Comment by ziikutv | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ziikutv | Hacker News Reader

It ain't perfect in Canada either.

I remember losing my hairs and getting patches of super smooth bald spots. Super embarrassing for a kid in a bad neighbourhood and bad school.

Went to the doctor she looked at my charts and said I was super low on iron so low that I might even die if it continues to lower. I was given iron pills.

Two months after I went to the doctor again and said my hair patches are not fixed. She looks at my chart again and said... hey you don't have low iron you have perfect iron and I never told you to take any pills.

Then upon investigation it was noted that the staff gave her wrong chart; of a pregnant woman who had a similar "feminized" version of my name.

Edit: Addendum: finally I was sent to a skin specialist who injected me with steroids for months until my patches were fixed. They said I had alopecia.

I was furious what if the said person had cancer and they started chemo on me?

Same doctor once injected my mom with the wrong fluid. To this day we don't know. We filed a complaint but she then resorted to personal attacks in her report and the "college of medicine" or whatever it's called didn't do anything. Till this day my mom has a red/purple bump on her arms.

Finlly, most other docs don't even check me out they listen to symptoms and say it's nothing, it will go away, etc while looking miserable (no doctor should watch House MD lol). Other times they solve the symptoms by tossing prescriptions at me. Said symptoms always keep coming back and I keep getting more of the same prescriptions.

Thanks for the free health"care" Canada.

Bureaucratic mishaps and mediocre care providers are bound to occur in any sufficiently complex system.

Have you looked at the work in the 2000s on preventing medical errors, e.g. http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/31/health/31safe.html?

I agree and the skeptic in me wonders if we can ever replace the "humans" in these roles with computers that crunch a bunch of numbers. However, just like computers, many doctors base their decision on statistics.

> Then upon investigation it was noted that the staff gave her wrong chart; of a pregnant woman who had a similar "feminized" version of my name.

This has happened many times to me. It's quite scary once you realize it. Thankfully no one ever told me I was pregnant.

> We filed a complaint but she then resorted to personal attacks in her report

Care to go into more detail? I'm really interested in knowing how these details.

> Said symptoms always keep coming back and I keep getting more of the same prescriptions.

This is just called making sure your business is recurrent.

> This has happened many times to me. It's quite scary once you realize it. Thankfully no one ever told me I was pregnant.

I was furious and told them to write my name, age, and gender on top of the leaflet in bold red letters and watched them do it. All subsequent visits started off with me making sure that it was the right chart. Some good doctors ask you name, age before opening the chart. Not this one..

> Care to go into more detail? I'm really interested in knowing how these details.

My mother is a registered nurse. Heck, she was part of the government that trained a school of just nurses. Needless to say, she comes from a time and with experience that would lead her to run around the nurses of today. The digression was to just point out that.. my mom knows her shit.

After injecting her, she said "OH NO" really loud and then quickly left the room after tossing the bulb in the hazard bin.

As she was gone, my mom tried to look for what it was hoping there wasn't anything else in there other than the bulb in question.

She came back and saw my mom looking and accused her of attempting to harm herself and tampering. She never physically touched anything in the room, just was leaning from her seat so she can see the contents of the bin.. What the fuck man!

> This is just called making sure your business is recurrent.

Yeah, this is why I wished Homeopathy and all those kind of things were actually realistically helpful. I think the problem is that Doctors are no different than road workers that periodically patch the cracks on the highway. Doctors need to prevent shit instead of patching shit.

Edit: Spelling error and remove colloquial tinfoil paragraph xD

> Doctors need to prevent shit instead of patching shit.

Ideally yes. But we as individuals already have the capacity to do this:

- Eat well

- Exercise

- Don't smoke

- Don't drink

- Wear sunscreen

etc.

Yes. I think long term/chronic long term issues can be avoided by following those rules. I do not follow any of them which is my problem.

I think baking in lifestyle design or something that educates kids at an early age might help. Back home in India, I remember there used to be a kid show where they explained how mosquitoes and flies spread diseases and how this happens too often when you eat at the street vendors. I stopped doing that (of course, mileage varies)

> She came back and saw my mom looking and accused her of attempting to harm herself and tampering.

Classic. When in doubt discredit them by making them look crazy. Coupled with being an authority figure and credibility that comes with it this is an effective technique.

> Doctors need to prevent shit instead of patching shit.

Medicine is very good at treating acute and traumatic things. Long term conditions, not really.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com