My Medical Misadventures

There are times when the patient is right and the doctor is wrong. Once, my mother insisted that she had a fishbone stuck in her throat after a seafood dinner. After waiting for hours in the local emergency room, an intern examined her, saw nothing, and sent her home. My mom was still convinced that the fishbone was there. My dad and I sided with the doctor and thought that she was being a bit of a hypochondriac. After a restless night spent enduring excruciating pain every time she swallowed, my mom headed back to the emergency room in the morning. This time, the attending doctor immediately spotted the fishbone, showed it to the intern who'd missed it the night before, and booked my mom for surgery.

My best friend has an even more dramatic story. "Alice" had a sinus infection when she was 16 and underwent three weeks of antibiotic treatment. Although the infection went away, Alice developed a new illness that brought about intense vomiting and diarrhea. Her family doctor thought it was the flu, and recommended that she stop eating for a few days. After three days without food, Alice was still vomiting every time she drank water, and insisted on going to the hospital for tests. Those tests revealed that she had Clostridium Difficile colitis (CDC), a serious illness caused when normal gut flora is eradicated by antibiotic treatment, and C. difficile bacteria become overabundant and toxic. However, Alice's family doctor did not read the test results, and Alice continued to deteriorate at home. After two weeks of illness and seven days without food, Alice was unable to walk and had to visit her doctor in a wheelchair. Her doctor refused to admit her to hospital until Alice stared him down and said that she was going to die unless she received treatment. Although Alice still didn't know what illness she had, she was not exaggerating. By the time Alice was admitted, the CDC had progressed so far that she only had a 50% chance of survival. Luckily, Alice made a full recovery, but she needed two rounds of antibiotics, nine days of IV drips, and physical therapy to help her recover from the weakness caused by her illness.

I'm grateful to be young, fit, and generally free of health complaints. However, I've also undergone a few medical misadventures of my own …

Dental Hygiene

During my first year of university, I decided to act like a responsible adult, so I went for my first dental cleaning. The cleaning, which took place at two o'clock on a Friday afternoon, was rather painful (but what cleaning isn't?), and left my gums bleeding. Since I hadn't been receiving regular dental care, the hygienist assured me that the bleeding was normal.

I went back to my residence, hung out with my friends, and attended a poetry reading. Since my gums continued to bleed throughout the evening, I carried a water bottle with me and made frequent trips to the bathroom to rinse out my mouth. Eight hours later, the bleeding showed no sign of stopping. I wasn't in any pain, but I was starting to worry. I decided to play it safe, and headed to the emergency room at 10pm with two friends by my side. After a few hours spent wondering if this was really the best use of a Friday night, I was examined by a friendly, tired doctor. He assured me that the bleeding wasn't serious and should stop on its own, and sent me home with saline water syringes and plenty of surgical gauze. I went to sleep reassured, and the bleeding finally stopped on the following day.

"You must have been cursing my name all night," my hygienist said when I told her about the incident.

"No, not at all," I fibbed.

I continued to see the same hygienist over the next two years, and my gums continued to bleed after each session – but, thankfully, never as spectacularly as the first time.

Then one year, I visited a different dental clinic while spending Christmas with my parents, and the experience was a revelation. My cleaning was virtually painless, there was no bleeding at all, and the hygienist even told me that my gums looked "very pink and healthy." I finally realized that I needed a hygienist with a gentler touch, and switched clinics as soon as I returned to university.

Oral Surgery

My second year of university brought along my first experience with orthodontics. Before my braces could go on, two premolars and an incisor had to be removed to create more space. I decided to have my wisdom teeth removed at the same time, and made an appointment to have seven teeth extracted right before spring break. The operation went well, but only six teeth came out – it turned out that one "wisdom tooth" was actually a part of my jawbone. Despite this mistake, I must say that my oral surgeon did an amazing job. I had a speedy recovery and didn't require a single painkiller. Like the tooth fairy working in reverse, I even received a refund for my nonexistent wisdom tooth.

General Medicine

In my third year of university, I moved off campus and into a basement apartment with a friend. Although we were both reasonably clean and tidy, our subterranean dwelling inevitably attracted some critters like spiders and predatory centipedes. But during the winter, a mysterious pest began invading our beds, and left my roommate and me with tiny bites all over our bodies. We spent hours at the Laundromat, washing all our bedding in hot water and bleach, but the bugs and the bites kept coming back.

"It might be scabies," the doctor at the student clinic said doubtfully.

"I haven't been having sex or doing anything else that might give me scabies," I answered.

After a few more minutes, the doctor agreed with me that it was very unlikely that I had scabies. However, he couldn't find another explanation for my symptoms, and gave me a prescription for a topical scabies medication.

I bought the medication with some misgivings, then returned it four hours later. I'd done my research, was almost certain that I didn't have scabies, and didn't want to risk any side effects from medication I didn't need. Besides, I was a poor university student who could really use the $15 to buy food.

So what were our mysterious bed pests? My roommate was a botany student and a resourceful woman, and tried to identify the bugs herself. She caught a few of the pests using masking tape, and we noted that they were red and about the size of a period. My roommate then dissected the bugs under the microscope at her lab, and consulted several identification manuals. The closest match she found was a mite indigenous to Eurasia and known to infect chickens.

"Huh?" pretty much summed up both of our reactions. Since there are many different species of mites, and it can be difficult to tell one from the other, we figured our pests must be a relative of the Eurasian poultry mite with a taste for undergrads.

Although eventually the mites decided to leave on their own, we put the problem behind us for good by moving out of that basement apartment.

Optometry

I've been wearing glasses since age 11, so eye exams, glasses, and contact lenses are a familiar bi-annual routine. Last May, I visited the optometrist that I'd been seeing for six years, got a new prescription, a new pair of glasses – and a major headache. My new glasses literally made my head hurt and occasionally distorted my depth perception. After three days of squinting at objects with first one eye and then the other, I realized that the glasses were giving me much better vision in my left eye than my right.

"The astigmatism in your right eye has changed," my optometrist pronounced as he handed me a second prescription. I was highly doubtful that my eyeball had changed shape within the space of a week, and thought it more likely that my optometrist had made me a mistake. However, I kept this thought to myself, and went off to get my right lens replaced. My second prescription was a big improvement over the first. However, my eyes felt fatigued after wearing the glasses for a few hours, and minor headaches continued to crop up. I was reluctant to visit my optometrist for a third time. I didn't want to tell him that he'd given me two inaccurate prescriptions, and at the back of my head, there was a little voice asking, "What if you're only imagining these symptoms? What if you're the one who's wrong?"

So I avoided the issue altogether by wearing contact lenses for seven months. At my mother's insistence (and after my supply of contacts ran out), I consulted a different optometrist for a second opinion. He examined me carefully and concluded that the astigmatism on my last prescription was still a little off. The third time was indeed the charm and now I'm back to wearing glasses every day. Unfortunately, my glasses were no longer under warranty, and it cost me an additional $200 to replace the right lens again.

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These anecdotes are not meant to be a catalog of complaints. I've received excellent medical care my entire life, and I have full faith in the healthcare professionals who work to ensure my wellbeing. I've also come to realize that healthcare providers are only human. Working under tight schedules and heavy patient loads, the occasional misdiagnosis or medical mishap may be inevitable. I don't mind if my healthcare providers make a minor mistake, but I will change practitioners if they refuse to acknowledge or correct that mistake.

Of course, much of the responsibility falls on me too. Once I thought I was being a good patient by bowing to my healthcare providers' judgments, even if I disagreed. Now I realize I was doing myself and my healthcare providers a disservice by not speaking up. Yes, the professionals have a lot more medical education and experience than I do, and they are far more likely to be right, but there are occasions when I'm the one who knows my body best.

Perhaps the medical world will be a better place when healthcare professionals are not under constant pressure to be infallible, and patients have the confidence to say, "Could you please take a second look?"

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