Recently, I shared stories of patients second-guessing their doctors when they made a mistake. Commenters came through on the post sharing their own stories, that, reading through, made me gasp so loud that my husband came running into the room asking what was wrong. Here they are:
1. "My first summer home from college I had gained 20 pounds, which is normal-ish, and I was craving food I had never even liked before. But then, I started waking up vomiting for 3–4 days in a row. It would stop for a few weeks then start again, all in a 3–4 day block and getting more intense each time. I ruled out pregnancy pretty quickly, and proceeded to see a series of doctors over the next couple months who all basically said I had IBS and that was that. No one ran a single test (except for pregnancy tests 🙄). It wasn’t until an herbalist friend started tracking WHICH 3–4 days out of the month I was getting sick and put together that it was always when the moon was full. Long story short, I had a parasite in my intestines, likely for over a YEAR, that was reproducing every time the moon was full."
"A stool sample confirmed it and my lovely herbalist friend put me on a diet and protocol that cleared it up in matter of weeks. I dropped all the weight, lost the cravings, and wasn’t sick again!"
2. "I had inflammatory breast cancer. Textbook case. At my appointment with a surgeon who specializes in breast cancer at one of the top-rated cancer hospitals in the world, he told me that it was just a thickening of my skin from prior radiation from a previous cancer. I would be dead if I had listened to him and not pushed for an appointment with my oncologist. Inflammatory breast cancer is highly aggressive and spreads in a matter of weeks. If I had waited, I would have been untreatable."
3. "I ran track in high school, and hurdles were my main event. I made a mistake in practice one day and my heel didn't clear the hurdle, and smashed directly into it instead. There was a blinding pain in my knee, and I went to the doctor that day. They did an X-ray and told me I had probably just torn my meniscus, and that I could run in the meet two days later. Over the next two days, I couldn't sit still. I could walk fine, but keeping my knee still was so painful. I ran in the meet, won my 300m hurdles race, and fell off the track in agony. I went to the doctor again and they did an MRI, and then told me, 'ooooh yeah, you fractured your femur at the knee joint, our bad. Here's some crutches, stay off it for eight weeks.' I literally broke my leg and they missed it and cleared me to compete. Unbelievable."
4. I wasn’t involved in sports, but have a misdiagnosed fracture story. I was in third grade, and was literally walking heel-toe along some lines in my school’s foyer. I twisted my ankle, and later that day was still in excruciating pain. Luckily, my mom listened to me and made my father take me to the hospital. After X-rays (where the nice nurse that wheeled me around bought me a Sprite after I answered his trivia question), the doctor said it was a sprain. A few days later, I was called to the office at school, and had my father run up and scoop me up off my feet. It was a fracture really, really close to the growth plate. Luckily, the growth plate wasn’t damaged, but the ankle is noticeably larger than my other one, and it still bothers me from time to time 30 years later."
5. "A few months ago, I woke up with horrible neck pain so bad I couldn’t move my head. I’ve pulled muscles before and just thought that was the situation. After three days without relief, despite taking a mountain of Advil, I went to an urgent care. During the exam, the doctor pushed down on my head and I let out a blood-curdling scream. It was the worst pain I’ve ever felt. He then told me to go to the ER. Two shots of morphine and a muscle relaxer didn’t even take the edge off. They told me to follow up with an orthopedist who gave me a strong anti-inflammatory and ordered an MRI. It turns out I have three herniated discs in my cervical spine and most likely the pain was caused by a pinched nerve. Both the ER doc and orthopedist said the urgent care doctor SHOULD NOT have pushed down on my head that way. It wasn’t necessary given my symptoms and caused me tremendous pain."
6. "When I was four, I fell off the trampoline and hurt my arm. Mom took me to the doctor, who insisted it was simply dislocated, so he took my arm and twisted. I yowled and the doctor got mad at me for being too loud.' Got an X-ray and it turns out I had broken my wrist."
7. "My friend went for a routine mammogram and was told there were some suspicious spots, but to just come back in six months for another mammogram. As her sister had passed away from breast cancer years earlier, she insisted on further investigation. The doctor told her no need and refused to discuss it further. She’s lucky her husband is a doctor and reached out to a colleague who is an excellent oncologist. It turned out she had breast cancer that was so aggressive, she likely would not have been able to survive it if she had waited six months. After chemo, radiation, and a double mastectomy, she beat it and is doing great ~20 years later."
8. "When I was in high school, I went to the ER with horrible abdominal pain. The nurse practitioner saw that I was kinda sweaty and vomiting. As soon as I told them that the pain was on my right side, they started making calls and setting things up so I could get my appendix removed. They didn’t even touch me. My dad convinced them to do a CT scan which they aren’t even supposed to do just because some guy asked them to, but thank god they did. I was beginning to be prepped for surgery when a confused nurse who I don’t think was even working on my case came in and said I had a kidney stone not appendicitis. The nurse practitioner just laughed and joked about the close call...dude was about to take me into surgery."
9. "Four or five years back I got my annual case of strep and went down to the walk-in clinic where they swore it was bronchitis, and couldn't be bothered to take a swab. No big deal, took the antibiotics, symptoms went away, and thought nothing of it. A couple months down the road, I started feeling pains in my sides. Then, I started peeing blood, so I took myself to the doctor. First one suggested it was probably just my period' (yikes!), next one said I was just stressed. I knew these answers were complete trash, so I did some googling and narrowed it down to being kidney-related. I FINALLY managed to see a doctor that did a quick blood test, and it turned out that I had in fact had strep months prior, still did, and was experiencing an autoimmune reaction that was attacking my kidneys."
10. "Not me, but my dad. He had bad knee pain after a traffic accident when he was in a concrete truck. He could barely walk on it. The first doctor said it'll be fine, to just get a leg brace and walk carefully and it'll heal up. He doubted this and went to a different doctor. The first appointment, he had the second doctor look at the X-ray and MRI that the first doctor did. He got scheduled for emergency surgery the next day. The quad muscle was almost 3/4 off the bone. The doctor was surprised to see that my dad was still walking like that and that the first doctor missed seeing an entire muscle almost off of the bone."
11. "My daughter's doctor's office blew off her stomach pain and vomiting for five days as 'reflux.' An ER trip found she had intussusception or 'telescoping intestines.' She could've lost part of her intestines and become septic."
12. "I had weeks of 'cyclic' vomiting with blood and weight loss. I literally couldn’t keep anything down. After TWO ER visits where doctors said my vomiting was a result of smoking pot (I wasn’t- they didn’t even do the drug test I requested) I went to a different ER. Loads of tests and an endoscopy later, I was diagnosed with 10 bleeding stomach ulcers including one that was over an inch in diameter and within one millimeter of rupturing through. I spent the next eight days in the hospital and weeks after in recovery."
13. "I was told I'd given myself hepatitis by drinking too much when it was actually SSRI discontinuation syndrome. I didn't second-guess the diagnosing doctor, but my father, a veterinarian, second guessed TF out of him. (I knew I definitely needed a second opinion when Dad used his professional vocabulary in suggesting I get one instead his informal vocab.)"
14. "I was competing in an archery tournament in college and heard a loud bang followed by my hand going limp in immense pain while I was at full draw. The doctor at the medical tent told me I probably had a ganglion cyst in the palm of my hand that I didn’t know about that just burst, and cleared me to go back to competing. I was a freshman and didn’t want to disappoint my team, so I kept shooting until I physically couldn’t. I got back to school and sports medicine ignored me and told me to take some ibuprofen. i finally went to a hand surgeon and found out I had torn the tendons in my hand and arm. Took over a year to heal, never returned to its full capacity, and completely ruined my athletic career."
15. "My mother kept bringing me to the hospital, they kept sending her home telling her I just had the flu. I lost SO much weight and was SOOO sick at 3 years old. I was underweight as hell. My father finally took me to the hospital and because he has T1, he told them to check me for it. They did and voila, diagnosis via my FATHER. I would literally have died if he hadn't taken me."
16. "My daughter went into labor and we went to the closest hospital as we were over an hour from her hospital. The nurses were preparing for her to deliver. Her contractions were two and a half minutes apart. The OB came in and refused to deliver. We raced to my daughter's hospital. When we arrived she was dilated to 9.5 cm. That was a fun day."
17. "When I was 19, suddenly I kept being really fatigued, was in a lot of pain, and kept dislocating my shoulder and hips. The doctors kept telling me it was depression. I couldn’t understand how they could think depression could cause dislocations but they were adamant. When I changed doctors, they sent me to a rheumatologist and I was diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome and fibromyalgia. Took me two and half years for the diagnosis. I was one of the lucky ones. For some people, they wait 20+ years being made to feel like it's all in their heads and wasting the doctor's time!"
18. "I have a rash on my arm. The doctor tried telling me it was marker and tried wiping it off with rubbing alcohol. He said it was coming off when it clearly wasn't. I was about 15 at the time, so I would've known if it was marker. The rash also looks nothing like a marker. After that, I told my mom I wasn't going back to that doctor. Twenty years later, I still have the rash (the dermatologist thinks it's popped blood vessels and the blood rose up to the skin)."
19. "A doctor once told me that my double vision was caused by a recent concussion. That would be reasonable, except for the fact that the concussion happened several months after the double vision started. When I pointed that out, he told me 'concussions cause weird things.' Indeed, but those things do not include *retroactive* double vision, sir."
—kbg1
20. "I always have knee issues where the patella will pop out and pop back in, but I knew this was different. My orthopedist said it was just another dislocated knee. I asked for an MRI and he, quite arrogantly, said I didn’t need one but would send me if I wanted. It turns out, I completely tore my ACL. Then, I developed superficial blood clots in that leg (I’ve had a clot before and know what to look for). Went to urgent care, received an ultrasound, and the PA said yes, I had a clot. My leg hurt so bad the next day that a vascular doctor squeezed me in at the behest of my primary. It turns out, I had clots throughout half a superficial vein. One injury, two wrong diagnoses."
21. Finally, "I went to the ER two days after delivery of my first child with fever, chills, and rapid heart beat. I was told it was probably just the flu and was discharged. I ended up going back the next day and discovered I had sepsis."
Jeepers! If you feel so inclined, tell us your wild doctor stories below, or if you'd like to share 100% anonymously, use this Google form!
