Missed Diagnosis: What the Doctors said to patients

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I've had that very problem many, many times. It's a big part of why I'm Dr phobic. So very few will listen.

This is just one example of my experiences with the medical profession. I had a serious accident Oct 2015. I was taken to hospital and they did a CT. On the discharge summary it mentioned an incidental finding on CT that I had thyroid nodules. I figured as nobody mentioned it to me it mustn't be important. A bit over a week after the CT, I started getting very odd problems. I was sweating profusely, my heart was racing and doing weird flip flops and I couldn't sit still or sleep for more than an hour or two at a time. When it was time for the stitches to come out I went to a GP and took the discharge summary and she told me she had no idea why these things were happening and to go home and give it a few weeks to see if it would settle. It didn't, it got worse.

I went to another GP who sent me bloods which showed I was hyperthyroid and he started me on meds. Instead of getting better, I got worse so I went back and he sent me to a psychologist because obviously it was all in my head. The psychologist was an idiot who wanted me to meditate and practise mindfulness. I knew I had a physical problem. After a few weeks I realised that in the evenings I started to get a bit better then it was time for more meds and 20 mintues later I was a basket case again. I looked the meds up and realised the probable offender was the propranolol so I went back to the GP and told him I thought that was the problem and he got very snotty and told me I was being 'ridiculous' it was perfectly safe and wouldn't do anything of the sort.

I went to a another GP who was really lovely. He actually said "I don't know what's going on but I know someone who will." He referred me to an Endocrinologist whose first question was "Did they give you contrast with the CT. They had. He said well that's why your thyrotoxic, contrast is full of iodine and your thyroid cannot handle that much and the other stuff is the propranalol. He told me to stop the meds because over time the iodine would gradually clear my system.

I have since learnt that in the acute period of contrast induced thyrotoxicosis, it causes cardiac arrhythmeias and that's why my heart was doing strange flip flops. It could have been fatal. I am angry at the Hospital for not warning me of the potential problem and I am angry at the first Dr who brushed me off and the second who dismissed me. I had a lucky break finding Dr three. He is a rare beast. A Dr who will admit he doesn't know everything but will refer to the right people.

Sorry for this long rant but I don't believe going to different Dr's is Dr shopping. It's necessary if you are not getting the help you need. If I hadn't, I would not have found out that iodine can kill me which is useful thing to know.

MDs are a self-regulated/self-policing profession.(of course Psych., OT, PT, Nursing, etc... are as well)

The profession and the individual physician needs to continually self-examine and self-challenge.

"Was my dx correct?" "What are my assumptions about this pt?" "How am I biased?" and so on........

Very few MDs do this and the profession as a whole rarely does this.

More importantly, they do not see the need for it.

When anyone dares to question MDs or the profession as a whole on any issue, they close ranks and use their immense power and wealth to fend off the challenge.

This will NEVER change............and why you ask?

Simple. They shield themselves from the consequences of their mistakes and thus they are never impacted by said mistakes.

So why would they develop the desire for change?
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I've personally been impacted by obvious malpractice, to my great detriment and they felt no consequence of any kind.

The 3rd leading cause of death in the USA is medical error.....and nothing will be done.

Looking to the future, I think some change will come, though it will be driven by technological advances in diagnosis, not by the medical profession itself. History may look back on the mapping of the human genome - which is old news now - as the turning point. Already (though it is not much utilised) it is possible to tell who will or will not respond to prescription drugs in the way assumed. But that's only the beginning. Technology gains will bring about a very significant shift of doctors from diagnosticians to treatment providers.

However (and it's a big however), I think technology diagnosis could also have very adverse impact on the AS community.
The practice of medicine is always (and has always been) a political as well as a medical issue. Medicine is fraught with many strands of political issues - funding, policy, practice, gender, cost, power, access, control... I doubt that technology gains will change the politics of medicine even if it changes the practice, in the relatively near future. Ultimately the paradigm will shift, though not in my lifetime I think.

My own cynicism goes deepest in terms of psychiatrists, who seem to me to function more as agents of social control and profit collectors for drug companies and hospitals; these scientists (as they claim to be) seem to have a self-serving regard for unscientific opinions which they decide are fact via a committee process (the committee being themselves). If that's not political, then I don't know what is. No other branch of science is allowed to get away with these distortions, not even academic psychology (and nor should they).

Whenever I read a post by some new member about going to seek a diagnosis from a psychiatrist, a shiver of fear for them goes through me. Whenever I read a post by a member who describes years of misdiagnosis by psychiatrists before someone diagnosed their AS, a shiver of rage goes through me. These are my personal responses; I wish that our response as AS people was decidedly more political or at least the way we think about these issues.