Unfortunately, many people experience below-average care from their healthcare providers — and doctors are known to say both cruel and toxic things to their patients. Now, Quora users are sharing the most ignorant thing they’ve heard from a medical doctor. The stories will make you sigh heavily:
1.“I was a young, happy 10-year-old girl who had never thought about her weight. I wore comfortable shorts and wore tank tops all the time. One day, I went to our family doctor for a standard check-up. The doctor took out a weight chart. She pointed to a point on the chart and said, ‘This is the weight you should be for your age. ‘Then she pointed at another point on the chart and said, ‘And you’re way over here. You need to stop eating so much sugar and start exercising more.’
“When I went home and looked in the mirror that day, I no longer loved my body. I had a favorite unicorn tank top that I stopped wearing because all I could see when I put it on was fat, fat, fat, fat. I stopped wearing dresses and only wore baggy sweaters. The doctors’ words rang in my head, and I gradually became less healthy and started binge eating then starving myself.”
—Mel, Quora
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2.“When my daughter was 4, I took her to her yearly check-up. I told them she was still peeing at night so I was putting her in Pull-Ups. The doctor said the reason she was still peeing was because of the Pull-Ups and that I should immediately stop using them. I felt like a horrible mom, so I stopped putting them on her. For the next year, multiple times a week, she would wake me up because she wet the bed. I would help her change, strip her bed, and remake it. Some nights, I would just make her a bed on the floor. I was exhausted and cranky because I also had a newborn waking me up at night, and I was not always patient with her. A year later I went to a different doctor and told her of our dilemma. She asked why I wasn’t putting her in Pull-Ups., ARGGG! After that, we all slept through the night, and life was so much sweeter. She did, thankfully, grow out of it at age 8.”
3.“I grew up on a farm with roosters and chickens and got attacked by one. I ended up getting really sick, so my mother took me to urgent care. My mom told the doctor I had gotten badly injured and she was worried the wound was infected. The doctor asked how I had gotten hurt so my mom told him. The doctor, for whatever reason, thought that was hilarious. He bent over laughing. It was discovered that I had blood poisoning, so the doctor was laughing at a very sick little kid.”
“I was little, so the memory isn’t super detailed, but I recall her asking me to wait in the hall and hearing her through the door threatening to ‘bring the rooster to the office so it can punch a bunch of holes in him.'”
—Austin Lewis, Quora
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4.“That my mammogram showed no signs of tumor. I read the report, and each breast had the exact same description. The doctor had written the same report about both sides of my breasts. I got a sonogram and my right had three malignant tumors that had spread to my lymph system. I was in stage 3. After chemo, surgery, radiation, and nightly meds, I’m going strong.”
5.“A doctor told my cousin, ‘Your period can’t hurt that badly.’ She then went on with years and years of painful, almost debilitating periods. They were so bad, but she thought it was normal because that is what she was told. She knew it was not as bad for other girls but was convinced it was just a bad case of cramps every month. Finally, as an adult, a friend convinced her to see their gynecologist, and they ordered an ultrasound. When she went in for the results, the doctor told her she needed surgery ASAP.”
“Turns out she had eight pounds of dermoids in her uterus, and some even had teeth and hair. If they had kept growing, her uterus could have burst and killed her. But because one doctor brushed off her symptoms and never really did anything about it, she almost died. If they had been discovered earlier, there were things they would have known to look out for, and she would have had fewer health issues related to uterine health. Eventually, she had a hysterectomy at 28, and that stemmed partially from this doctor ignoring her initial complaint.”
—Marie Phillips, Quora
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6.“My sister Sharon’s older son, Russell, was 7 years old when he developed crippling pain in his lower right abdomen. My sister’s first thought was appendicitis, so she took him to our local children’s hospital, thinking that he would need surgery right away. Sharon was also sick with strep throat at the time. The doctor examined him and announced that it wasn’t appendicitis, but given Sharon’s condition at the time, the doctor said, ‘He has strep throat in his side’ (his exact words) and sent them home with antibiotics for strep.”
“After several days on antibiotics, Russell was no better and literally couldn’t walk upright. He was bent over double and clutching his right side from the intense pain. We took him back to the children’s hospital, hoping to see a different and more intelligent doctor. We did get a different doctor, who listened patiently to the history. We told him several times that we were certain it was appendicitis. They ran some bloodwork, and while we waited for the results, the doctor wanted to run another test on Russell. He told my nephew to stand up straight (despite the debilitating pain of doing so), stand on his right foot, and hop up and down several times. The doctor then announced that a person who has appendicitis cannot physically stand on their right foot and jump up and down without collapsing from the pain. So, this doctor said that there was no way Russell had appendicitis. I don’t know whether he even looked at the bloodwork results; he had already made up his mind, and he sent us home, saying that Russell should stay on the antibiotics and the situation would resolve itself…
And just to tell you the rest of the story:
The next day, my sister took Russell to their pediatrician for a third opinion. Russell had a very high fever by this time and could barely walk. The pediatrician ordered Sharon to get her son to the local university hospital (NOT children’s) immediately, where the ER doctors took the situation very seriously. They ran their tests, of course, and told us that Russell had, indeed, had appendicitis, but now his condition was much worse. His appendix had burst (thanks to the delay in competent treatment), and by then, the infection had been flung throughout his abdomen. They admitted him immediately, performed surgery, and then started him on IV antibiotics. He was by no means out of the woods. It took about 2.5 weeks in the hospital on strong antibiotics to pull him through. He came home with a tube protruding from his side that was to drain any remaining infection.
Had the children’s hospital made the obvious diagnosis the first or even the second time, a lot of time, pain, effort, and money could have been saved.”
—Katie Burke, Quora
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7.“I went to the doctor for test results back in the day. The pain in my stomach had me worried I might have anything from an ulcer to Bigfoot growing in there. The doctor walked into the office and began by saying, ‘I’ve got some bad news. You have cancer.’ The shock was followed by gloom and a hint of despair as the doctor began to outline what the plan of attack was, the next doctor I would have to see, and what my odds were for my kind of cancer. I sat there stunned, trying to take everything in and thinking I should be asking questions or taking notes or something other than just sitting there. The doctor then addresses me as ‘Brian.’ My name is not Brian.”
“I found a new doctor who sent me to a nutritionist for my real issue and has been my primary care doctor now for about 20 years.”
—Robert Girard, Quora
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8.“The local doctor in our small town did not believe I had asthma. I had been diagnosed when I was a little baby. I had to take a day off work every month to see him before he would refill my medications. I ended up going to another doctor who confirmed I had asthma.'”
9.“My daughter wasn’t doing well. She was very pale, bruised easily, and was always tired. So I took her to the doctor. The brilliant doctor who saw her, without a single blood test, pronounced her to be a ‘troubled teen.’ He tried unconscionably hard to pressure me into having her committed to an institution. I was dumbfounded! After seeing a second doctor, out of pocket, he actually tested her, but before the results were in, he said that it was a ‘classic severe case’ of anemia and that she would have been in great danger had she remained untreated. He prescribed a certain kind of iron, and as long as she took it, she was as good as new.”
10.“I remember shadowing an RN during my clinical days. She asked me to walk with her to visit her ultrasound technician friend. During the session, the tech was with a monolingual Spanish-speaking patient, and I was asked if I could help translate the procedure to the patient. I was confident I could utilize my Spanish in medical terminology. However, a doctor stepped into the conversation and stated that I was not in a position to translate. The doctor stated he knew Spanish ‘very well.’ He explained to the patient that they were going to assess for ‘cancer en los huevos’ (cancer in his balls), and the procedure entailed putting the equipment ‘en las pompis (Spanish slang for butt). I observed the poor man’s ego shattered and my jaw dropped in disbelief as I was in no position to enlighten the doctor in Spanish medical terminology.”
“I later processed my experience with the RN and explained to her what the doctor told the patient in Spanish, how it was inaccurate and perceived to be misinterpreted.”
—Omar Angelo, Quora
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11.“When I was in my mid-20s, I started gaining weight. A LOT of weight. So, my doctor put me on a diet. I followed it religiously (weighing my food out to the gram). It was 1,200 calories a day; I was always hungry, never had any energy, and was still gaining weight. Two months later, I went back to my doctor, who started by noting that I was still gaining weight (30 pounds in twp months). He then asked why I wasn’t following the diet he gave me. I told him I was but made the mistake of mentioning how hard it was. He looked me straight in the eye and told me, ‘If you were actually following the diet I gave you, you’d have lost 30 pounds, not gained 30 pounds.”
“I left that doctor’s appointment in tears and feeling like a horrible human being. I stopped seeing that doctor a few months later for completely unrelated reasons. Oddly enough, it only took my new doctor a few weeks to diagnose me with a small tumor on my pituitary gland. The tumor was removed, I was able to go back up to eating 2,000 calories a day like a normal person, and almost all the excess weight went away within a few months. I don’t think the tumor would have killed me if left untreated but it’s appalling to me that a medical doctor would rather think a patient was willfully lying to them than look at why that patient’s body wasn’t behaving as expected of a healthy individual.”
—Katie Kuhn, Quora
Annick Vanderschelden Photograph / Getty Images
12.And, lastly: “My 8-year-old son had painful stomach cramps that were misdiagnosed by his pediatrician as hysteria or malingering. I was able to get him admitted to a different doctor for observation. Seeing the residents come in with disinterest after interviewing us was tough. All that changed after a pediatric gastrointestinal specialist finished his examination. He diagnosed the problem as an abdominal migraine. Within minutes, we had several residents stopping in to learn about the gastric migraine and how they could have diagnosed it.”
Some submissions have been edited for length and/or clarity,