Bad Doctors experience
This happened quite a while ago to my partner. I thought I would share it with others, because it shows how the quality of doctors varies, and how a doctor simply listening to you makes a difference. A long read.
My wife and I had just moved in to a new rural property. Her coworker and friend said that he was getting ready to demolish an old wooden shed on his property (he was going to burn it down). Since we were in a new property with need of storage, we looked to see if we could salvage anything. Yes, we could! Actually, quite a bit. So we set about tearing down his old shed, which in some cases involved swinging a sledgehammer. With the last swing my wife made, she felt a pop and said 'I'm done'. She wasn't in pain or anything, she just knew that was enough. We finished up and went home.
The next morning started out OK, but after her shower while sitting on the bed, she tried to put on a sock. That's it. Instant agony, couldn't bend down. I helped, but it was obvious we weren't going to work that day. So, queue up the visit to the docs. We gave the whole story, including the suggestion that my wife knew exactly what happened and when (the swing of the sledge). Referred to the local hospital for an urgent sonogram thinking it was kidney stones (with less resistance from the radiology folks than when her appendix burst, by the way, but that's a different story). So they told her it was kidney stones, gave a painkiller, and told her to wait it out. Results read by the doc the next day said they saw no evidence of kidney stone. After another agonzing day, rinse and repeat. Bottom line for a few days, my wife was in agony, it was getting worse, and everyone said kidney stones.
So we did some calling around, got a referral/recommendation to another doctor, who specialized in sport and spinal injuries. You would think this is a good fit, considering what we said the source of the injury was, right? The referring docs thought so. After a cursory exam, he declared there was no injury, my wife didn't know what happened to her, and referred her to another specialist: A gastroenterologist oncologist. I literally almost fainted in the waiting room when I heard them tell her that. Yes, literally. One of the worst moments of our married life.
After recovering a few minutes, sitting in our car in the parking garage crying, and not really trusting the docs we had seen so far, I thought about one of our most trusted docs over the years - my wifes OBGYN. I called them, and as usual, their first appointment was 3 months away. I said this was extremely urgent, could we talk to Dr. X. The response wasn't hopeful, but we got a call back from him personally in less than an hour. He would see us immediately. We headed over and waited to see him.
He asked my wife to give a basic explanation of what was going on, and listened intently. Next step was an exam, really just basic exam, like what you would get in a physical. Palpitating, asking questions, nothing invasive. And then he asked us to go to the waiting room for a bit.
He called us in to his office, pulled out his medical books, and explained why he believed my wife had ruptured a particular disc, and even the side of the disc, based solely on listening to her and the basic exam. He had also arranged for a specialist to see her the next day (yes, he called him and asked for him to see my wife ASAP). Long story short, after several expensive tests, the specialist confirmed what my wifes OBGYN figured out just by listening to her.
He also followed up by sending a strongly worded letter to the spine injury specialist who told my wife she had cancer. We followed up with docs who assured us it was kidney stones.
Good news, my wife is doing well. A bit of PT and some meds, and she was back to work in a physically demanding job a few weeks later. We finished rebuilding the shed on our property, and it is still in use today over a decade later! (bad news: it is in dire need of reorganization and cleanup).
I'm not sure exactly why I am sharing this with you guys, except to say that be careful with doctors, make sure you trust them, and don't be afraid to stand up for yourself or your loved ones if something doesn't seem right. Don't be a Karen (I hate that term, I have some much loved actual Karens in my life), but do be willing to question those who literally hold your future in their hands. And sometimes you end up with a true genius, a true Hercule Poirot, like we did!
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