I totally understand your experience. What is going on here is that doctors are being trained to treat us as unreliable reporters of what is going on inside our own bodies. We may not use proper medical terms to describe it, but we usually have a clue when we're really sick.
The other problem is this moral panic that every person who reports pain, even if they walk into an Emergency Room with an ax embedded in their skull, is just a pain-seeking troublemaker.
Every time I've ever reported pain to a doctor and they did some sort of imaging, they found something wrong. Of course before I saw the imaging, I wouldn't have known that my pancreas looks like it has a conjoined twin, but I consistently accurately described the characteristic pain path and intensity. Oh, and the pain that sent me seeking help hit me out of a sound sleep. The GI doctor who confirmed my diagnosis said pain that wakes someone from a sound sleep is a serious sign.
The other thing is they get taught the old saying, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." In other words, think of the common problem first. That probably held in the 1800s, when all of a doctor patients might live in one small area. But today's MDs have huge numbers of patients. A doctor these days who doesn't run into a zebra now and then would be a zebra.
With me, if there were two options to explain my symptoms, one the "normal" one and the other super rare and weird, I always had the weird one. Every time.
please let me know how/what practical things would help further your advocacy work.
I totally understand your experience. What is going on here is that doctors are being trained to treat us as unreliable reporters of what is going on inside our own bodies. We may not use proper medical terms to describe it, but we usually have a clue when we're really sick.
The other problem is this moral panic that every person who reports pain, even if they walk into an Emergency Room with an ax embedded in their skull, is just a pain-seeking troublemaker.
Every time I've ever reported pain to a doctor and they did some sort of imaging, they found something wrong. Of course before I saw the imaging, I wouldn't have known that my pancreas looks like it has a conjoined twin, but I consistently accurately described the characteristic pain path and intensity. Oh, and the pain that sent me seeking help hit me out of a sound sleep. The GI doctor who confirmed my diagnosis said pain that wakes someone from a sound sleep is a serious sign.
The other thing is they get taught the old saying, "When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras." In other words, think of the common problem first. That probably held in the 1800s, when all of a doctor patients might live in one small area. But today's MDs have huge numbers of patients. A doctor these days who doesn't run into a zebra now and then would be a zebra.
With me, if there were two options to explain my symptoms, one the "normal" one and the other super rare and weird, I always had the weird one. Every time.