Doctors Getting thing wrong

Soutra Of course you are right and one doctor's stupidity or understandable mistake doesn't mean that the whole profession fails. In my case, I made the mistake - at the age of 20 and home for the Easter vacation - of suggesting that I had appendicitis as I was vomiting with central abdominal pain that had moved down to right-hand side. I was then diagnosed on the telephone - although he came to see me later the same day - as having indigestion and prescribed some peppermint flavoured antacid. That was Monday. By Thursday I was in severe pain, unable to keep even water down and soiling the bed (tmi) but he said - on the phone again - that it was just the infection working its way through and to ring him again if I hadn't improved over the weekend. The next day was Good Friday and my parents didn't want to disturb this long-standing family GP over the holiday. By Saturday, I was completely listless, cold, wheezing but no longer in pain. He came, rang an ambulance and I was admitted to hospital with a perforated appendix, peritonitis and pleurisy with a temperature so low it wouldn't register on the thermometer.

Some hours of surgery followed during the night because the day had been spent shoving umpteen drips into me in the hope that I would be strong enough to survive it. My parents were told that I had less than a 20% chance of survival. I still can't imagine how they must have felt. I did survive, obviously, and survived more surgery three weeks later and a dose of pneumonia thanks to superb and dedicated surgeons and wonderful nursing care. For some 20 years afterwards, I endured intermittent excruciating acute pain owing to adhesions until emergency surgery solved that problem too - once again, by superb surgeons who were in awe of the fact that I had been a patient of a consultant and registrar (later a consultant himself) who were their heroes.

The whole experience has left me with a certain scepticism about GPs, although I have known some very good ones, and profound gratitude for surgeons.

My ex went to his GP with a burned finger and was given advice for a sore throat!!!

Years ago I was under a particularly obnoxious Consultant for a breast problem. He had pulled and pushed my breast around and decided that I needed an operation for a discharge from my breast. I was in the hospital bed waiting for the pre-med when he came round with his students. 'Expose your left breast Mrs S he bellowed' I did as I was told. He again squeezed, pulled and pushed and found nothing untoward. 'Right he said, what am I supposed to operate on if there is nothing to operate on?' 'I don't know' I replied 'You are the surgeon'. He promptly discharged me saying that it was probably a cyst that had burst and dispersed (which is exactly what my GP had said a month before)

DH was sent home from A&E with a ruptured tendon in his leg. They x-rayed him but didn't think to rule out a anything else. He got out the car on our return home and promptly collapsed on the drive.
Major surgery followed.

It is too easy to pick out misdisgnoses and somehow "diss" the medical profession as a consequence. Let's face it tcherry if you didn't know you were pregnsnt how on rarth do you expect the doctor to unless you have a pregnancy test?

Yes - I was told that I would probably have great difficulty conceiving so we threw away the pills - 9 months later DD1 arrived. And from thereon in, we only had to smile at each other and - bingo!

A GP at my surgery misdiagnosed himself. He asked one of his receptionists to nip to chemist at lunch time to get him something fir heartburn. By the time she returned after her lunch break he had been whisked away in an ambulance suffering a heart attack.

At least yours had a happy outcome tcherry.

Yes, and it made me very ill - diagnosed Myasthenia Gravis , when I have Mitochondrial Myopathy - In Southampton Hospital

Yes and I very nearly died.