I got sick last year and the nasal congestion created enough pressure to perforate my ear drum. My family doctor didn't see the hole on 2 different occasions and prescribed ear drops you're not supposed to take if you have a perforation. I had hearing loss so I went to an ENT doctor. He finally saw the hole and said most family doctors miss them. Anyway, I ended up having to have surgery to repair the hole but I still have hearing loss and will likely have ringing in my ears the rest of my life.
That is terrible. I had ringing in my ears after a concert for about 2 months. It was an awful experience. I go straight to the ENT if I have ear problems. I want nothing to do with ringing in my ears ever again.
doctors are human. they mess up way more that you would expect. there are so many diseases, conditions, environmental factors, genetic factors... also, you have to think about human error. the patient may not tell the entire story behind their ailment. the doctor may have missed something... if youre interested, read a book called "complications" forgot the authors name. its about the authors (currently a surgeon) experience throughout residency. one night he had to do a trachea tube. instead of making a vertical incision, he made a horizontal one. the patient almost suffocated on her own blood. luckily she survived.
Well, luckily (if you can say that), after 8 months I've kind of adjusted. Most of the time the ringing gets lost in white noise and I don't notice it.
Yeah, that pretty much tells you all you ever need to know about socialized health care. Amusingly, a co-worker told me about this story as I was walking in this morning, before I ever saw this thread or anything. He told the story, and my first question was 'What country was this?' 'England.' he replied. 'Yep, no surprise there.' Anybody who wants to bring that worthless crap system here needs first to be placed under its care for a couple of years - I guarantee they will change their minds. Seriously, if there was a book entitled 'Great Success Stories of Socialized Medicine', it would be smaller than a postage stamp.
Every other western industrialized country has universal healthcare and they spend much less per capita, cover everyone and have much health outcomes than the US. So basically you don't know what the hell you're talking about.
I don't see what having socialized health care has to do with a doctor making a mistake. How is an individual's mistake a reflection of the system? The same kind of mistakes happen in America all the time. I'm not saying socialized health care is better, but using this story as an example of why it's bad is just stupid.
It's not 'a' doctor - how many times do you think those parents took that boy to specialists and doctors over the 9 YEARS he was having the deafness problem? Yes that IS an indictment of the entire system, because it breeds apathy and incompetence. And I never said the kind we have here is perfect, but it sure as hell is better than what they have in England and Canada.
My 3 year old niece was crying like crazy, had a 102 fever and said her tummy hurt. My sis took her to the doc right away. The doc said it was probably just the stomach virus that was lingering from a week ago. He prescribed antibiotics. But it didn't explain the fever so my sis took her to another doc who said it was prob just gas. Then she went to Mem Hermann NW. She asked the doc to X-Ray her appendix. He sent my niece in for X-Rays but only of the stomach and kidneys. They said same thing "just gas". So my sis goes to Texas Children's and finds out her appendix had burst and was leaking for a while. She could have DIED. My poor baby. She had to have it drained, but the docs didn't want to remove it yet because they said it was so infected that it was too risky. She's gonna be in the hospital for another week and when she gets out she has to have a little bag attached that holds the fluid from the appendix and a thing in her arm so my sis can give her injections. It happens everywhere.
