Times doctors have been wrong

[pugilistico]

Have you ever had experiences where doctors have been wrong?

When I was in my early 20s, I was training (running, skipping rope, foot work drills) a lot and developed bad knee pain. It was so bad to the point I had to stop skipping rope and running, and I had to take long breaks from training altogether. I eventually went to see a specialist and after some tests, his solution for me was to stop working out. It was one of the craziest things I've heard. This MD literally told me, a young man in my early 20s, to just stop working out. No rehab exercises, no treatment options, nothing. This guy looked like he never set foot in a gym in his life, and he told me that people who work out just have knee pain so I should stop working out if my knees hurts. Incredulously I asked, "So I can't work out for the rest of my life?" And he just shrugged and said, "Yeah."
I obviously didn't believe him so I did my own research. I went to some exercise forum and on a thread about knee pain, a guy in his 40s said he solved his chronic knee pain by doing squats. I started to do squats and my knee pain went away. I continued training and my knee pain only came back when I stopped squatting. Now I don't have any knee pain even though I don't squat. I concluded the doctor I saw was a hack and just because someone went to med school doesn't mean they're right.

One of my friends, who's a former nurse, had a similar experience where she started to show symptoms of lyme disease and asked doctors about it. The doctors told her she was being paranoid and that she was fine. She went to five different doctors until she found one who took her seriously and treated her. She did have lyme and because she wasn't able to get it treated right away, it already did permanent damage to her and she now lives with its effects. If she believed the first several doctors she went to and didn't get it treated, she would have been worse off.

Another example was my mom who had respiratory symptoms and the first doctor told her to just clean her room more lol. My mom is an obsessive cleaner so this didn't make sense. She ignored it for awhile and then went to a different doctor and they ran tests and found that she had a serious lung infection. The new doctor freaked out because if she didn't get it treated, she could've died. The first doctor almost let my mom die by being a useless hack.

I've also seen psychiatric doctors who were total hacks.

Finding a good doctor is like anything else; you have to sift through a lot of shit from my experience. It makes me trust them less. Even my current doctor I'm seeing for my herniated disk is keeps trying to push pills and injections on me (also brought up surgery which I definitely don't think I should get) while my physical therapist is actually helping me to recover. I don't think my doctor is necessarily a hack, but he is obviously trying to get me to do stuff that makes him more money.

 

[UberHere]

Doctors are wrong all the time. But for shit like your knee pain, unless you need surgery, the doctor is really only good for a physical therapy referral unless they specialize in sports medicine.

It does sound like the doctor you saw gave you horrible advice.

 

[jeff7b9]

Back when I first fucked up my shoulder I went to a local ortho and he gave me his diagnosis and plan for the surgery to correct it.

This occurred during brutal dragged out workers comp trial when I got to walk around with a dislocated shoulder for 18 months because when asked why I was at the hospital I said "I noticed one arm was longer than the other when I got home from work. I have a feeling thats not good." and since I said the W word my insurance denied my claim.


On a whim I got a 2nd opinion and the first ortho had the wrong diagnosis and if he would have done the surgery it would not have fixed the primary issue (torn labrum, separated AC)

 

[UberHere]

I’m not using this as an excuse, but the state of healthcare is not good right now. Most primary care physicians an are over worked and most specialists have insane waiting times to get in.

I work primary care and I have no PA or NP, so I manage all 1800+ patients I have on my own and it’s not easy.

Most doctors tend to be dismissive of things that aren’t potentially life threatening or that don’t fall under the umbrella of “quality metrics”.

I myself will always put in the work to narrow down a differential diagnosis for someone no matter what the complaint is. It takes work that a lot of doctors just don’t want to do because they’re over worked. If I have no idea what’s going on after performing an initial work up investigation, I have no problem admitting to the patient that I don’t know what the answer is and I will always offer them a referral to “someone else who might be able to figure it out”. A lot of the time when you see them back a few weeks later they say they’re fine and don’t pursue it.

 

[jimbob27]

Doctors are wrong all the time. But for shit like your knee pain, unless you need surgery, the doctor is really only good for a physical therapy referral unless they specialize in sports medicine.

I once had the complete opposite experience. Saw a consultant when I injured a disc in my back. Had an MRI, and when we looked at the results, he spent most of the appointment praising the muscularity of my lower back. He was pointing out thick bands of muscle which he said don't even show up on most people's scans.

I'd been doing lots of squats and deadlifts for many years, to which he praised the benefits and said he was confident I was going to heal just fine because of how strong and healthy that area was. He referred me to a physio, and that appointment went very differently.

The guy looked like he weighed about 10 stone, but with the ego and personality of WWE Ken Shamrock.

He basically said all weight training is terrible for you and I should stop immediately... and he got angry and accused me of ego lifting when I told him my routine (a very basic 5x5 program, with a sensible amount of weights so there's no form breakdown on the final lifts).

He gave me a rehab routine that was total nonsense - mostly exercises that felt like they did nothing unless I do 100 reps - presumably some out-of-shape person's routine designed to work those muscles the consultant was marvelling over.

 

[MacGregor]

 

[UberHere]

I once had the complete opposite experience. Saw a consultant when I injured a disc in my back. Had an MRI, and when we looked at the results, he spent most of the appointment praising the muscularity of my lower back. He was pointing out thick bands of muscle which he said don't even show up on most people's scans.

I'd been doing lots of squats and deadlifts for many years, to which he praised the benefits and said he was confident I was going to heal just fine because of how strong and healthy that area was. He referred me to a physio, and that appointment went very differently.

The guy looked like he weighed about 10 stone, but with the ego and personality of WWE Ken Shamrock.

He basically said all weight training is terrible for you and I should stop immediately... and he got angry and accused me of ego lifting when I told him my routine (a very basic 5x5 program, with a sensible amount of weights so there's no form breakdown on the final lifts).

He gave me a rehab routine that was total nonsense - mostly exercises that felt like they did nothing unless I do 100 reps - presumably some out-of-shape person's routine designed to work those muscles the consultant was marvelling over.

That sucks. I can’t overstate the value of a good physical therapist.

 

[RoastBeast]

Doctors are basically just troubleshooting problems with your body. The same way a plumber, electrician, mechanic etc troubleshoots their work. It's impossible to be right all the time. Most you can ask for is for them to at least do their due diligence and not be negligent.

I wound up switching doctors 15 years ago because my doctor didn't seem to listen to me and had it in his head that ibuprofen and ice fixed everything. Found a different doctor and it was like night and day.

 

[UberHere]

That’s not entirely wrong. Doctors are trained and educated to prescribe medicine, but most people seem to prefer taking medications than pursuing healthy lifestyles. Some conditions require medications, but lifestyle is the number 1 driver of good health

 

[BlankaPresident]

When I was in my early 20s, I was training (running, skipping rope, foot work drills) a lot and developed bad knee pain. It was so bad to the point I had to stop skipping rope and running, and I had to take long breaks from training altogether. I eventually went to see a specialist and after some tests, his solution for me was to stop working out. It was one of the craziest things I've heard. This MD literally told me, a young man in my early 20s, to just stop working out. No rehab exercises, no treatment options, nothing. This guy looked like he never set foot in a gym in his life, and he told me that people who work out just have knee pain so I should stop working out if my knees hurts. Incredulously I asked, "So I can't work out for the rest of my life?" And he just shrugged and said, "Yeah."
I obviously didn't believe him so I did my own research. I went to some exercise forum and on a thread about knee pain, a guy in his 40s said he solved his chronic knee pain by doing squats. I started to do squats and my knee pain went away. I continued training and my knee pain only came back when I stopped squatting. Now I don't have any knee pain even though I don't squat. I concluded the doctor I saw was a hack and just because someone went to med school doesn't mean they're right.

That's insanity. Everybody in the field knows that strenghtening of quadriceps is crucial to the treatment of most knee problems.

I have the opposite problem with my patients here in Brazil. We do very complex reconstruction of fractures, have the bones and joints heal marvelously but they keep suffering from knee pain because physical therapy in our universal healthcare system is almost non existant. So we get bad results because of joint stiffness and muscle feebleness, even with the surgery going perfectly as expected.

 

[syct23]

Remember back in the 80s and 90s when Doctors used to cut off the wrong limbs…

 

[Natural Order]

Buddy boy....

Medical error is a Top 10 death statistic in most first world nations. I mean, this is not easy stuff, and we're still only in the infancy of really understanding much of our own physical reality. Serious mistakes are to be expected for much of the journey to immortality!

Malice in that error is where the lines are drawn, but determining this is obviously a tough scenario and generally unprovable unless egregious or verifiable.

 

[AFanNotAFighter]

Yup.
Five years ago I had a fever and cough for nine days straight and was weak as hell so I finally went to the doctor.
Doctor said I had a chest cold.
Then the prick asked me if I lived with my parents and if I needed a sick note for work.
I told him I had moved out of my parents' house over 30 years ago and that I had over 300 sick days on the books with my employer.
I couldn't believe the gall of this guy.
Went to a different doctor the next day. He told me I needed to go to the hospital because I had bronchitis and pneumonia.
I told him I'm not going so he gave me prescriptions for five or six different medications as well as an injection of antibiotics.
He said if I didn't feel better in 24 hours to go straight to the hospital.
Believe it or not that shot had me feeling better in about 90 minutes.
The pneumonia kicked my ass though. I was weak as a kitten for weeks. Had a cough for almost five months.

 

[Jesus X]

My first orthopedic doctor gave the worst sling for my broken clavicle and some bad advice for rehabilitation I almost grew it back crooked YouTube directed me to better physical therapists and treatments for my shoulder problems because a lot of excellent doctors and physical therapists have channels. My doctor also did not educate me on what not to do to avoid the bone not healing right he could have spent 6 mins giving me some info.

 

[StonedLemur]

Have you ever had experiences where doctors have been wrong?

When I was in my early 20s, I was training (running, skipping rope, foot work drills) a lot and developed bad knee pain. It was so bad to the point I had to stop skipping rope and running, and I had to take long breaks from training altogether. I eventually went to see a specialist and after some tests, his solution for me was to stop working out. It was one of the craziest things I've heard. This MD literally told me, a young man in my early 20s, to just stop working out. No rehab exercises, no treatment options, nothing. This guy looked like he never set foot in a gym in his life, and he told me that people who work out just have knee pain so I should stop working out if my knees hurts. Incredulously I asked, "So I can't work out for the rest of my life?" And he just shrugged and said, "Yeah."
I obviously didn't believe him so I did my own research. I went to some exercise forum and on a thread about knee pain, a guy in his 40s said he solved his chronic knee pain by doing squats. I started to do squats and my knee pain went away. I continued training and my knee pain only came back when I stopped squatting. Now I don't have any knee pain even though I don't squat. I concluded the doctor I saw was a hack and just because someone went to med school doesn't mean they're right.

One of my friends, who's a former nurse, had a similar experience where she started to show symptoms of lyme disease and asked doctors about it. The doctors told her she was being paranoid and that she was fine. She went to five different doctors until she found one who took her seriously and treated her. She did have lyme and because she wasn't able to get it treated right away, it already did permanent damage to her and she now lives with its effects. If she believed the first several doctors she went to and didn't get it treated, she would have been worse off.

Another example was my mom who had respiratory symptoms and the first doctor told her to just clean her room more lol. My mom is an obsessive cleaner so this didn't make sense. She ignored it for awhile and then went to a different doctor and they ran tests and found that she had a serious lung infection. The new doctor freaked out because if she didn't get it treated, she could've died. The first doctor almost let my mom die by being a useless hack.

I've also seen psychiatric doctors who were total hacks.

Finding a good doctor is like anything else; you have to sift through a lot of shit from my experience. It makes me trust them less. Even my current doctor I'm seeing for my herniated disk is keeps trying to push pills and injections on me (also brought up surgery which I definitely don't think I should get) while my physical therapist is actually helping me to recover. I don't think my doctor is necessarily a hack, but he is obviously trying to get me to do stuff that makes him more money.

When I was 19 I hurt my knee really bad and had to go to the emergency room.
They took an x-ray and told me it was a bad sprain.

Turns out I had blown my ACL into pieces.
And people wonder why I hate doctors.

 

[Jack Reacheround]

I dislocated my shoulder numerous times. Nothing helped. I needed surgery.

I went to my doctor and asked him about getting a referral to an orthopedic surgeon. He reluctantly gave me one and told me they wouldn’t operate on my because I was a smoker.

When I saw the orthopedic surgeon, he immediately said, “This needs to be operated on.”

This is after two GPS said I didn’t need surgery and that I could just rehab it. And I had done rehab before.

 

[Kowboy On Sherdog]

When I was 19 I hurt my knee really bad and had to go to the emergency room.
They took an x-ray and told me it was a bad sprain.

Turns out I had blown my ACL into pieces.
And people wonder why I hate doctors.

 

[StonedLemur]

That's exactly what she looked like too sir .... everything will be fine in a few days she said lol

 

[UberHere]

I dislocated my shoulder numerous times. Nothing helped. I needed surgery.

I went to my doctor and asked him about getting a referral to an orthopedic surgeon. He reluctantly gave me one and told me they wouldn’t operate on my because I was a smoker.

When I saw the orthopedic surgeon, he immediately said, “This needs to be operated on.”

This is after two GPS said I didn’t need surgery and that I could just rehab it. And I had done rehab before.

Just out of curiosity were those older doctors you saw? When I was a resident, the older doctors always took so much convincing to actually order studies and referrals for patients who clearly needed them. Shit even prescribing antibiotics required extreme justification for some of the older faculty members.

 

[aerius]

Finally reached the age where it's advised to get a prostate exam, and my doctor is like "you don't need a prostate exam, you have no family history of cancer or prostate disease and you're 100% healthy". Asked my doc to check just in case but she insisted that I don't need one. To be honest she's probably right, but like to think she's mistaken because I was really looking forward to being probed.