I’ll accept a brutal course of treatment or poor treatment at the hands of medical professionals for this question.
In the poor treatment category…
Long story short as I can make it and make sense, had a falling accident at work. I got hit in the head by flying piece of iron and gotten knocked off a scaffold, falling down 7ish? feet and belly flopped onto a concrete floor with my right arm under me. They x-rayed my arm, stitched the wound on my head, and said I was good to go. My arm… not sure how to word it… just felt wrong. I’m used to a lot of pain and have a high threshold, but something just was off about it. I asked the doc and they reassured me two doctors had looked at the x-ray and it was fine, but if it still hurt in a month to go to my family doctor.
K great. Go home, and for the next few weeks I do my thing, trying to use my right hand fairly often to help “walk it off” so to speak. After nearly a month of it not getting any better made an appointment to see my doc. (one month to the day of the accident.) Got another x-ray. I had barely got home when I got a call from my doctor, he saw the problem immediately when he got the pics. Turned out that when I fell, one of the bones in my wrist got dislodged and the tendon that attaches to it pulled it back into my carpal tunnel, pinching off the nerves to my thumb and two fingers. (Apparently our other two smallest fingers nerves run separate and to the side.) Sorry to any med ppl if I skewered that explanation. Perilunate dislocation is what they called it.
So basically, two different doctors didn’t notice the bone on the wrong side of my wrist. Me being the idiot I am, kept using it for a month like it was fine. I don’t like taking painkillers so I smoked a shitton of weed that month lol all because two doctors didn’t look close enough at an x-ray.
My sister in law broke her arm in 3 places. They put her in a cast and put her in a sling. She kept telling them her shoulder hurt. Doctor ended up getting pissed off, calling her av drug seeker and kicking her out of the hospital.
After a month she went to a specialist and was like “yeah my arm feels fine but my shoulder hurts really bad.” Doctor did xrays, immediately requested the xrays from the hospital and had her come back in.
He showed her on the most recent xrays how her arm was very clearly outside of it’s socket. He showed her the previous xrays from the hospital where it was the same. Then he read her the notes where one doctor commented on it that it was out of the socket and dislocated and needed to be fixed. But the doctor she had wrote notes ONLY about the broken arm and specifically said everything else looked normal. Clearly not reading the other doctors notes.
Unfortunately due to some other health circumstances and how long it had been, they could not do anything to get her arm back in the shoulder. She permanently lost all ability to use that arm for the rest of her life. The specialist said “I never tell people this but, if I were you, I would absolutely get a lawyer.”
She did. She won. That was also a fiasco. Their lawyer wasn’t very good. Followed me around for months. Presented evidence that she was totally fine with picture and videos of me. The judge was not amused. My SIL was 30 years older than me, a foot shorter and about 70 pounds less. Zero chance you could confuse us.
Her and my brother bought a house, a car, and a truck with that money. Which got them out of poverty.
Kidney stone removal. Well having the stent removed. Imagine a thorny vine being yanked out and the thorns are pointed towards the exit.
Treatment for head and neck cancer. Surgery (not so bad), Chemo and Daily radiation. The chemo was rough, and the anti nausea pill did nothing. Radiation starts out fine, but half way through the sunburn inside your throat is horrible, and the combo of chemo and radiation kills your salivary glands and so instead of thin saliva you just have a thick mucous like hot mozzarella cheese strings on a pizza that you can’t seem to spit out and it chokes you to swallow. Your body is so tired that 10cc of water into the Gtube feeder makes you vomit. You lose all taste, so everything is like chewing soggy cardboard.
The only positive is I no longer have to shave my neck, the beard hair there just never grew back.
I’m sorry. My nephew and his granddad have had this. Both are currently in remission. My nephew could only eat thin yogurt.
Yeah, it’s ahitty. I hope your family members stay in remission. 🙏
Thank you. I return your good wishes, with love and gratitude. 🙏❤️
had a chest tube for a collapsed lung. it was not so bad after awhile but was a bitch when it was fresh. sorta different but im not sure how much was effect of the prep or how much was the colonoscopy but it irritates a hemroid to the point to prolapsed into a litteral skin flap covering over my asshole. doctor was very um. glib about the whole thing. like no big deal. it was a fucking big deal.
Man I went into the ER after bleeding out of my asshole for weeks, eventually bad enough that I was bleeding through my pants and underwear during the work day and staining my chair. The attending made me feel like I was absolutely wasting his time, then squeezed a blood clot the size of a lemon out of my asshole and sent me home.
I thought I was fucking dying when I went in. Then I thought I was dying when he was squeezing that fucker out. Then I thought I was dying from his withering disdain.
I think if I ever wind up with those symptoms again I’ll just wait for death instead of going in.
Antidepressants. They don’t help and cause tons of additional issues like brain zaps, constipation and sedation. The real awful part is the pin prick of hope that this one will work…
I’ve quit mine once before 2 weeks of terrible brain zaps. You feel very uncomfortable living in your own brain.
Although I should probably consider getting off of mine again. What actually worked for me was getting diagnosed with ADHD so I could get my hands on Adderall. That was the drug that finally worked for me.
This was my thing too. Turns out I wasn’t necessarily depressed. I had executive functioning issues so I couldn’t start anything. Things weren’t fun because I knew I’d have to bully myself into getting started. I laid in bed all day on my days off not because I was depressed but, because of task paralysis. And turns out when life is just too hard to do anything other than the bare minimum, it can make you depressed. Who knew?!
What was the solution for you?
Antidepressant withdrawal is serious and severe. Only recently is anyone taking that seriously
Treatment for the nerve damage in my left arm which involved a lot of getting shocked. Getting shocked to see the specific damage and then dry needling which is acupuncture plus electricity.
Sucks hard, dude.
then dry needling which is acupuncture plus electricity.
I stopped counting at 13 needles. Told my neighbor I feel like a human poppet.
Not sure if the same one, but did it involve (if I remember correctly) sensors on your fingers and the needles went up kind of closer to your shoulder for them to send the pulses through? I had my right side done because of nerve damage to my wrist.
A doctor once gave me a month’s supply of a drug only approved for use for 10 days due to liver toxicity. I learned about the limit from a news article and stopped taking it.
I experienced no ill effects that I know of, but his malpractice put me at risk of death or lifelong complications. I learned to double-check everything myself after that.
Dangerous. Liver and kidneys can get severly damaged by such drugs.
Damn, that’s also on the pharmacist for not noticing… multiple failures there.
My insurance demanded that I switch one of my medications because they had cut a deal with the other brand or something. After the first dose, I had crazy heart palpations for the better part of a week and thought I was going to die. It still took several rounds of appeals before my insurance returned and allowed me to get back on the original medication.
Of course, they dropped my coverage for it again 2 months later, so I gave up, which I guess was what my fucking for-profit scum insurance wanted anyway.
That drug wouldn’t have been called Vioxx by any chance?
No, it was a GLP-1
Ah ok, was wondering because I know that one got yanked off the shelves for causing heart issues.
Oh, interesting. It was ozempic that gave me the palpitations, which from what I understand is a somewhat uncommon reaction
I’ve have a few laser lithotripsies for kidney stones, nothing too bad except for one of them the anesthesiologist decided for some reason that he was going to put in the breathing tube while I was still awake. That was fucking horrible.
I can’t stress this enough when I say it but, WHAT. THE. FUCK?!
Lumbar puncture, hands down. They insert a needle into your lower spine to extract fluid for analysis. It was horribly painful and took them several tries to get right.
They gave me incorrect instructions. At least for my case they were incorrect. It is done sitting up. And they told me specifically not to round my back but to slump down. And they poked and prodded and just couldn’t get the needle in. Finally I rounded my back and oh wonderous thing it was suddenly much easier to get the needle in.
That was painful enough but sucking the fluid out is downright sickening. You can really feel it along your spine and in your head. Absolutely awful. I felt like passing out.
And of course they found absolutely nothing.
This is my answer too - worst experience of my life
Was going to say this. One of the most stressful procedures.
Six fucking tries too, sitting and lying. And then it didn’t flow all that well.
I envy you though that they found nothing. No such luck for me.
Hey, we’re in the same boat. While the procedure itself went fine for me, the headache afterwards was hell and I had a leakage. Though there are options to close it, they decided to wait. After a while I had to be hospitalized but still no blood patch…
The toll this shit takes on your body was understated in the info brochures. Haven’t been the same since then.They also found absolutely nothing.
Yes.
In my case, the fluid shot out because it was under insane pressure and since I lost too much, I got the most horrible headache in the entire world. I was physically unable to be upright. I had to be hospitalized for a week and I wasn’t able to go home until they gave me a blood patch.
I’d rather have 3 more appendectomies and break my arm a few more times than go through that again. If anyone ever asks for a spinal tap again, I am going to tell them to suck my D.
orthodontics, never again
You guys have wild stories. I’ve had good medical care for the most part. Damn, so boring
My urologist didn’t believe me when I told him I have an incredibly high tolerance to local anesthesia.
He also didn’t believe me that I could feel him make the initial incision.
So that’s how I had my vasectomy without anesthesia. At least the recovery was completely pain and swelling free, so I kinda speed ran the pain. I was also able to confirm my suspicion that my pain tolerance is extremely high. I’d give it a 9.5/10 because I didn’t lose consciousness.
Second worst is regaining the ability to form memories during a colonoscopy as a child. Again, that pesky anesthesia metabolism. When they had to surgically set my arm in 6th grade, they put the anesthesia mask on me and told me to count down from 100.
I got to 46 before they just went ahead with the IV.
By any chance are you a redhead?
No, but my mom was, so I assume I inherited it.
Luckily, actual anesthesiologists know what I’m talking about when I tell them and adjust accordingly.
As a zebra patient… too many to list lol
But the one that stands out is my original POTS diagnostic test. They did something called a “tilt table test”. They strap you on a table like a torture film, literally head straps and everything, and then raise the table vertically. The idea is to see how well your body adapts to gravity.
Normally I have pretty good compensations for my condition. I’ve learnt specific ways to stand, lean, and hold my body so that my circulation works… not well, but decently. I can get up to make toast every now and then, stuff like that.
The table bypasses all that. Immediately I suffered extremely bad effects. I could feel all the blood draining from my brain and my body and pooling into my legs. Couldn’t breathe properly, vision going white, feeling absolutely horrible. I can’t accurately describe the feeling of all your blood leaving your vital organs. It felt extremely bad, I felt like I was dying. Like a cold shower on the inside, hollowness, pain.
Worst part was, I was too weak to even ask them to cancel the test, or move to remove the bindings myself. Turns out you need blood to do stuff like that. I was completely paralyzed.
The doctors were like “wow this is the worst POTS I’ve ever seen! Usually when people say they have POTS it turns out they don’t, but man… hey let’s show Larry” and they leave the room to go find Larry and show them the interesting POTS patient. I could barely see on the monitor my heart rate was 180bpm and my blood pressure was 80/40mmol, which is very bad. I eventually lost consciousness completely. As I passed out I accepted that I was going to die right there on the stupid table because nobody noticed the problem.
I didn’t die (obviously). I came to when I was horizontal on the table again and they were unstrapping me. No idea how long I was out for, but fuck that. Nobody told me it would be that bad. “A bit uncomfortable” my ass.
After all that, I got my diagnosis for severe POTS after 10 years of confusing symptoms. Now I have some medicine that helps it not be so severe, so I guess it was worth it in the end?
Holy shit they couldn’t even tip you back while going to get Larry?! Dicks!
Not me, but in the span of a couple weeks I had some really awful experiences with pediatricians. My middle kid was almost three when they had a horrific fever and was complaining about a stiff neck, which is a huge red flag… But the ER sent us home with the diagnosis of “neck torsion.” A few hours later we went to a different ER because they had a lump the size of a grapefruit in their neck from an infected lymph node. Required several days in the hospital to get IV antibiotics.
A couple weeks after that I gave birth to our youngest, and at her 3 day check up her doctor claimed to see sores in her mouth and was worried about herpes (despite the fact that neither me nor my spouse have any STDs) so she sent us to the ER… No one there bothered looking in her mouth until after a lumbar puncture. Then someone realized there were no sores at all, but harmless gum cysts that are extremely common in infants. They kept her overnight for monitoring and that morning a med student presented the case to her peers as a cautionary tale to verify symptoms before jumping into an LP.
