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  • My former cardiologist kept grilling me to lose weight, laughing in my face when I told him I was really active at work but still gaining. Turns out I was retaining water because the heart failure he blamed on my weight was a genetic defect that a few years later required a transplant.

    Due to unrelated circumstances, I moved states between my last visit with him and the discovery of how much worse my condition was or I definitely would have had words with him.

    • You may want to file a complaint with the medical licensing board of that state though. While nothing will probably happen because of it, it may make him think twice the next time before he is so dismissive.

  • It would be funny if it wasn't so sad and true. A few years ago I had the flu. Took me three weeks to be completely fit again. Then, like two weeks later, I suddenly got dizzy, I felt like vomiting, I was cold but sweated like a pig. I thought I was going to faint. I laid down and slowly felt better. But it came back every 30 minutes. Over the day it got better until in the evening I only felt exhausted. The next day I felt good again and went back to work. Around 9 in the morning, BAM, it hit again. I went to the physician and my systolic blood pressure went haywire going up and down between 90 and 180 within 5 minutes. He prescribed me something "for the bloodstream" without any clear diagnosis. It didn't do shit. I visited him I don't know how many times. Then I went to the next physician. And the next. I somehow kind of learned to live with it. One year later the third or fourth physician actually did some tests: You have a severe vitamin D3, B6, and B12 deficiency. Your immune system is fucked. Your stomach is fucked. Your metabolism is fucked. I finally got some treatment that actually improved something and felt significantly better but not good. Two years and \three physicians later it turns out that my problems are somehow linked to my allergies: your immune system is fucked. There's some trial and error with different medications, at the end of which I actually feel better but still not good. Three years and another two physicians later the fuzzy diagnosis is that I had/have "long flu" (mind you, this is all before covid). It damaged my nerves and somehow mixed up my metabolism. There's a weird "cross-relationship" with my allergies. Now I take medication daily which lets me at least function and work. I still do not feel good. I haven't felt good since six years. But, there's an entry in my file from 5 years ago that I'm a hypochondriac, that won't go away, despite later tests confirming that several things were severely and factually wrong with me ...

  • I paid 130$ for a doctors visit and another 130$ for lab work, only to be told, if it hurts you, don't eat it. It turned out to be a stomach ulcer. I lost so much weight before I figured out what was wrong.

  • Unironically, what doctors are trained to do when they don't have an answer is:

    Ah, you're troubled by ? I can rule out , so you must have , let me give you

  • I started having lots of pains in my back and some joints specifically the sacroiliac joint when I was young (at 11yo) and went to about 15 doctors, the first 14 told me that I was either faking it or it was just growing pains.

    I went to a physical therapist literally told me within 10 minutes of looking at me and asking me questions "I know exactly what you have but since I am a physical therapist only I can't diagnose it, go to [doctor that I already went to and told me it was growing pains] and tell him to make you these tests"

    Turns out I had ankylosing spondylitis (a type of arthritis) but since I was 11yo nobody wanted to actually look into it because they thought I was just growing or faking it.

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