he had been there just in case. When we got home, I had a shower & came out to find my husband had just taken the sheets off the bed & I saw him start to lift one up for closer inspection, as I said ‘are you serious?’ To which he laughed & said ‘just in case’

I never did find out what it was from, the next morning they’d migrated again but stayed put all day and the following day they did the same and fourth day they were gone. And there were definitely no ants in our bed!

Username: Routine-Owl7788

Doctor: “Pardon my language here, but how the fuck are you still alive? How the fuck are you even awake enough to tell me you feel sick? You should be in a coma! Fuck, at this point you are the first real life zombie!” Me, adding fuel to the fire: “I’ve also died [at the time] 5 other times.”

Background: it was 2012, and I was on vacation with my mom, and my brothers, but wasn’t feeling well towards the end of the week long trip. The last day when we were packing, I felt so weak, I couldn’t get out of bed, and was queasy just trying to stand up. My mom said I was only acting sick cuz I “didn’t want to be with the family.”

I tried to keep down a bowl of top ramen, and packed my stuff and we left. On the 3 hour drive home, I ended up needing to puke. So I grabbed the closest vessel to do it...ironically my mom’s lunch bag. Now me throwing up is bad because of a surgery I had when I was 3 months old (1st time I died, due to being unable to keep milk down/being malnourished).

This surgery basically prevents throwing up. Well we got home, and my mom called my girlfriend, now wife, to take me to the ER. We drive 45 minutes down to the nearest in-plan ER. They run a bunch of labs, and send me home because there is nothing overly wrong with me aside from feeling weak, lethargic, and pale.

We drive 45 minutes back home, and I go to lay down. My wife starts relaying the information to my mom and as they are talking the Doctors call and say “Bring him back here NOW! Do NOT let him go to sleep, do NOT let him rest too much! If we send an ambulance to you, it will take too long, and being as remote as you are, calling for one is not an option. We have contacted Police to provide an escort, do what ever you can to get him here in the next 30 minutes.

We get back in the car, and drive back to the ER. When we get there the doctors immediately come with that speech. I had 3 liters of blood left in my body, most people go into a comma when they go bellow 7 liters, and normal range is 11-14 liters.

After several years of trying to find the bleed I got it patched up in 2015. It was a hole in my stomach, inside a hernia, inside the first surgery. I had 1 day post surgery...and death finally took someone of my blood... my 5 month old daughter.

Username: hellishhk117

So this one is a doozy to say the least. I was 20 tops and had terrible constipation due to a medication I had to take for a certain duration and I had tried EVERYTHING over the counter possible and was like please, I'm in severe pain (two weeks without going #2) I needed some strong relaxer/something to help and the doctor was a student and she was incredibly rude to me and asked me what I expected her to do about it and if I wanted her to just dig it out of my butt .... not even mincing words there.

I wanted to just be like yeah you know what, this is your job so get back there and do it. Glove up or shut up but I was young and horrified. I had already been on the brink of going to urgent care for a week but avoided it due to embarrassment and it was clear she meant to make me feel every ounce of that shame possible.

Meanwhile, I was already so embarrassed about the problem that I brought a girl friend for support. It wasn't an issue I had before and I haven't had it since (due to it being a medication side effect in the first place) but it had been two weeks and I was in so much pain that I couldn't function and she just acted like I was ridiculous.

Spoiler alert, they did actually have a prescription that a better doctor wrote for me after that bitch left the room. I was all better within a few hours of that medication which needed to be written as a prescription so despite the doctors attempt to humiliate me, she only proved her incompetence in knowing the medicines available.

It was an urgent care based out of a hospital and I just got to a point where I needed to be able to work so I was desperate and she was so insanely creepy and rude about it. Meanwhile the nurse was so sweet and told me to use the medicine (it was an up your booty hole type of med) and just eat a big green salad and drink tons of water and I would be okay and said she was sorry to hear I was experiencing such bad side effects from the other meds instead of making me feel like a freak.

Prior to that she had requested another doctor to write me that prescription having overheard the student doctors treatment of me. Medical care in the USA baby, pay a ton of money just to be treated like gutter trash.

Username: grimhailey

This is moderately off-topic, but I love this story and I seize any opportunity to share it:
My 5yo has leukemia. The hospital/his treatment team is absolutely wonderful and I trust them wholeheartedly. That being said: it’s a teaching hospital.

There’s always the core team of faces, but those familiar, trusted, cherished faces almost always are accompanied by stray faces behind them, eager to learn. My son is a goofball and a weirdo and he loves when they come for vitals- he’ll seriously let 10 different people do “pit checks” (temperature) and “arm hugs”(blood pressure).

Generally they’re great. I’m thrilled that they want to learn how to care for people. Most all of them, we truly loved and were genuinely sad when it was time for them to move on. Sometimes the nursing students with have nerf gun wars with my little guy.

They even went after his doctor once. It was absolute gold 😂 So like I said: we loved all of them. All- except for the surgical team and the group of “people” I can only describe as... if aliens read a library’s worth of books, and only books- no movies, TV shows, etc. on “how to be an Earth person” and then took on a human form.

They were the most robotic people I have ever met. No bedside manner whatsoever. It was fuggin HILARIOUS (mostly because they had no influence or decision in his treatment). But this is a pediatric oncology floor. So, shit could get awkward FAST. Kids are brutally honest. ESPECIALLY when you’ve got them on high-dose steroids for 30 days straight.

I’ve got a million stories but the one that makes me laugh every single time: My son was due to have his picc taken out and a port put in. It was probably about 4am; they send this poor intern in to our room ALONE. He walked in the room and flipped on every single light.

My son, with all the roid rage a human could have, sits up undertaker style, without missing a beat, screams “WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT AND NOT EVEN BRING ME BACON!????!!!!” He didn’t even have time to wake up but THAT was the first thing out of his mouth.

The poor dude stayed by the door the whole time... never approached my son once. All he asked was... “so, uh, how’s he pooping?” I stared at him for a second and said “uhmm... just fine?” And he said “okay” and skeedattled.

He returned a couple hours later with a stethoscope and my son proceeded to crunch Cheetos in his ear while the fella desperately tried to listen to his lungs. Normally, I would’ve stopped him from eating during this time, but the guy kind of earned it.

The following day, my son was NPO before his surgery and that was it’s own special hell. So anyway, the dumbest thing a medical “professional” ever said to me was someone on a surgical team, about to place a chemo port in a 5yo child’s chest, ask how he was pooping and then run away with all the fear I’ve ever seen in a human being.

Username: Sea-Cow-2996

I can't remember his exact phrasing but it was along the lines of "I can't help you if you don't want to help yourself. There is no magic pill. So do whatever happy thoughts you need and I'll be happy to write up the discharge papers when you're done with this show"

Phrasing is definitely a little off but essentially he was calling me a faker and insinuating that I was looking for drugs. The problem? I was paralyzed from the waist down. I wasn't in any pain, hell you could've stabbed me and unless I was looking I wouldn't have known.

But what had happened was I had been given a diagnosis 5 years prior and told there was no treatment so basically only come in if I needed a doctor's note for school. Fair enough. 5 years pass and I need a doctor's note for work. I'm no longer a child so I had to go to a new hospital/doctor. They see me and tell me my diagnosis wouldn't cause these problems.

They want to run some tests and see if maybe there is a treatment to help me. OKAY! I'm so excited by this idea, that I could finally have a reliable body that I tell them I'll happily let them do their tests. I then quipped to the nurses that if there was a magic pill that could make me walk again on command I would be happy to let them poke and pride me as much as they needed.

This could've been swapped for "if you tell me to do the hokey pokey every Tuesday at 3:34 am to avoid this, I'll do it". I was just excited at the possibility that I'm not hopeless again. There's a chance they can help me.

But because of this off handed joke, that the nurses laugh at I'll add so they at least knew I was joking, I got labeled a pill popper by the head neurologist guy and he refused to even speak with me again, NOR would be discharge me until I was walking.

(Periodic paralysis so I knew it was only a matter of days but still). I was in a catch 22. No insurance so I had to apply for Medicaid. But every night in the hospital was thousands of dollars. I had to consider the options laid before me. Do I leave AMA and be forced to pay thousands, or stay racking up more debt so that if insurance accepts me I'm okay.. but if they don't I'm THAT much more doomed?

I was having daily panic attacks over this. When I finally was able to walk again day 4/5 and leave I left with 20000+ debt. For sitting in a bed and eating shitty hospital food. I didn't even have an IV hooked up or anything I was just sitting there and begged them to discharge me daily because I could (and DO) do this exact thing at home in my own bed for free! But apparently they were convinced I'd try to stand and hurt myself (?!? I'm paralyzed not stupid! And I've been dealing with this for 5 YEARS).

One stupid little remark about being excited that I might have treatment that can fix me launched me into a 2+ year fight over that damned bill. I nearly ended my life over it too. Looking at my supportive boyfriend (now fiance) and wondering how the hell I could ever ask him to spend his life with me when my existence was potentially putting us 20 grand in debt before we could even be married or consider having a child.

Thankfully they messed up some paperwork so after years of debt collectors, calls to insurance, calls to the hospital, calls and emails and insanity repeating "I got insurance! I did the paperwork! Go ahead and bill insurance I don't owe you anything!!!!!" It was finally cleared.

But God.. I hated that doctor for what he did to me. I was already terrified of doctors because of my upbringing. But right as I was beginning to have hope this bastard comes in so sure that I'm just a druggie that he wouldn't even listen to me and see that IM NOT IN PAIN I DONT NEED OR WANT PAIN KILLERS.

I wasn't ASKING for drugs! I was just excited there MIGHT be treatment for me, whatever that treatment would've been was up for THEM to decide! Be it drugs or PT I didn't care I was just happy to have hope and help. Now I'll never trust them again. I avoid that hospital like they are the plague themselves.

Username: Ellie_Loves_

Me: Dr I’ve been having my period for a month straight and its extremely heavy and painful. I don’t think this is normal.
Dr (female): Oh that’s normal! Just wait it out.
Me (28, F, South Asian): Right, ok.

I already knew this was going to be the response. Fast forward three months later and I still did not stop bleeding or passing blood clots. I was hospitalized in the ER as my hemoglobin levels tanked from a healthy 14 to 5 in the span of three months. I then continued to bleed for two years straight. I had a blood transfusion every two months.

Once I had an iron and blood transfusion within the same day because the bleeding was so heavy. Hospital refused to admit me. My ER Dr. tried so much to admit me as my HGB just kept on dropping WHILE getting the transfusion done.

The hospital admin said exactly this “actually women can still function pretty well on level 2 and 4 HGB so unless she’s at level 2 or under I’m not admitting her. There is also a risk of infectious disease spreading.”

As if the waiting for months on end for a single hysteroscopy date was not frustrating enough, I now have to apparently have to be actively dying for them to admit me. They refused my please of a D&C for two years. I was eating Tranexamic Acid and Progestrone like it was candy.

Lupron also couldn’t stop the bleeding. Took it almost a month to start working and I felt horrible on it. FINALLY, after 2.5 years of pleading, $2,000 in pads, tampons, detergents etc (cause I would bleed through my pad during my sleep within 1-2 hours and had to put towels and extra bedsheets underneath me to protect the mattress) I finally got a D&C, biopsy and IUD insertion.

However they waited too long and I am now pre cancerous at an alarming fast rate. Now just waiting on a date for the hysterectomy to be scheduled and praying this does not develop into stage 1 endometrial cancer. My plans of having more children completely ruined. I gained 20kg more and became pre diabetic due to the severe anemia that took almost 2.5 years just to get back to level 10.

All my family Dr had to do was refer me to a gynaecologist (and that referral was just as useless) instead of dismissing my concern that first month and the gynaecologist should have immediately done a biopsy, D&C and IUD given my history of PCOS. I’m convinced in Canada they purposely make you sick till the extreme.

Username: Pink__Fox

Much older gyno doing a regular check with her fingers and says “you have a great vagina!” while still feeling around in my cooch. Funny looking back, not so funny to 16 year old me who just wanted to get the hell out of there and was wondering why she didn’t wait to at least get her fingers out of there before saying something since she was so inclined to comment on it.

Primary doctor telling me I had to stop getting so sick (I had pancreatitis a few times and was going through it at 15) and then said “I think all the hair dye is making you sick. Maybe that’s why your brain is all wonky too” (I was diagnosed with depression and anxiety not too long before the appointment). It was very clearly a joke and made me laugh.

Went back to see him after a bad reaction to reglan (had tardive dyskinesia) and when I said reaction and the medication name he started mimicking the muscle spasms and said it was tardive dyskinesia before going back to being professional like he didn’t just pretend to spas. Caught me off guard but made me laugh after almost crying while telling him what happened.

He liked to joke about how much my body hated me and how nothing could go my way because there was always something going wrong with my treatments and body. I liked it because he was basically speaking my mind but made it funny instead of sad.

Then there was the doctor who was overly excited about learning I had extra ribs and an incredibly straight neck from a neck injury. He was having the time of his life showing the other doctors how quickly my arms went numb. I can’t remember exactly what he said when he saw the X-rays but he was so funny about it.

He was a goofy older guy who already loved the stories about how I was dying from pancreatitis and didn’t even know it because I have an overly high pain tolerance and was super super excited to learn about me being able to do stuff with my arms entirely numb because I taught myself to be able to move my hands right and not let my arms fall down while raising my hand in school growing up.

I’m pretty sure it was the most exciting thing ever to him. He called me two days later to talk about it more and begged me to keep him updated. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a doctor that excited to find extra bones in a body before but he was pretty much like “wow! You’re so rare!” and all giddy like a school girl.

Username: FormalVariation4818

"You don't strike me as someone who feels emotions very deeply." Said by a psychiatrist who was treating me for a major depressive episode during a divorce.

Leading me to wonder... am I a psychopath? And I know that's not the current language in the DSM, so, equivalently, do I have schizoid personality disorder?

I don't have (many/any) close friends, I tend to be completely fine with not interacting with people for days at a time, I have difficulty maintaining friendships because everyone else seems to require _a lot_ more care and feeding than I do to maintain social relationships, I don't share things with even my closest friends, I suffer from anhedonia a great deal...

Like, yeah, I know that I'm not as emotional as a lot of people I encounter. And I know I'm much less bothered by being alone for long stretches of time than most people I know. And I know that I have a tendency to be secretive and to not share my emotional state with other people. And... and... and... and I check off all the things that would establish that I am, in fact, that way.

But that diagnosis is something they apply to serial killers, and that's _not_ something I would ever do, because... well, why would I? That thought of violating the autonomy of another person is horrific to me, because it's like... that's just not something you do.

Just because I don't feel a strong urge to associate with other people doesn't mean that I don't recognize other people as being, as Kant puts it, ends unto themselves, and not just means to an end for me. So, yeah, that shit disturbed me, and has continued to disturb me for years after the fact.

Bonus one: "Are you incontinent yet?" Said by the neurosurgeon I was referred to by a chiropractor, after the chiropractor sent me to get an MRI and then called me in a panic at 10 pm from his personal phone when he received the MRI results, because it was an emergency.

The neurosurgeon's nurses had taken the MRI results from me _two hours_ before and assured me the surgeon would be right in. _After_ asking me that, the surgeon proceeded to tell me that I needed back surgery, and I needed it immediately.

That normally they would try physical therapy, but my condition was so advanced that I was out of time and options, that this was an emergency situation because if I had a nasty fall, or if I got bumped in a car, I could end up paralyzed from the waist down, and the reason it took him _two hours_ to come to see me was because he was booking the surgical room, anesthesiologist, etc., for my back surgery which would happen _five days later_.

Username: daemin

I'm a guardian for my older brother who is mentally 2-4 yrs old. He had a seizure and I met him and his caregiver in the hospital. No one could figure out what happened that had him refusing to walk after his seizure.

Multiple EMT, nurses and doctors had seen him by the time I arrived without anything planned or pain meds given. I asked for details of what occurred during the seizure from his aid and was told he fell on his side. I was like oh, ok is there any bruising on his leg?

No, not really, was the response. I ask my bro if I could look at his leg and he was hesitant, but finally let me. Sure enough there’s this tiny little bruise on his hip towards the head of his femur. I put two and two together and ask the doctor about getting x-rays. He begrudgingly agreed.

We get back from x-rays and come to find out he broke the head of his femur completely through. Fucking terrible, this kid was in pain for 24hr hours before anyone told me about what had happened. No pain meds at all. My bro is pale AF hardly responding to things he enjoys. And has a bead of sweat on his brow.

Here comes the most asinine response that caused me to lose my shit on the doctor. I said to him that now it's confirmed the issue is a broken bone, can we get my brother some pain meds? Doc says, do you think he needs it? My response was along the lines of ...

Gee doc, how do you think you would feel if you broke your femur in half? Do you not normal administer pain meds for patients in similar situations? I stared at him with utter irritation plastered on my face. He confidently said well, yes, but he seems fine.

WOW, he seems fine!? The fuck he does. I've already told you he does not act like this normally. He doesn't randomly sweat, gaurd his body or look so pale. If he wasn't in pain he'd be running circles around us. Just because he can't verbally express his pain doesn't make him impervious to pain. He is clearly exhibiting non verbal cues of pain. YES he needs pain meds!!

I'm so greatful that I have legal guardianship of my brother. I cannot imagine how others get through our healthcare system without an advocate. Sadly this experience wasn't our first or last time dealing with something like this.

Username: thebeckyblue

It’s the size of a BASKETBALL!! I was 18. For several years I’d been complaining of a nondescript pain that sorta moved around, sometimes my back, sometimes my right side (not digestive). I was also lazy. “What’s wrong with you? Why aren’t you getting anything done?” I had NO energy.

We lived in Seattle. It was during one of the first Boeing economic down turns. “Will the last person out of Seattle please turn out the lights?” My mom was a casualty of it. She was a drugstore clerk with no job. I think it was nearly 2 years before she got a job through a retraining program.

In the meantime, I went to a quack who always said it was a yeast infection. Antibiotics and nothing changed. My mom got a job *with benefits.* She asked a friend who was sorta sickly and well off for a gynecologist recommendation. This was in May, 1972.

He examined me and said I had a huge ovarian cyst and it needed to come out “yesterday.” He even suggested I wouldn’t be able to walk in my hs graduation because I’d be post op.

My mom obviously had NO money, not even for a copay. So she called my dad who got in touch with Indian Health Service. It was the very first time I knew there were healthcare services for me as an enrolled tribal member.

The hospital was a good one. But it was a teaching hospital. That meant — especially since it was such a large cyst — that I had a LOT of interns examining me.

One said basketball. Another said volleyball. They were fascinated of course. I was able to graduate but the cyst came out pretty quickly after that.

They told me after that it was my body going rogue and creating a “baby.” It had random teeth and hair in it. I really really wanted to see it, but no one would let me. This has nothing to do with reproduction. I was NOT pregnant.

I signed the consent forms but I was NOT told that if the cyst was wrapped around my ovaries, I could have a full hysterectomy. My mom told them not to tell me. To this day I’m so glad they didn’t have to do it. Can you imagine my reaction to that had they done a hysterectomy!?

Username: Prior_Benefit8453

When I was in College, my gums got infected around my right rear wisdom tooth. I wanted to wait until after the end of the semester and get it taken care of during the summer, so I went to the University Dental Clinic.

My dentist at home had taken x-rays of my teeth several months earlier and said they were OK, but if I continued to have problems, perhaps I should consider taking them out. I walk into the clinic and tell the person at the front desk that I have an infected gum and I'd like an antibiotic for it.

She said I had to see one of the doctors. After a while, one walks over. He has me stand up and open my mouth in the waiting room. He puts a tongue depressor in my mouth and looks at my teeth. Within 15 seconds, he says, "That's got to come out, that's got to come out, that's got to come out, and that's got to come out.

I'm making you an appointment for next week..." I explained that I had it looked at, and they said it was ok. He said, "Was the person who examined you a dentist?" I said yes. He said, "Well, I'm an oral surgeon. " I told him I don't want an operation. I just want antibiotics, so the infection goes away.

Now, here comes the part where he says something weird. We're just going to pretend that his behavior to this point was completely reasonable. You know, telling an 18 year old college freshman that he should have surgery to remove three perfectly healthy teeth while standing in a waiting room having examined no records, no x-rays, no patient history, while at the same time dismissing the qualifications of the overwhelming majority of the professionals in the field he is a member of.

We're going to pretend that's all just fine...He says, "You know, if you're going to keep taking antibiotics to ward off infections instead of taking care of the problem, eventually you're going to get an infection we can't treat, and you're going to die." I swear to God, this is exactly how the conversation went. Word for word. All of it. Not one bit of exaggeration.

I insisted that I was not having four wisdom teeth removed without at least seeing my regular dentist. He petulantly said, "Well, if that's what you want." He dismissively waved his hand as he turned and walked out of the waiting room, saying, "Give him the antibiotics."

I took the antibiotics, and the infection went away. It never returned. This story took place in 1981. 42 years ago. I still have all four of my wisdom teeth

Username: M_Looka

I slipped in the shower and banged my face pretty hard. There was this weird lump in my upper gum I could feel with my tongue so I went to the emergency room. Young Aussie doctor looks me over, doesn't seem concerned, gets one of those mirror thingies to look in my mouth.... then suddenly he yells "STREWTH!" and literally runs out the door.

And then neither he nor anyone else come back for FORTY FIVE MINUTES. After a while, and having thought all the things one thinks in such circumstances and others, I left the exam room to go looking for someone - anyone - to talk to. It was a quiet Saturday morning and the hospital was pretty empty.

I ended up wandering around a number of empty corridors and wards like a scene from 28 days later, and then when I finally did find anyone they were invariably working on entirely different things and to know nothing about me and just advised me to go back to the exam room and someone will be along shortly.

45 minutes later my aussie finally comes back apologising profusely but kind of incoherently. He then without really explaining what is happening sticks his fingers, ungloved, into my mouth and yanks. Then he says "here's your problem", shows me something I can't see, and leaves again.

Then he comes back and I slowly piece together what happened. Or I think I do, to be honest I'm still not entirely clear and parts of what he said sounded completely incredible.

Anyway as best I can make out I slipped in the shower, landed on my face, chipped my jawbone, and drove a jawbone chip into my upper gum like a spear. My doctor had seen this, had been surprised and concerned by this, and had gone to find a colleague for a consult which had taken a while.

The end result of the consult was, to quote him directly, "we decided that this was really really weird but not really a biggie", and so he'd come back to pull the chip out. And now I was fine. Well except for the fact that I now have no labial frenum, which I can't say has particularly held my life back.

Username: [deleted]

I have chronic pain, have had it since I was 5 or 6, and the amount of times doctors have told me that I was a liar, faking for attention, not sick, etc etc etc has broken my faith in the medical field. My knees have hurt since I was 5, they would randomly swell to the point where I couldn’t bend them or stand.

One doctor take a cast of my knee incorrectly to prove that I was faking bc the pain bc it didn’t actually offer any support, that when he put it on my leg it dug into my skin and cut off circulation. Luckily one of my friend’s mom was a nurse and was like “hey that thing on her knee is fucked” and was able to take it off and rewrap it so I didn’t hurt as much.

When I was 16, one doctor told me that he believes I have some rare tendon/ligament condition where my leg muscles & such didn’t form right & they’re too short for my body and my knee caps can’t move. It’s causing the rest of my body to become messed up too, pulling my hips out of alignment, progressing my scoliosis and causing more back pain than I should be having based on how active I try to be & family history.

I don’t have a name for the condition and could never get any doctor notes or anything bc so many called me a liar and I have such a high pain tolerance bc I just love in pain. When the weather changes, my knees swell and my legs go numb.

I struggle to crouch, get up, lift things, etc. My leg went numb at work the other day but luckily my boss/coworkers know what’s going on and helped me out until the feeling came back

I also had a female OBGYN tell me “that sometimes, our bodies hurt, and you need to get over it and move on”. It took me awhile to go to a doctor again for my pain and the last time I went they were like “yep, you got cysts.

No, we can’t do anything about that, have you tried losing weight? Also we need you to come back and get another scan to make sure you do have more cysts the next time it’s your period and it’ll be another $400 for the scan”

Username: SierraDL123

A few years ago I was in a car accident and the side airbag deployed and popped my lung. (I never knew that could happen.) I had to have a chest tube inserted and was stuck in the hospital for 6 days while my lung healed. The thoracic surgeon was an awesome guy who told us to call him by his first name.

When my parents and husband visited me he came in and explained everything to them. I said "Yeah, it was amazing how you just thumped on my rib cage and then knew exactly where to insert it." He said, "Yeah, that always makes me crave ribs for lunch." Still don't know if he was kidding or not but it was hilarious.

My husband had an awesome hospice nurse before he passed away. She taught me how to use a condom catheter on him. (This is another thing I never knew about.) It's pretty much exactly what it sounds like. You wipe the penis with this thing that looks like an alcohol pad but instead it's an adhesive. Then you put the "condom" part on and there's a tube attached so the pee goes into a bag.

It's really cool and convenient. Anyway she asked me if I'd be interested in using one and when I said yes she had to ask what "size" he was. We cracked up trying to figure it out. I was like "Umm I don't know. I'd say small. But that's only because he's not going to be excited when I put it on! Trust me!"

Fast forward to when she brought it over and showed me how to use it. She wiped him with the adhesive and said, "Now you have to be careful not to clue his penis to his leg." She looked at him and said, "You don't want your penis glued to your leg, do you?" As if he was going to say yes. 😂

Username: MoonLitCrystal

Not sure who really fucked up here but I'm pretty sure it was the ER doc. I was 30 when this happened (relevant).

I went to the hospital at like 2am one day because I all of a sudden started getting cold sweats, shivering uncontrollably, got a bunch of sharp pain in my left forearm, had issues breathing, and felt like my chest was being hit by a taser every few seconds.

I gave this same description of symptoms to the triage nurses in the ER and they did an EKG. They had issues getting a decent reading because I literally couldn't stop shivering. They also took a blood sample.

They then sat me in the lobby, where my wife and I proceeded to wait for 2 HOURS, the first 30 minutes of which these symptoms kept happening.

Since I started feeling better, and we were both tired of waiting, we asked the triage nurse if I could leave. He said if I feel better I can go. My wife relayed this info to me and we started gathering our things to leave. Just as we were walking out, the door pops open and a doctor calls my name.

She starts questioning me on how I described my symptoms so I repeat what I said and my wife confirms. She keeps saying "you said your chest was burning, not feeling electric" and I denied ever saying that. I told her I never said that because I'm aware that ER departments like to hand-wave that description off as acid reflux and this definitely was NOT that. The look of "Oh fuck, he knows what I'm trying to do." on her face was obvious to the entire lobby.

She called me inside. They proceeded to tell me that the blood they took showed a protein called troponin. I knew what this was because I'm interested in medical science and because I have doctors as friends.

I knew it meant heart damage so the implications of just that first sentence were already sinking in while they were explaining (my wife didn't know yet). They said that it's normally indicative of heart attack, but my trop levels were at 12 (usually a heart attack is like 3 for a massive one). They later went up to 18 and dropped back down.

I was diagnosed with acute idiopathic myocarditis. That basically means they don't know why the hell it happened. They turfed me up to cardio and the cardiologist basically said his best guess was a virus that, for some reason, affected my heart as well.

They ran a battery of different tests the next day and everything checked out fine. I did a bunch of follow-ups and it was all good but I was given some routine meds to take for the next month or so just in case.

That ER doc was basically trying to wave me off by saying it's just acid-reflux until she saw the results of my blood test and saw her career flash before her eyes. She then tried to gaslight me into changing my description of symptoms to justify her initial response. Unlucky for her I know my shit when compared to the average person and I'm relatively quick-witted even at 4am in the ER.

Something interesting, but irrelevant to this thread, the same exact thing happened to my little brother 6 months later. He doesn't live with me and is about as physically different from me as possible.

Docs said there is no genetic connection, just two freak occurrences. To this day it's a mystery to me because I don't buy the coincidence answer.

Username: diamondpredator

“It’s all in your head” -said 2 doctors before I finally went to my current one. Since when I was a kid, I always had those episodes when I can breathe, but I have some food stuck in my esophagus that won’t go down. My parents never believed me, most of the times said I was faking it, so I got used to sort it out by myself.

Then, three years ago, some food stuck in my esophagus, and no matter how hard I tried, I would not be able to make it go through or throw it out. This time I was not able to drink small sips of water and let it pass through. I also had to spit out my saliva every 2-3 minutes. Still, I decided to wait since it usually get better over time. So I waited for about 12 hours,but things only got worse. And thus, I went to a doctor in the following morning.

First doctor I went to, checked my throat through my nose after I explained the situation. They were like “it’s all in your head, there is nothing stuck in your tracheae”. I was like, yeah I know Sherlock, otherwise I would either have trouble breathing or be dead already. But apparently pressing on this point didn’t help and they just dismissed me. So I went to another doctor in the evening.

After waiting for a lot of time, they told me (again and without even checking my throat) “you can breathe. There is nothing stuck in your throat. It’s all in your head, it must be caused by stress that makes you feel like you have food stuck” . I tried to explain It can’t be only in my head, I can’t eat nor drink, and I even took a sip of water and spit it out because I could not swallow all in front of they. They thought I was faking it. And was sent home. Again.

Next day, I finally decided to go to a different clinic. I waited for almost the whole morning, after two very restless nights, and two days without drinking water. I was so exhausted and so hopeless that when the nurse told me “please come back tomorrow morning”, I literally said “please, I haven’t been drinking water in two days and spitting my own saliva in this plastic bag, help me”.

Pretty sure I’ve shown her the plastic bag too (lol). They told me to wait and well, they finally called me. And for the first time they told me it was real, I had food (meat, if you’re curious) stuck in my esophagus.

They tried to dislodge it, but couldn’t, so they put me to sleep, extracted the meat, told me what I have and gave me medicines to keep it under control.

When I woke up after the procedure I drank the water bottle I bought in the morning all at once, then went to get another one and drank it too. Water tasted like the most delicious and satisfied in that moment for me. I still thank those nurses and the doctor who believed me to this day. Also, never had another even remotely severe episode since then.

Username: Individual-Froyo-471

My ma was a meth addict and cook. She cooked under the trailer directly under my room. Never used the shit in my life, but one of the many times a sheriff was called out he asked if my mother did drugs. I had a fierce loyalty to her and i said no. He pointed at a shared wall from the living room to my room.

He said " that giant oval stain only comes from cooking meth, and whether you're using it or not, you are breathing it and are going to have issues and side effects. ". I was 14 and didnt want my mom to go to prison so i said "no she doesnt do drugs" again. He shook his head and left. Fast forward to me being 19 and all my teeth started chipping, crumbling and rotting.

Ive never had dental insurance in my life so that didnt help and they just kept getting worse and worse. Nothing helped the pain except insane amounts of hard liquor. One night i had an abcess grow on the roof of my mouth. The pain was drivi g me insane and i couldnt even swallow the whiskey i so desperately needed to try and manage the pain. A good feiend drove me to the E.R. and went back with me.

The Dr walked in and looked at me like i was garbage. He asked why i was there and i told him about the abcess. This motherfucker walked up and put his thumb on my front teeth and a finger on the abcess and squeezed. I screamed and almost passed out. I was in tears and blubbered out "help". He said "im not giving you anything" with what i could only describe as a sneer. I pointed to a sign that said "You have the RIGHT to pain management". He literally laughed and said "not for people like you".

I was bawling. My friend stood up and said "what the fuck?". The Dr repeated himself and told us to leave. My friend basically had to carry me out to his car while im crying my fucking soul out. That was not the first or last time i ever experienced that, but its one of the ones that sticks out clearly. I understand that my teeth were rotted, i was in a band so my mohawk and leather jacket didnt help my appearance, but how the fuck is a dr so calloused?

I was in a stupid amount of pain and i didnt really have time for a haircut and suit before going to the emergency room. Thankfully now my teeth are better because they're all fake. But every now and then i think of that guy and hope he gets into a horrific car wreck or breaks an arm and the first person to find him is another bassist who just squeezes his broken arm and laughs at him before leaving him on the side of the road.

I know its not mature but fuck him. People have tried to justify his actions saying" well his job is hard and im sure he deals with addicts all day". Neat. All i ever say is " sucks for him, its almost like he chose that profession and went to school for it" sorry for rambling. That was over 10 years ago and it still pisses me off

Username: hulkbogan

OOOOOOHHHH here we go: When I was 16 I came down with a very unusual and never-diagnosed illness which lasted about 2-3 years. Basically, once every 6 weeks my throat would close up, I’d have a wicked fever, couldn’t eat for days, throwing up, wild headaches. It was very bad. I saw doctors from all over the world, or at least as best I could from my small town.

Every. Single. doctor. Would test me for HIV and STIs as soon as the triage was finished, even when I told them I was t -that-sexually active (I’d had sex, but protected and I had regular checkups since then, all neg). As soon as they saw me, as soon as they heard my voice, the first thing they did eas diagnose me with AIDS. Not even HIV. Straight up AIDS.

One time I was in the hospital for a week and both of my arms were so bruised from blood transfusions and testing, they had to find other parts of my body to take blood from. One time I was in the hospital (between 16-18 I’d say I was hospitalized for a week at a time maybe 4 times, but definitely every 6 weeks during that period id be on bed rest, if I wasn’t straight-up intubated).

The 2nd last doctor I ever saw was some BITCH from Poland. (Sorry, don’t mean to be a misogynist, but fuck that bitch).

... I was born-into, but escaped from a cult, which is why I have a super unique and religious name. When my specialist of internal medicine examined me she delighted in seeing it - my name. She smiled and said I must have nice, god-fearing parents.

I was 17 so I was like, uhh, well we don’t really go to church anymore. She looked me up and down and began shaking her head and wrote a whole page of notes on my sheet. She looked up and said, “so you must be one of those people who doesn’t believe in God?”. I kinda gulped and asked her what she meant by that.

“Well, obviously your sins are catching up with you. I know what’s going on here.” She wrote a diagnosis which basically said that since she suspected I was such an ass-floozy that I’d destroyed my internal organs from getting hardcore gangbanged by any man who’d offer to scratch my insatiable itch.

She registers me for a litany of tests to do biopsies on my internal organs, including some things that were beyond inhumane. She was determined that I was suffering from organ failure because my ASSHOLE couldn’t keep up with the TRAUMA of being a pass around party bottom. Again, I was 17. Naturally, all of the tests came back saying I was fine.

Happy ending: my next doctor was from Australia. He asked what my diet was like, asked how I was sleeping, what I did as a schedule. His prescription? He told me to go buy some yogurt and get better sleep and talk to him in a month.

I got yogurt and slept better and never got sick again. I’m 34 now and I haven’t had so much as a cold since then. His diagnosis was that my parents were pushing me too hard, i wasn’t eating or sleeping properly and I was malnourished.

This is why I fucking hate doctors, and why I will literally need to be on deaths doorstep before I ever see one. Fucking assholes.

Username: josiahpapaya

A while ago, I noticed some itching and burning while urinating and thought I had another UI, which is get regularly. But a few days after, I felt really intense pain in my groin. It got so bad early Sunday morning decided to see a doctor in an emergency clinic (I live in Europe, this clinic is not an ER in a hospital, it's more like a clinic you go to with minor issues that don't need an ER but are urgent enough they cannot wait longer, when there are no doctors open on Sundays, for example. I don't know if there's a similar thing in the US).

So I waited for the gynecologist a while and when I went in and described my symptoms, she literally jumped up from her chair and exclaimed "Oh god, let's hope it's nor herpes, that would be terrible!"
I was extremely irritated and sort of just sat there staring. She then examined me and kept muttering "oh no."
I was so freaked out, close to tears. This woman works in an emergency clinic, where people only come when they have issues that cannot wait. I couldn't believe how she responded.

After a short while she finally told me, that it's herpes and that I need to see my regular gynecologist for further instructions. Nothing more. When I walked out the door she said "you're on shock. I would be too".
I held it together until I was in my car then I started bawling my eyes out. I thought I was broken, that I would never have sex again, that I was truly and forever sick and diseased. I drove home, woke up my boyfriend and cried some more.

Around once every two years or so, my boyfriend has a very minor herpes outbreak on his lip. We had oral Sex around one day before one started to show. It was simply very bad luck. I didn't blame him, I was just so lost and scared.

A couple of days later, after reading a lot and seeing my regular gynecologist, I figured out that herpes will never really go away, but the gaps between outbreaks usually become longer and longer and they never get as bad as the first one. There's some medication you can take once an outbreak starts to keep symptoms minimal and keep the time of the outbreak short. If you don't have an active outbreak, chances are very low that you are contagious.

A lot of people have herpes, in fact, however they never show symptoms and therefore never know.
Yes, it sucks, but it can be totally lived with, mostly without even thinking about it. My life and relationship has changed almost not at all, I didn't have an outbreak since that first one, back in December.

That gynecologist in that emergency clinic freaked me out so much and acted so unbelievably unprofessional I keep thinking about going back and complaining.

Username: octhisisathroaway

Not me, but my mother. She started having seizures and trouble walking/talking in September of 2021. She had Guillain-Barré syndrome about a decade ago, and for a few months was actually paralyzed across most of her body, so my parents assumed it was related to that.

Turned out to be stage 4 cancer. The radiologist she had to deal with for this, who introduced himself as a "man of god" told her during her first visit with him that the cancer is spread all throughout her body but "god willing" she might make it another month. Then he started to proselytize to her, asking her if she's accepted jesus into her heart and the whole spiel that pretty much everyone in the USA has heard at some point.
She had to check him there and let him know that he doesn't know her. A decade ago, she was told she'd never walk again but she beat that. So he can keep his guesses about her chances of living to himself.

Of course once she was referred to a specialist, it turned out that while the cancer was in several places, they had a good chance of treating it. Incidentally, she kicked the cancer's ass over the next few months and was doing great until recently.

So in the last month, she started to have some trouble talking again and decided to go back in. Of course, she ended up with the same radiologist doing the initial MRIs or whatever. He tells her she has a new, massive tumor spreading through her brain and that she has maybe a couple months left to live. Of course, we all take his pronouncement with a grain of salt but start wondering if this upcoming summer is going to be the last one we get to spend with her.

Yeah... turns out that the tumor he found has likely been there the whole time and is actually necrotic. Because the treatments killed it. And any other traces of cancer they can still find up there are all tumors that are shrinking. She is going to get surgery to remove the necrotic tumor and everyone (except the radiologist) is confident she will pull through this.

Only question I really have is whether the radiologist is an asshole who thinks he knows more than he does and that's why he's trying to tell people how long they have left to live? Or is he just an asshole preying on people when they are weak, making them think they are doomed in order to spread his religion and get more brownie points with his sky daddy?

Either way, setting aside the idiocy of telling cancer patients they are going to die very soon when actual oncologists give an entirely different timeline is just not something you should be doing. Then topping them off with trying to proselytize to patients during work at a secular hospital? Super unprofessional.

Username: Totentanz1980

Around 9 years ago I had brain surgery to remove a tumor (turned out to be benign). I had a bumpy recovery with pain and I was doing my best to manage. Then one day maybe 2 weeks or so after surgery I went to make a microwave dinner and couldn’t read the package.

Completely blurred. It was so sudden. I called my mom panicking, we called my PA and she said get to the ER now. I go and it turns into an 8 day hospital stay: no one knows what’s going on, I get a lumbar drain to drain cerebrospinal fluid because it seemed like my pressures were high (from the LP and an ophthalmology resident).

At the end of 8 days my headaches are slightly better and my vision is maybe a teensy bit improved, but I still needed to borrow my moms reading glasses and enlarge the text in my phone at 23. My neurosurgeon gets me a referral to a neuro ophthalmologist and discharges me from the hospital.

My mom takes me to this specialty neuro ophthalmologist who does a few tests and an exam and then says “I don’t see any reason for your blurry vision, you are perfectly fine. I think that you might be scared of fully recovering and being independent and this is a way to keep your mom in town.”

My mom flipped out on him and I started sobbing, but he insisted it was all in my head, my eyes were fine, my vision was fine, I was faking it. Told me it’s time to move on with my life.

My mom was furious. She took me to a family friend’s friend who was an optometrist just to get a decent basic eye exam and see if she had any leads. Our friends said she was wonderful and wanted to help. I walk in with my notebook full of the timeline of events and start on about what happened to my eyes.

She listened fully and then pointed at my neck “how long have you been wearing that scopolamine patch?” I said I had been wearing it since surgery, so at that point over a month, changed it out every 3 days. They had prescribed it for he bad nausea I got post surgery.

WELL APPARENTLY SCOPOLAMINE DILATES THE SHIT OUT OF YOUR EYES. My pupils were huge she said, no change in size between light and dark, like 10x what they should be. Took the patch off and within a few days back to normal.

It’s funny I actually saw a pic of my handwritten timeline come up in my Facebook memories and at the bottom is a note that said “feels like when the eye doctor dilates your eyes”. I had shown the ophthalmologist those notes.

My mom wrote the chief of ophthalmology about the incident and he personally called to apologize. Said they were embarrassed an optometrist figured it out.

Username: stinkspiritt

Not a medical Doctor, but a Dentist. When I was 12 years old, I knocked out my two top front teeth playing Hide and Go seek. All the neighbourhood kids would gather at one house and we'd play.

Well, I came around the corner of a building in a running crouch, and another player was coming the other way at a full bore run, and we collided, my mouth into his forehead. Went to this guys house (we were playing using his house as the safe base.

His Mom was a nurse, and she and my Mom came out to my screaming bloody murder with blood pouring from my split lip. My Mom grabbed some Kleenex from her pocket to try stop the bleeding, and one tooth immediately fell out. The other was hanging at a weird angle by the root.

Went to the hospital to get my lip stitched up, and they said go immediately to the dentist in the morning, as this happened about 9:30 PM. Got up the next morning and drove about 45 minutes to the dentist.

He sees me right away, and my Mom gives him the tooth that had been immediately knocked out. Dentist begins his exam, poking around in my VERY PAINFUL mouth. He tells his assistant to give me a shot of Novocaine into the roof of my mouth and front gums.

This DIDN'T help as he's trying to manipulate the tooth that didn't fall out back into place. It HURT LIKE HELL, so he orders more Novocaine into the roof of my mouth, and starts me on nitrous.

He keeps trying to put the tooth back in, and I'm literally screaming in pain. Two more shots of Novocaine into the roof of my mouth, which is basically skin over bone, and nitrous gas, but I'm still screaming in pain.

Here's where things got "interesting"! At one point, he's still trying to manipulate the tooth back into it's socket and I'm literally screaming in pain because the FOUR shots of Novocaine and nitrous gas weren't touching the pain, and he says "Will you shut up! You're scaring my patients in the waiting room."

He decided to take an x-ray to see why the tooth wouldn't go in, and found out a few minutes later after developing the film (this was in 1981....) that both root sockets for the knocked out tooth and the hanging one weren't there.

The collision had crushed jaw bone! If he'd have taken an x-ray right away, he'd have seen this and avoided a lot of screaming and yelling in pain by me, and him not having to tell me to shut up! He ended up pulling that tooth as well, and because they were adult teeth, I've got a partial plate with my two front teeth.

Username: WizardofLloyd

Not necessarily weird, but about a brilliant doctor who was my tutor that day. I was in the consultation room with this urologist, and his patient plus wife. The patient and wife were nephew and niece, and the urologist knew that their family has a long history of (near) incestuous relationships. They were obviously not the smartest bunch, but hey, let's treat them for the medical matter at hand:

Retrograde ejaculation. The doctor does the talking, and start giving some advice. Smart as he is, he notices how the patient doesn't really like to listen to advice on this embarrassing subject (embarrassing for the patient, not us professionals: we're there treating these kinds of things all day).

So the doctor starts talking to me instead (without disregarding the patient): he explains to me, in very simple language, what he's diagnosed and what that means to the patient. And then proceeds to give his advice, e.g. that the patient (and for that matter his wife too) should always pee after sex.

And certain treatment options. All explained to me, as if he was being a gentle teacher and not the patient's doctor for their embarrassing problems.

I thought it was brilliant that a very experienced urologist managed this consultation with a not-so-smart and stigmatized patient in a very respectful and smart way, so that the patient got what they needed and more.

And let's not forget me: I also learned a lot: how a great teacher can turn around a complex situation into a safe learning environment.

Username: erikieperikie

Told me to “suck it up” “go back to a baby dentist” “i’ll cut your tongue and sew it improperly” if i didnt quit telling them it hurt when they did stuff to my mouth. They fucked my teeth up too. Parents didnt care. I was 13.

Story:
Old dentist retired (excellent)
New one (horrible) wanted to put crowns in for cosmetic reasons, i didnt want it
New one drills into my teeth without numbing it multiple times (like seriously every damn time they’d try to get away with drilling close to my nerves without numbing it, words cannot describe how much it hurt)

Tells me to suck it up and deal with the pain, or when they did numb me they would leave for 30-45 minutes and it would wear off (whatever they were using wouldn’t last long on me).
Put temporaries in, doesnt seal one correctly, falls out, i hide it because i didnt want to go back.

Starts taking temps off, drills into a tooth next to it for some godaweful reason, drills on my front bottom four teeth for some horrid reason (it hurt). Cuts too much from one crown leaving a u shaped shelf that cuts my tongue, other one was too big and squished my gums upward and made them itchy.

A month go by and itchy crown fall out (not sealed correctly). Hide it for three months because i didnt want to go back (still cleaned the tooth and such but held it in place with my other teeth/lips) lose it somehow, had to go back.

Dentist gives me hell for losing it, puts temporary in (crooked at that), doesnt smooth it, tells parents its a permanent. I never go back.

Eventually the temporary started to chip, and much to my relief (teeth shifting for wisdom teeth) it makes itself even again, ironically by chipping in a rough shape the original tooth was. And it didnt ich my gums anymore after it chipped.

Still haven’t gotten them fixed, largely due to my parents wanting to take me back to shitty dentist (teen) or as an adult, lack of dental insurance or health insurance.

Found a great dentist, that actually listens to me, and i dont feel pain when they work on my teeth, but they dont take my dental insurance now, which is lovely.

I just hope i can find one in network that is as understanding as that one, especially where i shake really bad. Shitty dentist made me scared of dentist (or the drill specifically) when i wasn’t previously.

Plan on getting them fixed after i get my goofy ass wisdom teeth removed that’ve been needed taken out since late 2019 and have started to damage my other teeth. (Lost dental and health insurance aswell as my job during the pandemic)

Username: ekdocjeidkwjfh

This will probably get buried, but I had a weird vomiting episode in my early 20s. Wasn’t food poisoning, wasn’t a hangover. Just woke up and couldn’t stop gagging and retching. My stomach was mostly empty so it was just liquid and a lot of burning bile.

The contractions in my stomach were so strong it felt like I was being repeatedly punched. Everything was spinning like I was on a carnival ride. Was happening like clockwork every 5-10 minutes.

Friends drove me to the university health center with a bucket in my hand. The nurses were sweet, get me cold rags, run my urine etc, give me some fluid bag. The doctor comes in and is a fucking prick. Keeps asking me repeatedly if I was pregnant since I wasn’t on birth control. (“Well, how are you SURE? Lots of girls lie about having casual sex. You’re not using protection.)

(Because I haven’t had sex in 6 months.”) (“Listen, if you had one too many drinks downtown, just be honest.) This dude had like a sadistic glint in his eye. I’m still dry-heaving; so violently at one point pure stomach acid shoots out my nose and onto the floor. I stupidly stood up to wipe off my face, and collapsed dizzy onto the floor, and the doctor rolled his eyes and barely tried to help me up with one hand.

Finally the nurse comes back in, “She’s not pregnant, or been drinking. We ran her urine, obviously. And she’s seriously dehydrated. Any advice, sir?” Her voice was venom. He just shrugs and says “some Gatorade, she’ll be fine” and strolls out of the room.

Apparently, the second the doctor left, that nurse went into the hallway, grabbed my best friend, and told her they needed to take me to the hospital immediately or she’d be calling the ambulance for me. They did. Apparently my potassium + electrolytes at that point were wildly off - I needed four additional bags (of fluid or saline?) the hospital.

They made me stay overnight and late into the next day. Hooked me up to like a EKG(?) with those sticky pads and then later a heart monitor thing for 24 hours. They gave me lots of anti-nausea/vertigo meds and I had to take these prescription potassium pills for two weeks. They did some initial neuro testing and then scheduled a neuro consult follow up to try to figure out the cause; but I was too broke at the time to pay for it.

That was just the first of three vertigo spells. Just recently found out it’s due to some fucked up inner ear problems causing the vertigo. Having surgery in June for that, ear tubes in, and getting rid of my tonsils. If I see that doctor in the street, I’m going to to kick him in the shin.

Username: pennylane131913

Went to a TMJ doctor in San Diego who is "well known", and he's known for being rude and egotistical too, but I think his ego got an even bigger boost after he appeared on a news station (or maybe he was always a super major asshole) and whenever I described him to other doctors they would say "Oh ____?" (his name) I'd say "yep."

Anyways, I went for jaw pain, clenching teeth, all that, (which ended up being due to stress in general/the pelvic floor), I brought my mom and dad because I was young (like 20) and always am nervous around doctors and get pushed around, so I needed advocates. He was really rude from the start, terrible bedside manner.

I explained I was having headaches in the back of my head and left side too, along with the jaw pain, and he wanted to inject botox into the back of my head/brain to stop the pain (which is completely ridiculous, no way is this guy touching my brain he's not a neurologist), and when I expressed caution at some of his really invasive treatments/doubt about him as a doctor, he yelled "You know, I've got the solution right here.

I'm giving you a solution, I can take this needle right here and shove it into the back of your head and all your pain would be gone. But you don't wanna do that, why? Is it because you're doing it for attention?

I'm sure that's i, I mean your parents are here (my name), you're old enough to be here by yourself. You don't really want a solution you want attention." And I told him I brought them because I knew I would be uncomfortable and he was making me even more uncomfortable right then and since he wasn't a neurologist and especially being hostile, I DEFINITELY wasn't gonna let him anywhere near my brain.

And I wrapped up the appointment after that like "yeah no nevermind, I'm ok I don't need your help." And then I just walked out before the appointment was even over. Outside the building I started to cry due to anger and frustration, I needed help but I can't stand doctors without bedside manners, but especially those with an ego (that might've started when they were on KUSI, the shittiest news channel in San Diego).

And I've always been aware of doctors, psychiatrists, etc. that are completely excited and ready to deliver the most invasive or potentially life-changing solution first before anything else, and especially if he wasn't a neurologist he wasn't gonna do anything to my brain. The doctor was an absolute asshole and detestable and I hope he's out of business/lost his license.

Username: [deleted]

“Not to be politically incorrect but.. you’re basically full of shit haha!” A tick-borne meningitis infection (treated at this same hospital) had left me with extreme neurological setbacks resembling a severe traumatic brain injury, yet the medical system had essentially released me into the wild with no resources or information after a couple days of antibiotics and IV hydration.

About 20 days later I ended up in the ER with extreme abdominal pain, confusion, malaise, vomiting variously colored foam and bubbles, and nausea with an extreme rotting odor coming from my breath, so advanced it genuinely resembled the smell of burning plastic or rubber with general chemical undertones.

The doctor who ended up with my bedside clipboard didn’t bother to read any of the recent record of a near fatal meningitis infection presented in that same ER with nearly complete body paralysis and severe brain damage, he simply took an abdominal x ray and and could barely contain his guffaws when he delivered his diagnosis of *constipation*, despite the fact that I informed him repeatedly I hadn’t eaten in a week due to the pain and nausea, and completely undigested food was visible in my stomach on the one x ray he ordered.

I am dizzy with relief every day that my sister insisted on physically carrying me into her car and driving me to the ER in the next city 45 minutes over.

In the 3 weeks since my meningitis horror I had peripheral neuropathy starting at my toes and working steadily up to my waist by the time I acquiesced to attend the ER. None of my nervous system from the belly button down was operating, the usual auto-pilot functions that cause food to be moved through your digestive tract were in complete paralysis.

My stomach had not yet dumped my meal of a week ago into the next steps of my digestive system and I was in the throes of toxic shock as my entire digestive tract broke down from the material rotting within it, with my gut actually perforating at several points from advanced necrosis.

The infection actually hadn’t been eradicated by the pitiful dosage of antibiotics they’d given me my first time in the ER, half of which I’d almost instantly vomited up bc the ER wouldn’t provide me with food but also wouldn’t allow anyone in to bring me food. I ended up in 2 years of picc line antibiotics and have essentially no digestive tract left.

The two year statute of limitations for malpractice passed while I was bedbound in a nearly vegetative state.

Username: [deleted]