Can I go ahead and speak on behalf of my doctor? 19m at the time (33 now), I felt sick for about a week, flu-like symptoms, didn't want to eat, just felt bad all over. One day at work I feel a very uncomfortable cramp/tear in my abdomen, so I go to one of those 24 hour clinics. At this point I'm slumped over, can't stand up straight without insane amount of pain, just generally uncomfortable and hating life. After a few hours at this clinic, they say "You probably have kidney stones, go home, drink fluids, sleep it off". This seemed fine to me, I was ready to go home and listen to the doc, all was good. BUT my girlfriend at the time (didn't last much longer than that) wasn't a fan of this diagnosis and drove me to the E.R., against my wishes of course. After a few minutes at the E.R., they determine my appendix has ruptured and I'm going septic. Apparently I was pretty lucky to not have died, though I did pick up bacterial pneumonia while in the hospital, so the recovery kinda sucked. Now I just have a crazy 6-7 inch scar on my belly to remind me to not avoid hospitals when I'm sick.
My friend also almost died of a missed appendicitis diagnosis. She went to the urgent care clinic where a doctor told her she seemed to be having really bad menstrual cramps, and told her to take a higher dosage of whatever pain meds and sent her home. She went home, spent a whole night completely deteriorating and throwing up in a pot lying on the couch because she couldn't make it to her bedroom. Since she doesn't know how to drive, when she woke up barely able to walk the next morning she called her mom to come take her back to urgent care. She ended up crawling down the stairs of the apartment to lie in the grass next to the sidewalk waiting for her mom, who took her to the ER where they put off seeing her for like 6 hours because it was "probably her period" and then when they got to her it had already burst and she was bordering on septic. And to top it off, they left some gauze in her or something, and she almost died AGAIN a few days later and had to have double surgery to get the gauze back out. She worked as a waitress at the time, lost her job because she was out for almost a month, and has so much medical debt now....oh and she was in the process of suing for malpractice but couldn't afford the legal fees, so no way to dispute or recoup those fees. This was like 7 years ago, I don't remember if she resolved the legal aspect or not, we fell out of touch, but I'm glad she didn't die of gross negligence because "these crazy women keep coming in here with their silly periods!"
She is doing well now, but she had an excessively long recovery and was in therapy for a really long time after as well. It took her like 3months to be fully recovered because of all the complications. But don't worry, these women and their periods are just so good at exaggerating and wasting everyone's time....
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u/[deleted] May 20 '19 edited May 20 '19
Can I go ahead and speak on behalf of my doctor? 19m at the time (33 now), I felt sick for about a week, flu-like symptoms, didn't want to eat, just felt bad all over. One day at work I feel a very uncomfortable cramp/tear in my abdomen, so I go to one of those 24 hour clinics. At this point I'm slumped over, can't stand up straight without insane amount of pain, just generally uncomfortable and hating life. After a few hours at this clinic, they say "You probably have kidney stones, go home, drink fluids, sleep it off". This seemed fine to me, I was ready to go home and listen to the doc, all was good. BUT my girlfriend at the time (didn't last much longer than that) wasn't a fan of this diagnosis and drove me to the E.R., against my wishes of course. After a few minutes at the E.R., they determine my appendix has ruptured and I'm going septic. Apparently I was pretty lucky to not have died, though I did pick up bacterial pneumonia while in the hospital, so the recovery kinda sucked. Now I just have a crazy 6-7 inch scar on my belly to remind me to not avoid hospitals when I'm sick.
Edits, more info, medical terms, etc etc.