Comment by theprotocol | Hacker News Reader

Comment by theprotocol | Hacker News Reader

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That assumes the expert has actually given an answer to my questions, in which case, you'd be 100% right. Even a "we don't know why this happens yet, here's what we know about it: ..." would be more than satisfactory. Just give me something!

But when the expert has nothing to say, yet mocks my questions and even just my reporting of what is happening to me, as he very eagerly waits for me to leave so he can get paid... Then there's not much more I can do than read on the Internet.

Some throw in a veiled insult by suggesting I should be sent to a psych ward for my "panic attacks." You might say it's not an insult, but I accepted the psychiatric evaluation once - and then a whole team of psychiatrists determined after 2 weeks that I was genuinely sick with stomach issues, and called that doctor up and asked him what the hell he was doing sending me to them when I had real physiological issues.

The truth is, most patients will accept the doctor's advice if the doctor can give an answer, any answer that's genuine. "We checked out the inflammation and we don't know why it's there, we'll keep working on it." <--- GREAT. Even the most "annoying" and inquisitive patients will accept this answer. The problem occurs when the doctor thinks him/herself too good to work with the patients by giving answers like this.

I'm absolutely not trying to belittle your experience -- it sounds horrible, and it is something I have met, and that my spouse has met. She was crying after she had met a doctor that examined her, because the doctor had made fun of her, in no uncertain words implying her symptoms were fictitious.

My point was more generally about how doctors are a lot like the car mechanics of people. So when none of the usual things show up as wrong, they just assume your electronics are shot (for humans, "you're crazy") and move on.

>I'm absolutely not trying to belittle your experience

I understand, I didn't think that you were. I agree with the point you made that maybe doctors who are trying to work might be impeded by a patient who disagrees. But I think that is a much smaller problem since the doctor can quickly be vindicated when the treatment he or she advises works, or the disagreeing patient leaves.

Yes. I lost a mother in law due to that.

She had legit signs of heart disease. Got told repeatedly it was diet. Went out to work and, hard core as she was, powered through a heart attack.

Damage was terminal. She lived a few more years.

Hard core again, she got tired of being zapped back to life, asked them to turn it off. I had to intervene and force it.

She lived another blissful month.

Through the whole thing, it was, "woman, you know nothing" right and left. I basically became full time patient advocate, and wish I was in that role earlier.

> Even the most "annoying" and inquisitive patients will accept this answer

but in the United States, often times they won't accept it and instead will give the physician a low survey score, which ties directly to their financial reimbursement.

This is a big problem.

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2015/04/the-probl...

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