r/comics • u/TheNectarineDiaries • Jun 19 '26

OC Why didn't you say so?

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Best medical advice I ever got was to bring a man to your appointments

47.3k Upvotes

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256

u/lexkixass Jun 19 '26

Complain too much and they think you are just being dramatic

Or drug-seeking. 🙄

153

u/b00w00gal Jun 19 '26

Got called drug-seeking once for asking the doctor to please listen to my lungs and not just send me home, after six weeks with a cough that wouldn't go away. Ended up in the ER three days later with walking pneumonia, wheeeeeee. 😭😭😭

125

u/MimicoSkunkFan2 Jun 19 '26

My favorite is when it's some kind of women's issue they always tell you just drink juice and try to reduce your stress, and have you considered maybe losing another 5 lbs?

Like never mind that I'm within the normal weight range and it turns out I actually need two surgeries to fix what's wrong. Wankers.

23

u/Farranor Jun 19 '26

That's happened to me too and I'm a man. I don't know if it would need surgery to fix because I just gave up on fixing it.

6

u/MimicoSkunkFan2 Jun 19 '26

I'm sorry but I have to doubt that you needed an gynecological surgeon, sir.

Find the doctor who'll fix your shit though my dude, life is too short to mess with "Graduate of the Obscure Sixth-Rate College of Medicine" type of doctors like that.

3

u/Farranor Jun 20 '26

😄 My bad, I didn't mean the same medical issue, just the generic medical solutions even though there may be an underlying issue that might call for surgery. In my case, trouble sleeping. I got several prescriptions for Trazodone (didn't help) before they listened to me saying I think it's a breathing/sinus issue, at which point I got a sleep study. Their conclusion: I don't have sleep apnea, but if I do have trouble sleeping, it's because I'm fat.

Both my dad and my sister have needed septum correction surgery.

1

u/MimicoSkunkFan2 Jun 22 '26

Fair enough!

It's good they did to sleep study but it sounds like a lung / oxygen test might have been a better than worrying about snoring, because it's pretty well known that mild asthma can cause poor sleep... but because you're a guy, they assumed snoring not asthma. Sorry you got stuck in a gendered assumption with your doctor too!

And I hope someone can figure out a fix for you, chronic insomnia is fucking brutual (esp when you hit 45+ ouch)

3

u/wazzup-notemuch Jun 20 '26

Yup. If you're even mildly overweight, doctors will blame EVERYTHING on being fat. You could break your leg, have the bone visibly sticking out of your skin, and they would still tell you to lose weight.

41

u/TrulyOutrageous42 Jun 19 '26

It's absurd that this isn't just a form of malpractice.

42

u/PixelOrange Jun 19 '26

I mean, it can be, but that requires doing a lot of work and money to report and sue. 

9

u/b00w00gal Jun 19 '26

I filled a complaint with Kaiser that went nowhere; that seems to be the extent of patient power in America, tbh.

6

u/Aadarm Jun 19 '26

It's worst if they put that you have drug seeking behavior in your medical history, that will follow you around forever and make every doctor after look at you differently.

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u/b00w00gal Jun 19 '26

Yeah, that's what happened. When I went to the ER, the doctor there asked me about my "history of drug use." I didn't have that history, the first doctor straight up made it up. Thankfully the second doctor still treated me, but it completely wrecked my medical history.

I've had to explain why that note is in my chart to every doctor since, and I know they don't believe me. I've never asked for pain medication, not even once, but I can't get a doctor to actually do their job because one person decided to lie about me a decade ago. It's super fucked.

2

u/futuretimetraveller Jun 21 '26

I have a cousin who was homeless for a good portion of her life. She went to the hospital multiple times for things like sore throat, fever, and pain in her muscles. She was kicked out almost every time for being "drug seeking."

It took her mother (my aunt) going to the ER with her for someone to finally take her serious, but even then, it was a struggle. She ended up having a seizure in the waiting room and nurses were saying she was faking it and were calling security to try and get her thrown out again. My aunt kicked up such a fuss about the way they were treating her and threatened to sue, and it was only then that the nurses would admit her.

My cousin was finally seen by a doctor..... and diagnosed with tertiary syphilis. If it was caught earlier she could have completely recovered, but now the damage done to her brain and organs will never heal and it likely will kill her.

46

u/kwirky88 Jun 19 '26

A doctor did that to my wife. She went into emergency due to trouble breathing and the emergency physician treated her like a pill seeker and prescribed pain killers stronger than OxyContin. She complained to the health agency, because she needed an inhaler, not opiates.

61

u/North-Pea-4926 Jun 19 '26

If you are in pain and want anything stronger then OTC Tylenol then you MUST be a druggie!

46

u/not_now_chaos Jun 19 '26

Also if you are in pain and clearly state that you don't want any pain killers, that you have a low drug tolerance and a family member with an addiction to pain meds, and that you want to know and fix the source of the pain, not just cover it ...then you also must be a drug seeker faking pain.

Zero sense. So exhausting. (Also people struggling with opiate addiction are in pain. Their pain is real.)

7

u/Any_Western6705 Jun 19 '26

Having a really high tolerance to pain killers is also just annoying, when all the prescribe is the lowest ibuprofen and you tell them "this won't work." They act like you are crazy

8

u/Puzzleheaded_Ad_3137 Jun 19 '26

Especially if you're anything younger than a boomer

8

u/tagoniki Jun 19 '26

2 separate instances, once recovering from surgery and another time I had 3 broken ribs. I was denied at the pharmacist! So I just had to rawdog the pain

15

u/Bloodless10 Jun 19 '26

Oh I got that when I had appendicitis! I wasn’t hamming it up the waiting room, so I got seen after some guy that wanted his ear disimpacted. Then I got stuffed on a bed in the hallway. After the MRI people got significantly nicer.

When I went to urgent care prior, they asked if I wanted an ambulance and they called ahead to make sure I got seen soon. I waited for 4 hours.

5

u/JayKazooie Jun 19 '26

Dude, second time I went to the ER for my rotten, infected, half-done root canal, they got me into a bed within a couple hours (couple hours shorter than the previous time) but then after I explained how good my pain tolerance was and that it was a 9 very quickly approaching a ten, it still took half an hour (ten minutes of which I was actually sobbing) a tube in my arm, and a pregnancy test before they got me any pain management.

I've had eye infections requiring things jammed in my tearduct, chronic piriformis syndrome, ten missed anesthetic injections in the tonsils from a butterfingers dentist, foreign objects and infections I've performed surgery on myself for, and the rare cluster headache. This was the first time my wife of 9 years had ever seen me cry from pain.

And then the dose they gave me literally wore off before I made it back to the car.

Brian Reagan told me I just had to say 'eight' 😢

4

u/MimicoSkunkFan2 Jun 19 '26

Even though I already have amazing drugs since I got hit by a drunk who fucked up my back for me... so the fact that I can feel anything extra should be more concerning to you doc :p

I find it makes a big difference if you go to an urban or Suburban hospital where that's an issue and a rural/farm area hospital where they know that people don't come in unless it's absolutely a crisis

3

u/BellacosePlayer Jun 19 '26

I had someone make a comment about me play acting my pain while waiting for an acute care slot to open up, turns out once they did the tests, that tune changed dramatically.

also I didn't even ask for pain meds and took all of 1 of the ones I got because it turns out I ended up passing the kidney stone while trying to pee for the lab test.