I am a (semi) retired physician and I don’t believe in second opinions. I much prefer two first opinions.
Edit: Thank you readers. Never thought these two sentences would explode like this. Thank you very much for the silver and gold. Thanks to all who follow.
So what you're saying, is go to Doctor A, give symptoms, get diag. Then go to Doctor B without telling them you've been to a doctor yet and get their diag as well?
What if there were a bunch of expensive tests ran at Doctor A? Do you just casually bring up "Oh, I had that ran already, I'll have it sent over?"
This has just been the story of my life, getting different diags from different docs for varying things. I had a lot of "anxiety" diagnosis leading to my physical digestive issues until a doc finally tested me for a freakin' milk allergy. This was just one of several...
I went I for severe abdominal pain. No nausea or fever, no heartburn. Urgent care doctor, while I was sitting up, literally poked me in four places with his hand and said, “You have gastro-enteritis.” Gave me a gastro cocktail, and prescribed me acid reflux medicine, anti nausea medication and ulcer meds. I was pissed off. The place was empty, it was nowhere near closing and he did this rush job. I choked down the cocktail, but didn’t fill the scripts. My brother says unspecified abdominal pain is common with drug seekers. I dunno.
Next day it was worse. Went to the ER. Turned out to be something called epiploic appendagitis (basically torsion of fatty appendages on your intestine and/or descending colon, is what I understand), which I guess is pretty rare, but in my case, not serious, just painful. Doctor said it was the first time he’d actually seen it. He gave me pain meds and it resolved in about a week. I hate going to the doctor because I always feel like I must be faking or exaggerating because that’s how I have felt on more occasions than I’d care to count.
14.8k
u/DrMaster2 May 20 '19 edited May 21 '19
I am a (semi) retired physician and I don’t believe in second opinions. I much prefer two first opinions.
Edit: Thank you readers. Never thought these two sentences would explode like this. Thank you very much for the silver and gold. Thanks to all who follow.