[trs80]

The scary truth about doctors is they frequently misdiagnose. When I was healthy each diagnosis was pretty accurate "you're fine". Then I had a real catastrophe and was mistreated by the medical community. Till this day I suffer and I'm still not content with their diagnosis. Don't put too much faith in them to save you.

[jcadam]

Develop a chronic illness and you will quickly lose faith in modern medicine.

Especially if you have good insurance, you'll get to experience getting passed around from specialist to specialist who will take great joy in milking you and your insurance company for unnecessary and pointless tests.

[commandlinefan]

Well, the old quote "never attribute to malice what can equally be explained by stupidity" may, while sort of flippant in this case, be appropriate. You say that the doctors "take great joy in milking you" and while it's possible that that's what's going on (malice) I think it's a lot more believable that they're honestly just having trouble figuring out what's wrong with you ('stupidity' for lack of a more complimentary term), and have to exhaust all the possibilities. I guess I'm just sort of sensitive to those sorts of accusations because I've been working as a computer programmer my whole life and am used to, when I need to do some actual research to diagnose a problem, being myself accused of "dragging my feet" for some inexplicable reason - as if I did, in fact, know immediately off the top of my head exactly how to fix the problem at hand, but was for some reason refusing to provide it.

[walshemj]

Why once a chronic illness is diagnosed there is an accepted way of treating it - this is from my experience in the UK.

[conanbatt]

Healthcare produces a mental model on patients that is not how medicine is practiced.

Doing tests is not only economically costly, its also costly in terms of health, so ordering unnecessary tests is in detriment to health. There are also false positives. So tests without symptoms should not be performed. But that also means you dont find things pre-emptively.

For example, you are worried that your fatigue is due to a brain tumor (google surely told you that), so you ask your doctor to do an MRI to rule it out. MRI comes in negative. But the MRI radiation gave you cancer, because it does (in a very small amount of people), as well as gave you very expensive bill for it, because MRI are expensive everywhere, not only in the US.

[philipkglass]

For example, you are worried that your fatigue is due to a brain tumor (google surely told you that), so you ask your doctor to do an MRI to rule it out. MRI comes in negative. But the MRI radiation gave you cancer, because it does (in a very small amount of people), as well as gave you very expensive bill for it, because MRI are expensive everywhere, not only in the US.

Good example, except you're thinking of a CT scan, not MRI. CT scan uses x-rays. MRI uses no ionizing radiation.

[conanbatt]

Sorry! Thanks for the correction.

[tathougies]

Well... as an anecdote, I was worried my shortness of breath, numbness, inability to perform endurance sports, and anemia was due to thalassemia -- the most common genetic polymorphism worldwide, and especially prevalent in those of indian ancestry. I asked a doctor to test and told them my symptoms. Instead of being offered a relatively cheap blood test, i was sent for an EKG, told to take extra iron (very very dangerous for those of us with thalassemia), and sent to a cardiologist for a cardiac workup.

I ended up seeing a 'naturopath' and asked for the test and I have both alpha thalassemia minor and beta thalassemia minor, which explains all my symptoms.

As another anecdote, I went to a physical exam with no complaints. The doctor palpated my testicles and said I was fine. About 10 hours later, I get a call saying I have testicular cancer and need an ultrasound, which I did the next day. My testicles are fine; to this day, I have no idea why I was sent for this test.

[viraptor]

> So tests without symptoms should not be performed. But that also means you dont find things pre-emptively.

That's not entirely true. It's accepted you get periodic screening for many issues. (breast cancer, pap smear are probably the most common) Then there are tests you can easily request without any symptoms. (STI and allergy tests for example)

> But the MRI radiation gave you cancer

There's no MRI radiation. That's not how it works.

[conanbatt]

A broad generalization, it depends on the test. I was trying merely to make a point that the intuitive model (you want to know if you are sick, you do a test and you get a result) is not how medicine works.

I mixed up CT Scan with MRI, corrected in another comment.

[viraptor]

> Don't put too much faith in them to save you.

Is that really the best lesson here? Tests have known false positive and false negative ratios. That's why for some things you get immediately retested if the first result is positive. People cannot know/remember everything, so there will be always done room for error. But if you want to get better, you've really got only the choice to trust a doctor, or learn enough medicine to help yourself (still can't get access to drugs this way).

I hope nobody skips a trip to the doctor just because they think it may fail.

[dragonwriter]

> But if you want to get better, you've really got only the choice to trust a doctor, or learn enough medicine to help yourself (still can't get access to drugs this way).

The latter method also sucks when surgical intervention is necessary.

[Florin_Andrei]

Don't cross that bridge, the engineer who designed it may have made a mistake in their calculations. Stay home, don't go anywhere.

[hycaria]

Not everything and everyone can be diagnosed and treated.