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Comment by draven | Hacker News Reader

> Sam’s girlfriend, theorized that in the hospital Sam didn’t want to be a bother and didn’t advocate for himself

I'm like that and it sucks, I now bring my wife to medical appointments so she can complain for me while I downplay everything.

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If there is anything I've learned in my country (with national health care) where it's common for doctors to ignore you and say it's nothing, is to be overly pushy and even rude. It could be nothing, but a lot of time instincts are correct, and it's a mild embarrassment if you are making a fuss over nothing, but could be a life or death situation. And you could argue that everyone behaving like this is making it worse, and that might be right. But I remember multiple national headlines in recent years where little kids died of pneumonia after being sent home because they ruled out infection, sometimes even after parents already brought the kid back for the second or third time to the hospital after their condition wasn't improving. I know I'm not making chances even if it means getting a second opinion or driving to a different town to a different hospital, sometimes it's better to take things into your own hands than be complacent and rely solely on the medical system doing the right thing.

The "there's someone here who'll still be alive to be deposed and/or testify if we fuck up" factor really gets them to be serious.

Especially if the second person peppers their speech with correctly used medical terms.

My son almost died in the first 24 hours of life. I said, "There's something wrong. There's something wrong." multiple times and the nurses finally told me, "YOU NEED TO CHILL OUT." I did chill out....

Next morning the pediatrician did his rounds, checked on my son, and immediately started speaking Latin, to go over our heads while rushing around and getting equipment to clear his lungs of amniotic fluid.

Reminds me of what my first engineering boss told me -- "When the people on the line say there is a problem. There is a problem."

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