Real Life "Scary Stories" in Healthcare

[GophurIt]

I am looking for stories of mishandling, misdiagnosis leading to wrong treatment, plain old stories about mistakes in your healthcare experiences.

Does not matter whether you were the healthcare side, or the patient side, but since everyone "knows someone's brother's aunt's uncle that...."
keep them to firsthand accounts.

Why do I want to know?
I am curious. We all know it happens, lets see what the collective of SDN has experienced.

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[babel]

If you're just curious/looking for some interesting stories, I'd also try reading "How Doctors Think" by Jerome Groopman. It's full of medical mishap stories.

 

[GophurIt]

I was messing around with the dorm kids, playing dodge ball,
and the ball slammed my finger.

As it became all puffy and hurt, I wondered if the Student Health Facility 3 min walk away, might have a cold pack

on the side I wondered if I might have really hurt it

The doctor does not wonder if I have sprained, jammed, or broken it, instead he/she wonders if I have a rare bacterial infection, transmitted via a very small cut that I could not seee, infecting away my flesh from the inside. He/She just heard about it happening somewhere.

(worried about necrotizing infection?)

Well, just in case, I had better take this large bottle of strong antibiotics, better safe than sorry.

hmm, no ice pack, no x-ray, no manipulation or asking, "does this hurt?"

I went in to see if I had physically injured my finger, and came out with a prescription to ward against rare mysterious bacteria from an invisible cut.

While rare infections like that can occur, I am not about to quaff antibiotics just because a ball knocked my finger. Thanks but no thanks. This was only two years ago, well after we knew about the whole antibiotic resistance problem.

Guess I will stick my hand in the minifridge eh?

 

[Jolie South]

Disclaimer: I'm not a doctor so I can't adequately assess the appropriateness of some of the treatment I received. However, a lot of things seemed suspicious.

I got in a motorcycle accident in Africa which resulted in a deep nasty gash on my elbow. Upon arrival at the hospital, I was given general anesthetic unknowingly. I guess possible allergies and medical history were not important in consideration of this step, though I don't see how. When I woke up and was taken to X-ray, they realized that they had sewn up some rocks inside the wound.

Two weeks later, my arm is infected and they're still telling me to be patient with the whole rock situation. Needless to say, I became quite angry with the cavalier attitude toward the infection and the rocks/bone fragments still inside my festering arm.

Due to long distance between me and the American doctor that was giving me advice, it wasn't until this point that a secondary opinion was considered.

When I saw the second doctor, he was like "whoa that is bad." I was scheduled for surgery the next day.

Luckily, the second guy was good and my arm is ok now.

 

[StevenJ128]

Well, I got punched in the face (long story). After a couple of days, the swelling was gone, but I couldn't move my right eye very well, and it felt like pressure was building up behind it. I went to the doctor at my school's health center, and he said that absolutely nothing was wrong with it. I had to talk him into refering my to someone for a CT scan. Turns out I had a quarter-size blow out fracture of the orbital. I'm glad that I followed up on it, because the surgeon said that eventually my eye ball would have fallen back into the hole, along with the muscle, and become useless. I wasn't angry at the guy, but it's a little worrisome that the signs were so obvious that I figured out what was wrong with me, but he was convinced otherwise.

 

[pressmom]

I had my hyoid bone broken during a stellate ganglion block. The doc cranked me neck back too far and it just broke. They denied the whole thing and I had to go to two other doctors (including one in another city) before someone told me the truth. Talk about covering your a$$.

 

[Leen71]

I was visiting friends in North Carolina and fell down the stairs late at night. I didn't make it to the hospital until the next morning, where the doctors took x-rays of my ankle and foot. They told me I had a grade 3 ankle sprain and splinted my foot (even though I kept telling them that I was in so much pain it was more than a sprain-I even showed them the exact spot on my foot that hurt the most). They discharged me and sent me home. I made it to my actual home about 5 days later and by this time my foot had turned black. My uncle (who is a Chiropractor) thought my foot was broken so he took x-rays at his office. Turns out my fifth metatarsal was broken and displaced, I had to have surgery within the next two days, and I now have 2 screws in my foot. I called the hospital for the x-rays and apparently they didnt take x-rays of my entire foot and they missed the break. Definitely not the best experience with doctors.

 

[Bacchus]

Atleast you guys had doctors. I have a friend who was backpacking India, got stung by a scorpion, and had to be galloped through the desert on a camel by gypsies. Talk about experiencing healthcare abroad.

 

[Jolie South]

Atleast you guys had doctors. I have a friend who was backpacking India, got stung by a scorpion, and had to be galloped through the desert on a camel by gypsies. Talk about experiencing healthcare abroad.

Well, I wasn't too far off from that. My accident happened in the bush, like 40 km from the hospital. I had to take what could only loosely be described as a taxi and then the driver extorted money from me because I was white and injured. They charged me 10 times the real price! 👎

Had I not been bleeding and in serious pain, I would have argued with that mofo and refused to pay flat out!

 

[crumbelievable]

this story isnt exactly along the same lines as the previous ones but is nonetheless a scary medical story:

my dad is an internist and was treating a patient for the first time. they were sitting in my dad's office, with the patient sitting right by the door. my dad is taking down his medical history when the patient pulls out a butcher knife and announces that he really feels like chopping off someone's head. my dad eventually talked him into calling security for help and my dad walked away with an interesting story to tell that night at dinner.

 

[StevenJ128]

this story isnt exactly along the same lines as the previous ones but is nonetheless a scary medical story:

my dad is an internist and was treating a patient for the first time. they were sitting in my dad's office, with the patient sitting right by the door. my dad is taking down his medical history when the patient pulls out a butcher knife and announces that he really feels like chopping off someone's head. my dad eventually talked him into calling security for help and my dad walked away with an interesting story to tell that night at dinner.

Wow, what a psycho. What ended up happening to him?

 

[BlackSails]

My brother was taken to doctor after doctor for years, due to his persisient cough, wheezing and other problems. He missed probably 50% of school for those 3 years. One doctor eventually gave him a dose of steroids that in the words of a family friend who is a doctor he "would not give to a 300 pound grown man." My brother was crying for 2 weeks and gained like 20 pounds before my mom decided to ask our family friend what she should do.

The diagnosis after 3 years, several operations and courses of treatment?

Reflux.

 

[ssquared]

I was playing soccer, planted my foot, and stupidly twisted my leg. I felt a pop, and suddenly my knee had shooting pain in it. Having done something similar a couple years previously, I knew that I had ripped the cartilage. I went to student health, and the doctor moved my knee, saying he could hear the clicking in my knee, and I needed surgery. He then referred me to a local orthopedist.

A week or so later, I go see the orthopedist (who was out in the boonies, wasn't anywhere near campus). He comes in, looks at my leg (doesn't even touch my knee!) and then pronounces I have a sprain. I tell him I can feel/hear clicking in it, but he shakes me off and says I'll be fine in two weeks before dismissing me. I called my mom right after I left and told her about it, and she asked if he had taken x-rays (no), ordered an MRI (no), or even did a physical exam (no). She said, "Don't go back."

So I had to wait three months for the end of the semester (with my knee hurting all the time) before I go home and see my usual orthopedist. He places his hands on my knee, moves it a fraction of an inch, and says to me, "It's torn right down the middle, we need to schedule surgery. How's next week?"

Student health was right on that one, and that never happens!