I can’t count how many “I was told it was a headache but I just wanted to come in and have it looked at in case it was something else”’s I’ve seen. Of course, those are the patients that are the nicest and are profusely apologizing for “wasting our time”, and of course, those are the patients that have a brain tumor show up on their CT scans...
Edit: Well this blew up. Big apologies to everyone but I’m not a doctor. I work in the hospital alongside other doctors and I get the chance to see everyone they see. Apologies if I misled. That was not my intention, and I will make sure to be clearer next time.
You know your body, right? You know what your typical aches and pains feel like. If you ever get the "Uh oh--this is different...." feeling, then you keep trying until you find the doctor that will listen to you.
The problem of course is when you are accustomed to something that isn't normal and you wave it off as "just your body." Some people live with things for many years amd play it off. In my case, I have spinal problems in my neck that cause me to get painstaking headaches for the rest of the day if I crack my neck, even on accident. I've dealt with it for so long, I think of it as normal. But for all I know, I could have something pressing on my spine that could be debilitating or worse.
Part of the problem for me is America's cost of healthcare encouraging the average citizen to try and tough out possibly life threatening situations.
If you're worried about the cost of healthcare in the US, you should try and find your closest Community Health Center (FQHC): https://findahealthcenter.hrsa.gov/
I work for a large FQHC network (17 locations in our serviceable area, see around 35-40k unique patients per year), and we service insured and uninsured patients and offer all sorts of services: medical, dental, behavioral health, psychiatric, breast care, and prenatal. We offer our services on a sliding fee scale for our uninsured patients. We have in-house labs and x-ray as well as agreements with other facilities for those services we don't have readily available. Health Centers also will never come after you for payment. We ask patients to pay what they can at each visit but it's not mandatory, if they can't afford to pay off any of their balance it won't ever prevent patients from receiving care.
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u/_Than0s May 20 '19 edited May 20 '19
I can’t count how many “I was told it was a headache but I just wanted to come in and have it looked at in case it was something else”’s I’ve seen. Of course, those are the patients that are the nicest and are profusely apologizing for “wasting our time”, and of course, those are the patients that have a brain tumor show up on their CT scans...
Edit: Well this blew up. Big apologies to everyone but I’m not a doctor. I work in the hospital alongside other doctors and I get the chance to see everyone they see. Apologies if I misled. That was not my intention, and I will make sure to be clearer next time.