<p>I had a family doctor call me at 8:30pm with the news that the blood in my urine was probably bladder cancer…</p>
<p>7 years, several doctors, many tests later… still get blood in my urine tests and nobody has been able to find a reason…</p>
<p>The doctor who performed the colonoscopy I had recently wondered why someone my age (46) was bothering to have this test done (low red blood cell count, had he bothered to look at my chart). I ended up having 2 pre-cancerous polyps removed. Glad I didn’t take his advice and ‘not bother’</p>
<p>Only thing I remember about childbirth was my doctor saying “you’ll feel a little pressure, we’re going to put your uterus back in” (c-section). Thanks doc!</p>
<p>Most of my complaints about doctors’ tactlessness or ignorance have to do with breast-feeding.</p>
<p>One of the pediatricians in the group that my kids went to when they were little told me to “breast-feed the baby whenever he’s hungry, but not more than once in every four hours.”</p>
<p>My internist criticized me for “still” breast-feeding my first baby at the age of 9 months since “my wife only breastfed ours for 6 months.”</p>
<p>An emergency room doctor who treated me for an allergic reaction when I was breast-feeding baby number two told me that if I took even a single Benadryl pill for the reaction, I would have to wean my baby immediately and permanently and would not be able to breast-feed any future children.</p>
<p>And my obstetrician, whom I called to get a prescription for an antibiotic to treat a breast infection a few weeks after my second baby was born, told me that he did not know whether I could continue breast-feeding while taking the drug. As he put it, “I don’t know anything about breast-feeding.” </p>
<p>And people wonder why breast-feeding rates in this country are so low.</p>
<p>jeez, Marian, that is very depressing. I’m hoping that these comments are from awhile ago, and don’t reflect the current trend in your area. </p>
<p>I was a closet nurser (at bedtime) until my kids were three. Wasn’t because of any personal convictions, it was just easier to get them to sleep at night if I hooked them up first.</p>
<p>This from an Army pediatrician when I took DS 2 in for his 2 week check up:<br>
“Go ahead and take off the baby’s diaper and I’ll take a look in just a minute.” My response: “But doctor it’s really cold in the office and he has a really bad habit of peeing every time the diaper’s off.” Doctor: “Just do it.” Me: “OK” and then I laughed (a little too meanly in hindsight) when she leaned over him to check him out and he peed right in her mouth. She didn’t think it was funny?!?!</p>
<p>Way back in my early teens I made my first visit to the gyn. (I remember him seeming to be about 80, but thinking back - he was probably the age I am now!) He asked why I was there. I replied that my mom and sister both go to him. He said “you all look alike from down here”!!!</p>
<p>Momfirst - That reminds me when my mom was with her aunt who was prepped and going to surgery. Doctor walking beside the stretcher called the aunt “Mr.” and my mom corrected him. “Don’t they teach you how to tell the difference in medical school?” my mom teased. “Not from this end,” he answered. (In fairness to the doctor, my great-aunt was bald.)</p>
<p>My favorite “gotcha” story was with my D and the pediatrician. D was a failure to thrive baby, and the doctor’s spent a lot of time trying to determine why. (Very humiliating for the mother, too, I can assure you.) At one appointment, when D was 10 months old, the doctor looked at her a little strange, and said, “Hmmm, she doesn’t have much of a bridge to her nose; does Downs Syndrome run in the family?” I told him she had the same nose as her brother, and he was in the gifted program. He looked like he didn’t believe me, then leaned over to apply the stethescope to D’s chest. She reached up and grabbed it, looked him in the eye, and said, “Don’t touch!” He turned to me and said, “It’s not Downs.”</p>
<p>My daughter became very sick at 7. She had been complaining a lot about tummy problems, was losing weight rapidly, very pale, listless, and other alarming symptoms.
Three docs:
Pediatrician: kept sending us home (4 times) with "oh, this is normal with a divorce in family.
Emergency doc: Oh, she’s just being hysterical.
Radiologist (female, well known and respected in area) when attempting an upper GI as my D was having a real rough time swallowing the concotion.
Oh, turning to me, I’m always so interested in these psychiatric cases…I thought about that field before choosing this one…and a few other choice comments…until she got impatient and said she had no time to deal with my D’s balking.
Turned out my D was gravely ill, serious kidney obstruction and malformation, (4 kidneys with unusual plumbing), toxicity effects etc. Major reconstructive surgery, 8 week recuperation…urologist informed me that another few months and she could have lost her life.</p>
<p>Well, if this thread is about insensitive comments, when I was in high school I was having trouble with my contact lenses. The opthamologist told my mom that most people have no problem with these lenses, but I must be one of the losers that don’t tolerate them well. That was the last time we saw him.</p>
<p>If this thread is about incompetent doctors, I’ll mention the gyn who told my mom he didn’t know what the “shadow” behind her uterus was on her films, but he was sure it wasn’t cancer and to come back in 6 months. 6 months later it was twice the size, he still thought it wasn’t cancer. Ummmm… what grows in a post-menopausal woman besides tumors? Yep, she had ovarian cancer. The whole reason she went in to see him in the first place was that she had the same symptoms her sister-in-law had 10 years earlier, when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.</p>
<p>I had miscarriage at approx 16 weeks- went to the emergency room in middle of night because the embryo plopped out- they sent me home without making sure all the other stuff was out.
Anyway- when I went to my obgyn a few days later because I was still bleeding profusely and he scraped me out, ( without analgesic BTW) he was furious, because I was making loud OW noises and he had people in the waiting room.
another obgyn while I was having a hystosalpingram ( again without the drugs),to check on a large ovarian cyst- & I almost fainted from the pain, told me that if I thought that was bad- just wait till I had labor.
Just previous to that, my regular dr had referred me to a psychiatrist, because of symptoms that were caused by the grapefruit sized cyst ( it wasn’t diagnosed- but I was having symptoms of pregnancy- moodiness-distended belly etc- he apparently thought it was a hysterical pregnancy)</p>
<p>Right after I was diagnosed with breast cancer I made appointments with 2 different surgeons so that I could choose the one I felt would do the best job.</p>
<p>When I was in the examining room, a young woman was taking my history before the doctor came in. When I was giving her the date of my last mammogram, she asked “How many M’s in mammogram?”. Then when she asked about family history of cancer, I mentioned a couple of relatives that had the disease, and which type of cancer it was. She carefully wrote down what I said. Later, when the doctor came in and we were discussing my history, he asked about my grandmother who had kidney cancer. “Uh, no – I told the nurse that it was my great aunt, and she had bladder cancer.”</p>
<p>I decided right then and there that this wasn’t the doctor for me. He may have been a good surgeon, but his staff was careless. I found out much later that others had had similar experiences in his office. Glad I chose the other doctor!</p>
<p>My breast-feeding stories are 16 years old or older, and I fervently hope that things have changed.</p>
<p>I too was a closest nurser with one of mine until she was just short of three, for the same reason. The other weaned himself at 22 months. </p>
<p>Of course, if the health care system and society in general really were respectful of breast-feeding, we wouldn’t be referring to our past selves as “closet” nursers, would we?</p>
<p>It was difficult to figure out where the problem was at the time! D was 2 days old (18 1/2 years ago) and was jaundiced. Her very laid back pediatrician said to take her home and have her lie in the sunlight through the window for a few hours each day and she would be fine. Also to feed her lots of water. The very new interns – August, new to the job-- said that she is probably septic, would need a full blood transfer and if we attempted to take her home they would have no choice but to call the police! Boy, were we confused-- and scared. We did take her home, no police, no sepsis, no new blood. However, we did have to bring her back to the hospital a day or two later to lie under the lights. The bilirubin eventually dispersed and she was fine. What they do and say to new parents… I think it’s because babies are born without an instruction manual… :)</p>
<p>When I was about 22, my gyn wanted to put me on the IUD, the Copper 7. I told him I’d read enough about it that I didn’t want it. He really berated me, saying that I needed to stop being “silly” and getting all my information from reading “sensationalistic journalism.” I told him I had actually made my decision after reading the pamphlets in his office. I left and never returned to that doctor. The Copper 7, of course, was eventually taken off the market, with its maker (Searle?) spending millions defending itself in lawsuits.</p>
<p>Re: The Hysterical Child/Pregnancy etc. I’ve often wondered, when men go in for a problem that presents real symptoms (the same thing a woman might go for, like heart attack, stroke, intenstinial problems…) do the doctors ask him, right off the bat, “Are you happy at home?” </p>
<p>I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been to a doctor for some problem – whether migraines (related to TMJ – went away after braces), dizzy spells (related to low blood pressure) or something of that ilk – and been treated as though I were a hysterical female seeking attention. This <em>before</em> they’ve so much as taken a blood pressure reading, looked in my differently dilated eyes, or asked any questions beyond “What are you here for today?” </p>
<p>It’s enough to make me stay away from doctors in the hope that whatever my problem is will go away before I have to see one. I also wonder how many women don’t get the care they need as early as they should get it because of the 'Are you happy at home?" question. Of course, then the medical profession blames <em>us</em> for not coming in earlier. And Heaven Forbid you should have anything not immediately diagnosable! Very, very few ‘House’ doctors out there.</p>
<p>LOL, Novelisto! Dizziness due to low blood pressure was the reason I found myself with the health-center neurologist looking at my feet and asking me if I had brain damage!!</p>
<p>When I was 18 weeks pregnant - I had contractions - was told they were Braxton-Hicks. I then called my midwife in the middle of the night to report I was in severe pain and having real contractions. Her OB husband answered the phone and told me in an irritating voice - “You can’t be in labor you are in the second trimester”. An hour later I gave birth on the bathroom floor.
Needed an ambulance. Never spoke with that dr ever again. His wife told me that he was very sorry.</p>
<p>Breastfeeding -
Child #1 - Nurse: Here give her some water - she needs water. Me: Huh? I am breastfeeding. Nurse: Oh I see you are Midwife XXX’s patient. Your baby doesn’t get water.
Child #2 - Me: Get the bottles out of here.
Child #3 -Baby is 3 hours old:
Nurse: I need to take baby back to the nursery so the dr can examine her.
Me: tell him to examine her here
Nurse: He only examines babies in the nursery.
Me: The baby is not leaving.
Minutes later - in bobs the peditrician - Hello! Let’s see how she looks!</p>
<p>Later - Nurse: Can I watch you breastfeed? I don’t really know how it is done.</p>
<p>Child #4:
Baby is 6 hours old
Nurse: Can you come next door and help this mom with breastfeeding? You are so good at it.</p>
<p>yep - I confess I was one too - after they were a year everyone thought they were done - and every now and then there would be that “tug” on my shirt!
Ahhhh the stuff we worried about!</p>
<p>A few weeks ago I went to get some urgent medical tests done at my doctor’s secondary office a town away. The nurse/technician called me in from the waiting room and, trying to be pleasant, I offered an upbeat “how are you doing?”</p>
<p>Glancing down at my chart, she said: “Better than you, it looks like” (ouch!) She was very nice after that though.</p>
<p>The next day after the doctor reviewed the test results and said I had no choice but a major surgery, I asked her whether she had done many of these and she said she had. Then I asked – because I’d never had surgery and was scared – if any of her former patients had ever, um, died during it. </p>
<p>“Nope. You would be the first” she said, walking out the door. (ouch again). </p>
<p>But she is an excellent surgeon and it went well, so I forgive the cavalier attitude. And I ended up laughing about those exchanges with friends in retelling them.</p>
<p>I nursed both of mine till they were almost 4 ish- ( mostly emergency first aid nursing at that point though)
Even LLL, was a little uncomfortable.</p>
<p>I did have a good doc when I was pg with older D, and he gave me a name of a great baby doctor- however we moved when she was about 1 & 1/2.
I also took them to a naturopath for years- so nice to have hour long chats with the doctor and to not feel rushed.</p>
<p>H however, still goes to the same family doctor- that when I asked him when I should get D #1 tested for HIV ( she had many transfusions when she was a baby in 1982, before they tested the blood supply )
He responded - when she was sexually active, about 12 or 13 yrs
:eek:</p>
<p>Um well- if my daughter had HIV, I would probably want to * know?*
I took her to a public health clinic to be tested, because at that time, that was the only place you could do so anonmyously.</p>
<p>She was 6- I told her she was being tested for allergies- however while they were reading off this long list of questions while she was sitting on my lap, she was reading the privacy information forms on the desk.</p>
<p>She knew what AIDS was, because a week before, her primary class had attended a gallery opening at a local college, that was named for the uncle of a classmate who had recently died from HIV, but I didn’t feel comfortable telling her she was being tested for that.</p>
<p>( some of the questions were " do you know the father?- are you still in contact with the father?- I realize that they have to ask everyone the same questions, but ? )</p>
