[missinglugnut]

My dad got bit by a tick, came down with a high fever, but tested negative for Lyme so the doctor wouldn't prescribe antibiotics after two appointments with worsening symptoms.

He was hospitalized when he was too sick to walk and then an infectious disease specialist put him on antibiotics, and he got better in a few days, minus some permanent nerve damage in his face.

It's amazing how confident some doctors can be when they haven't got a fucking clue. The more I read about high false positive rates and non-lyme tick-borne bacteria the more mad I get about what happened.

[amatecha]

Yeah, a family member and I had to basically throw studies at a doctor to get him to agree to prescribe a medicine he insisted "doesn't work" (even despite studies clearly showing it does, like indisputably). Even after that he still said something like "sure, whatever, if you want to try it you can", all dismissively as if we're stupid and wasting our time. Oh, and then he prescribed an amount that would never work. We still wonder if he sabotaged it on purpose. Had to go back and get it re-prescribed at the actually-correct amount. The medication worked, and we avoided a completely unnecessary surgery. I have so, so many stories like this.

[StrangeDoctor]

That’s an awful thing to have gone through, but they are sometimes in a lose-lose-lose situation wrt insurance(s)-best practices-community concerns.

Maybe the patient’s insurance requires certain conditions to be met. Depending on the drug even expressing you’d be ok paying out of pocket can be dicey.

Maybe their malpractice insurance has some conditions based on actions of this doctor or not even this doctor but their insurance pool.

Maybe the hospital, state, school they are at or went to has procedures that just weren’t met for whatever reason. If you are dead set on getting or trying a particular treatment I have found it useful to know what these are. This can backfire spectacularly though if they suspect they’re being played. (Which is an additional related meta game).

And then there are societal/community issues. We aren’t in the time of just using antibiotics whenever something comes up as suspect. We are running out of effective antibiotics for some strains. Having had a resistant bacterial infection I wish people had had more restraint.

Learning to play the medical game or even realizing there is one is extremely upsetting. Doubly so when dealing with sudden life altering conditions. I got mad at it too. But that also didn’t help me, until I realized it’s just a big system like any other.