I’m raging today. I thought the medical industry couldn’t let me down any more than they have but they have managed to outdo themselves. People who read my posts may know that I’ve been having bladder issues for some time now. It flares up and down but basically it’s like having cystitis all the time. I can’t sleep at night, have to get up to wee constantly, and always feel like I need to go. I’m finally on the waiting list to see the urologist and have been prescribed several bladder calming meds, none of which have helped.

Well, I was at the GP today about my test results and I got chatting to a retired nurse who happened to be there and she told me that over-treatment with thyroxine (which I’ve been having for years to try and stop my cancer coming back) can have the side effect of an overactive bladder. The same issue I have been seeing doctors for for years, begging for help, is perhaps being caused by my damn cancer treatment and not a single doctor has ever even thought of this, maybe the ignorant twats don’t even know this is a side effect. God, I hate this life! These fuckers told me this treatment has no side effects and already it has given me a stroke, heart issues, multiple food intolerances, perhaps an overactive bladder and a whole lot more.

Oh Russia, please nuke the UK to oblivion, I am sick of this shit!

EDIT: Now they’ve got the hospital lab to redo the test and say there IS an infection after all. But the doctor refused to listen to me about my allergies and prescribed me an antibiotic I’m allergic to. I’m so exhausted by how difficult it is to get medical treatment.

  • peaceandquiet1917@lemmygrad.ml
    1·
    6 days ago

    i can sort of relate. without getting too much into it, despite being from an imperial core country, i grew up in an extremely poor household, and between that and an unknown neurodivergence that wasn’t accommodated, i ended up acting out a lot. ended up getting taken to see a psychiatrist and as a young child i was put on an antipsychotic for the express purpose of “making me easy to control”. to this day i’m still dealing with the metabolic side effects that the drug i was put on can induce, and despite explaining both this and the challenges in eating well while working two full time jobs and running my household on my own, every doctor or adjacent specialist i’ve ever met has just acted as if my health conditions are some sort of moral failure. they don’t consider the social determinants of health at all, and any time you try to explain why you’re engaged in certain patterns of behaviour, it’s simply dismissed. i don’t distrust medicine, but at this point i refuse to see a doctor if it’s something i can treat myself, even if it’s suboptimal - the social conditioning of capitalism on my country’s culture has completely rotted people’s brains, even in medicine, which is completely socialised here. any time i speak to a medical professional, it feels like i’m just being scolded for being poor. it’s not like i chose this life - i just don’t make enough money to have other options.

    • DisabledAceSocialist@lemmygrad.mlOPEnglish
      3·
      5 days ago

      People really do treat being ill or disabled as a moral failure. When I was first diagnosed with cancer people were understanding and sympathetic for a short while, and then as i got sicker and sicker and eventually had to quit work and didn’t go back, they just became judgmental and eventually drifted away and abandoned me. It really annoys me how whenever you meet someone the first question is always “So what do you do?” I would find myself trying to explain my health situation to justify why I wasn’t doing anything work-wise. But I could always see the look in their eyes, I was now considered subhuman and no longer worth talking to. They’d look shocked and judgmental, then their eyes would glaze over and they’d drift away.

  • Bronstein_Tardigrade@lemmygrad.ml
    15·
    9 days ago

    It is the profit driven medical system that should be the true target of our ire. Huge student debt to even become a doctor, medical associations limiting the number of students/graduates per year to ensure those who do graduate gain a huge return on investment, urban areas yielding better returns limiting access to the quantity and quality of medical care for rural patients, governments constantly reducing the budget for healthcare to service debt that they created; the hamster wheel keeps on turning and crushing all of us.

    • boboblaw [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      4·
      9 days ago

      urban areas yielding better returns limiting access to the quantity and quality of medical care for rural patients

      In the US at least, there’s also a disparity between doctors in the inner city (that’ll take your insurance) who treat a high volume of the urban poor, and doctors in the suburbs whose patients are whiter and wealthier.

      One’s way less likely to listen anything you say, and more likely to be infantilising.

      • Bronstein_Tardigrade@lemmygrad.ml
        2·
        8 days ago

        The medicare cuts are shutting down small, rural hospitals and clinics left and right; I’m talking rural and small town US, not suburban. There are now 27 million people with no insurance in the US, therefore, almost zero access to healthcare. The elderly will die younger (probably part of their Social Security reforms), but children will lack care in the early stages of development, guaranteeing a lifetime of medical and mental problems.

  • boboblaw [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
    9·
    9 days ago

    Too many instances of multiple doctors failing to catch something that’d you’d get from googling your basic medical history. Shocking levels of incompetence that lead to so many people suffering for no reason.

  • znsh ☭ @lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    9·
    9 days ago

    I don’t hate doctors/nurses/medical staff in general because I have seen extreme competence in the field, just like with any profession there are fuck ups worthy of gulags.

    I’ve had family members being told they have 6 months to live because they have a cyst on their kidney and then through other means found out that it’s just a kidney stone. To the reverse where they were going to public doctors for months because of leg pain and as soon as they pay a premium at a private clinic do they get a stage 4 bone cancer diagnosis. It’s insane, truly insane. The fact that people’s wellbeing is being exploited and ruined for profit.

    I’m so sorry that you are going through this right now. You truly aren’t alone, the system has completely let people down in most countries.

    • znsh ☭ @lemmygrad.mlEnglish
      7·
      9 days ago

      Oh and just to add, the absolute worse are administration staff not even the medical staff, those people are next level incompetent, rude, lack any empathy or respect.

      • boboblaw [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
        6·
        9 days ago

        I’ve often wondered why that is. There is a general effect in the medical industry that tends to make people numb/calloused, but I assume the magnitude varies. I think management is able to more effectively weaponize the empathy of admin staff against them, just like nurses and EMTs (who in the US are not paid a living wage). The most fucked up combo has to be being paid peanuts and being constantly made to feel responsible for life or death outcomes, while not actually having any decision-making power.

        On top of that, advancement in medical administration seems to depend on being able to act like a sociopath. So you eventually either burn out horribly with nothing to show for it, or you become a monster and make the big bucks.

  • RedLink@lemmygrad.ml
    8·
    8 days ago

    I relate to this immensely, I just recently experienced a similar pain.

    I recently have been trouble with intense pain in my abdomen slightly right of center and went to the ER multiple times thrashing from the pain, could even feel it through morphine. Cat scan showed nothing but my family history has gallstones so they scheduled a gastro doc.

    I’m fuckin pissed at this guy, I was in so much pain I needed to be wheel chaired in because I couldn’t take painkillers before the tests that day and he came in asked me the problem I described it as “pain in my upper stomach area center right” and he tells me my stomach is on my left side and I clarify I meant the belly region below the ribs. He begins poking at several areas and when he hits my ribs i feel intense pain, I almost start crying instantly. He says this is simply a bruised rib, pokes my other organs again and the rib a fucking GAIN. I state the pain this time is too far to the right and before it was more center and he says “I don’t know what you tell you its simply your rib” pokes it twice more and then tells me to take advil and finish the tests scheduled(HIDA and Ultrasound. I mentioned I take oxy for the pain right now and he said “no don’t take painkillers just advil for anti inflammatory” as if it’s no big deal and as if advil is not a mild painkiller and left. When I’m in the HIDA scan they are unable to conduct the test because my gallbladder doesn’t fill (a sign of stones) and he cancels my ultrasound. Fucking for no reason

    The next night I went to the ER and got an ultrasound and its fucking gallstones. fucking asshole is lucky my organ wasn’t infected and I wasn’t willing to listen to him. He could’ve gotten someone seriously injured or killed.

    However doctors here often ignore women and believe they’re being hysterical. I’ve seen it most my life with all my family members.

    I blame it on doctors predominantly being part of upper class families of petite or regular bourgeois and fall for the usual reactionary tendencies. Basically two different things make them think they’re better than you all the time. I trust experts but in this field, and in the imperial core, they’re too often refuse to listen to anything else. The best experts hone on the truth with discussion and collaboration.

    • DisabledAceSocialist@lemmygrad.mlOPEnglish
      3·
      8 days ago

      Sorry you’re experiencing it too. They are always like this. It took them nearly 4 years to diagnose my thyroid cancer because they refused to do any tests, believing I was just a hypochondriac or depressed. The only reason it got diagnosed in the end is because my employer at the time paid for me to go private.

  • LeninZedong@lemmygrad.ml
    6·
    9 days ago

    I am so sorry to hear about your suffering. I honestly dislike doctors too, but I do not want to get into it right now (unless you want me to).

      • LeninZedong@lemmygrad.ml
        2·
        9 days ago

        Well one time, when I was at a doctor’s appointment (not for myself, but I had to get a shot), my doctor was told that I had mental illnesses by my mother (without my permission) and the doctor was like: are you afraid people are going to hurt you? No one is going to hurt you. I just felt very annoyed at both my mother and the doctor because neither felt like they understood mental illnesses (I do not think doctors actually need to understand mental health that well unless they specifically work in the mental health industry). Honestly, I do not want to go to any doctor under capitalism because of healthcare costs.

  • yunah-knowles@lemmygrad.ml
    5·
    9 days ago

    the medical industry has so many shitty sides to it even apart from the human meat grinder of insurance like i’m so sorry this happened ik its been tough but jesus. aw fuck them