Doctors are medical professionals, but there are some that lack the “professional” part. These patients share the most unprofessional thing a doctor has ever said to them. Content has been edited for clarity purposes.
Food Poisoning Or Pregnancy?
“When I was 19, I returned from a vacation in Mexico with most likely food poisoning. After a day or two, I had a fever with painful vomiting and diarrhea. My mom took me to urgent care. I explained everything to the doctor and nurse.
He claimed, ‘You’re pregnant.’
I explained, ‘I’m currently having my period and I’m a virgin.’
He said, ‘Liar. Some women bleed when they’re pregnant and only Mary could claim immaculate conception.’
All of this was said in front of my mom. Then he claimed I was ‘slightly pregnant’. He proceeded to give me my first Pap smear – again during my period. It was more painful than the vomiting, diarrhea, and fever put together. When he didn’t see a fetus, he freaked out and left the room.
Came back after 20 minutes and said that he finally talked to an ob/gyn and admitted I couldn’t be pregnant. Finally prescribed antibiotics. I was there for over 3 hours. Should have sued but my mom worked in medical records and didn’t want to mess up her employment.
He’s still a doctor. This was ~20 years ago.”
“Norwood Hospital”
“I suffer from bleeding ulcers. After driving to Norwood Hospital and explaining I was seeing heavy blood when I used the bathroom they put me on a gurney on top of a filthy, uncovered mattress. I didn’t know then that I would be on that same mattress, without even a cover sheet, for five days.
They brought me to a semi-private room that I was sharing with an end-stage alcoholic who was spending his last hours in agony. He screamed and moaned all night long. From time to time a nurse would come in and tell him to ‘Shut the hell up.’
Sometimes other nurses would come in and show him compassion and comfort which made me want to weep. My nurse came in and told me to defecate into a bucket in the small bathroom so they could see if I was truly bleeding. It took a couple of hours of sitting on that bucket but the nurse took one look and said, ‘Yep, you’ve got real troubles.’
The next morning at six am, they wheeled me into the OR and pumped me full of drugs. The doctor then went up my butt and down my throat with cameras and lasers to find and repair the damage. When I awoke, I was back in my room with my moaning alcoholic roommate and his skeezy friends who had come to visit. I was still on the same dirty mattress.
I had a bunch of hoses in me, pumping me with drugs and fluids and who knows what else. At one point, they determined my potassium was low and hung a bag. Then the nurse disappeared. Within a half hour, I thought my arm was going to explode.
The potassium was burning the hell out of me. I pushed the call button.
‘What is it?’ the nurse FINALLY asked over the intercom.
‘You have to take this IV out. It’s really burning me,’ I pleaded.
‘Ok,’ she said and was gone.
I waited in agony. No one came. I hit the button again.
‘What is it?’ the nurse asked.
‘Please,’ I begged, ‘Please take this IV out. I’m in serious distress here.’
She said, ‘Ok.’
I laid there in my own sweat, writhing in agony. No one came. I pressed the button again.
‘What is it?’ She asked again.
‘I am going to take this IV out myself,’ I said, ‘I can’t stand it anymore.’
‘Hang on,’ she said.
I started to take the tape off. I was almost in tears from the pain. She came into the room and asked me what I was doing.
‘This potassium is burning me badly,’ I said, ‘You have to take this out.’
She looked at the bag and said, ‘It needs to stay in another half an hour.’
I said,'”If you don’t take it out right now, this minute, I am going to do it.’
She took it out. Later, she brought me a giant potassium pill. Why the hell couldn’t she have done that earlier?
My roommate died at the same time.
During the night, the nurses came in to change his bed. I was trying to sleep. They made more noise than a construction crew. The entire time they talked about how much the hospital management sucked, how the Union was letting them down, and how the pay situation really needed to be addressed. There was no attempt at any kind of consideration for the guy trying to sleep in the bed four feet away. I was forced to stay awake and listen to their griping about how much they hated Norwood Hospital. So did I.
I wanted to go home the next day. The doctor said I had to stay. They had found the lesion in my esophagus. They believed an aspirin that I had eaten lodged in my esophagus and burned a hole right through causing the bleeding. I had lost a great deal of blood. They didn’t want me to leave for a couple of days.
During the entire time, no one came to help me wash. A sheet was never put on the bed. I had no toiletries. There was nothing in the bathroom but a couple of rusty razor blades. By day 5, I had enough.
I told the nurse I was leaving.
‘If you leave AMA the insurance won’t pay,’ she warned me. ‘You need your doctor to sign off.’
I told her to get him. He showed up the next morning. It was the first time I had seen any doctor since the day after the operation. I said to him, ‘This hospital is a disgrace. I want to go home.’
He looked up at me over his bifocals and flipped his chart closed. ‘Oh, you can go home,’ he said to me, ‘This isn’t a prison. You can go home any time you like. Go home and die.’
And then he signed a piece of paper, dropped the chart on the bed and left.
A few minutes later, the nurse came in. She was the only person who ever showed me any compassion the entire time I was there. She gave me some instructions and a bunch of papers to sign and some notes about how to speed up my recovery. She was embarrassed for the doctor. I put my clothes on. It had been five days since I washed or brushed my teeth or shaved or changed my underwear. I felt like a bum. I could barely stand my own stink. I walked out into the sunshine to my car, now covered with five days of dust and grime. I never, ever want to go back to that shit hole again.”
Poor Kid
“A few years ago, I had an inguinal hernia. I didn’t notice it until my mother saw a lump when I was lying on the couch.
When I showed her, she just said to me, ‘Get dressed, we are going to a doctor.’
I was wondering why but anyway, after 20 minutes I was in the hospital walking with my mother trying to find a doctor to examine me. After my mom asked the nurse to help us, I was sitting in his examination room, waiting to hear what that lump was.
The doctor came in, and looked first at me and then at my mother. He pressed it and I screamed as it hurt me. He then told me to shut up as he continued with his examination.
When he finished, he just turned to my mother and said. ‘It is nothing. Your child is just making up some random condition. You took 20 minutes of my time for nothing. Your child needs psychotherapy, not surgery. Go away.’
At this point, my mother was shocked so she took my hand and we got out of the examination room.
We got home and after 20 minutes, I started to feel the worst pain in that area and I just started crying. My mother got scared and took me to the same hospital but to a different doctor that told my mother that I got to the hospital right on time because I could end up with an incarcerated hernia. I was lucky enough and the good thing is that doctor was fired in the end.”
Routine Check Gone Wrong
“In 1999, I was very ill with a fever and cough. I visited a couple of doctors, but with no results. Medicines did not work. My father at that time was in Mumbai, India so I went to Mumbai and visited a doctor there. His clinic was always full of a number of patients, so we thought he was a respected and knowledgeable doctor.
So, I went inside along with my father, mother, and brother.
Doctor: ‘What happened?’
Me: ‘On and off fever, consistent cough, some weight loss.’
Doctor: ‘Let me check.’
This was then followed by the routine check; he checked my tongue, weight, pulse, temperature, etc. Afterward, he was in deep thought.
Doctor to my brother: ‘Can you please take your brother outside for a moment?’
So we went outside.
Doctor to my father: ‘I think your son has AIDS. These are typical symptoms of AIDS. I am sorry.’
My mom started crying while my father was in shock.
My brother had some knowledge of medicine, so he refused his whole advice. We went to another ‘really’ reputed doctor. He first conducted pathological tests, then did confirmatory tests and concluded that I was infected by Mycobacterium tuberculosis.
My tuberculosis was cured in the next 9 months, but that doctor’s conclusion really scared our whole family. Back in the 90s, AIDS was the worst disease ever to discuss in a family.
How a doctor can not know such a thing before telling a family that their son has AIDS is just horrible.”
36 & Pregnant
“My mother was 36 when she became pregnant with me, which was considered pretty old for children at the time. She immediately went to a doctor to start prenatal care, and to get some tests done to see if I would have any birth defects. My parents had tried for a long time before finally getting pregnant, and wanted to know if I would have any disorders they should prepare themselves for.
The first time she met with the doctor, this was her response before any tests were done: ‘Don’t worry. If it has Downs, I can sneak you into the hospital under the pretense of a regular checkup, and get rid of it for you. No one will know!’
The doctor said all this to my father while my mom was lying down on the table, shocked out of her mind. Needless to say, they never went back to that whacko.
Happy to report I was born with 0 birth defects.”
He’s An Adult, Not A Child
“I once had a bad case of pink eye (conjunctivitis.) I suppose during my period of discomfort I must have rubbed it into the other eye as well. So I would up with two bloodshot eyes that felt like they were full of grinding glass.
I phoned my boss halfway through my shift and told him I simply had to go to the emergency room. Amazingly enough, he high-tailed it in and I went to the hospital. The wait was long because they had to prioritize some people ahead of me. Understandable. My case was not life-threatening.
Now, as you may know, pink-eye is not all that hard to get. You can get it from a dirty door knob, from money, just plain dirt, or any number of other objects; whereupon, you carelessly get an urge to rub your eyes. It is spread from one person to another fairly easily and can also come from allergies. I am just like anyone else. My eyes occasionally itch: I rub them.
As soon as I got into the emergency room, the doctor gave me a baleful glare, cocked his head, and crossed his arms.
‘You know,’ he said, ‘Little children get this sometimes when they have been playing around in feces.’
This shocked me so badly that I struggled for a proper reply. Having had no leanings whatsoever toward scatological proclivities, I doubted this had caused my problem. I always wash my hands after using the restroom.
‘I can assure you that I do not play in feces,’ was about the only thing I could come up with.
Seems that about half of our healthcare workers are pleasant people, while the other half need to take a class in bedside manners 101.”
Blame Game
“I was 15 years old and was having facet joint injections under local anesthetic for my back pain. Nobody was allowed to come in with me apart from the medical staff and a student doctor.
I swear I felt absolutely EVERYTHING. The tears were running silently down my face but I was trying to keep as still as possible.
‘Stop flinching please,’ instructed the grumpy old consultant.
I replied, ‘Sorry but it’s the most painful thing I’ve ever felt. It’s impossible not to.’
‘Well if you had been doing more exercise instead of slouching at a computer you wouldn’t have to be here in the first place,’ he snapped and continued to jab the needle in without offering me a break.
The student doctor looked at me sympathetically and took me back to my mum and granny in the waiting room afterward.
I have been diagnosed with a degenerative spine and osteoarthritis which started when I was 13. While sitting for long periods certainly doesn’t help matters, it wasn’t the cause. Needless to say, I never went back for a follow-up treatment.”
“How Did He Get Onto That Topic?”
“In my last year of college, I lost my appetite. Like, totally. Didn’t eat any food, really, for nearly six weeks, and consequently lost about 30 pounds rapidly. I felt fine, but the university officials suggested I see a doctor. Fair enough. So, I met with this older male physician who was very pushy and candid.
I revealed how a very close friend had recently graduated early, and I missed having her around. Since I’m male, this intrigued him.
He then said, ‘Have you ever seen her breasts?’
Instead of the appropriate response, which was ‘None of your damned business,’ I replied, ‘Wh-wh-WHAT?’
He went on, ‘Have you ever seen her breasts or her naked?’
He then shared his opinion that a male of my age should be turned on by every female he met, and there was something odd that I’d not slept with this woman or seen this woman naked.
Remember: this is a DOCTOR I’m seeing because I’d lost my appetite. How did he get onto that topic?”
“I Wish I Was Dead. I Need Help.”
“’I am in so much pain that I wish I was dead. I cannot eat, I cannot sleep and I need help,’ I told my dentist.
One side of my face was broiling in pain.
‘The problem is in your mind, nothing is wrong with you,’ said my dentist, as I wept in excruciating pain. ‘I’m sure it’s just stress.’
I begged. I pleaded. He told me I was overdramatic and sent me home, where I writhed in pain. Happily, I babysat for a family ‘Levine’ where the dad was a dental surgeon as well. And when the pain got too bad, I called Dr. Levine and basically said I need help or he was going to need a new babysitter, since I couldn’t live like this. Dr. Levine told me to come in first thing in the morning.
When I got into the chair, he took my hand (and I do not like being touched but I was almost limp with pain) and said, ‘Elke, I swear to you, I will not allow you to leave until you are better.’
And he kept his promise and found an enormous cyst that my dentist had overlooked. He drained it, cleaned it, and patched me up. He then called my dentist and shouted at him. It felt good.”
Dr. Weird
“I’d gone to the doctor with terrible flu symptoms. I had a severe sore throat which made my voice very hoarse. I told the doctor about this.
‘Oh yes I can tell… that’s not your usual sexy voice, is it?’ he said.
I just stared at him blankly, fully prepared to vomit on his shoes.
Later in the appointment, he was printing off a renewed prescription for my contraceptive pill.
‘Now how often do you forget to take the pill? I bet it’s a lot,’ he said, with a smirk on his face.
Again, I stared at him blankly, not sure how the question was at all relevant. I’d been taking the pill, with no issues, for the last six years.
I told him I very rarely forget to take it. Because I’m a responsible, grown woman, who is quite within the realms of capability, to remember to take a pill every day.”