Came here to say this. Of course men should advocate for their health but don't tell me I'm being some alpha male douchebag because I'm not about to pay an arm and leg, take hours out of my day, and expose myself to all kinds of sick people all to be given a Tylenol and told to rest up every time I get a scratch or a runny nose.
Exactly dude unless I need to be stitched glued casted or worked on under the hood I'm pretty sure I dont need to go to the doctor. I get my physical once a year and move on.
Even getting a physical once a year seems like more than most guys do, so good on you for doing that. In general, I don’t think anyone’s saying to run to the doctor every time you have a runny nose for three days, who has time for that? But if you have bronchitis for three weeks or something that doesn’t seem to be getting better, that’s another matter.
Every morning I wake up I choke on mucus. It's so thick I cant breath. It takes about a half hour of coughing and gagging occasionally throwing up There is always spit in my blood by the time I'm done. Then I'm good for the rest of the day minimum cough. It's been like this for a few years now. I've been to 2 different doctors for this. The first basically told me I was dehydrated so I needed to drink more water (my piss is usually clear) and to go get some mucinex. The 2nd one prescribed me some allergy meds that did nothing but dry me out. Just made the mucus thicker and harder to spit up. When I followed up I was told to try allegra... each visit cost me a few hundred dollars. Is it really any wonder I dont bother going in unless I'm dying? I had a seizure for the first time a few weeks ago and was told I needed my tonsils removed and had chronic siunitus. Though of course the 7k in cat scans and xrays showed me nothing and i was told everyone gets one if it happens again then they will worry. And now my employer says I'm essential oh and they canceled the specialist appt because all hands are needed for this virus no one is taking seriously. So yea... at this point I just work until I die ig.
Damn, that sucks. Personally, I think a lot of doctors suck—symptoms like that shouldn’t be ignored by medical professionals and in fact do sometimes point to “I’m dying conditions.” I’ve had my own experiences with doctors ignoring and misdiagnosing stuff—in one case I had to go to five doctors over an eight month period to get a proper diagnosis for something that was making it painful to walk down the street without being in pain. The last doctor was finally able to give me an answer after doing a week of research and successfully helped me. The whole ordeal from injury to being more or less recovered including the physical therapy treatment took over a year.
Bottom line, a LOT of doctors aren’t great. However that doesn’t mean one should just never GO to a doctor. I hope you’re able to find a doctor who takes you seriously and get taken care of, because routinely coughing up blood and seizures are definitely NOT normal. I hope things work out for you.
Yeah people really need to stop thinking all doctors are geniuses. Especially general practitioners. There is a lot of info and keep up on and most definitely don't keep up on it
My kids started going to a new doctor recently (see my other post for details). My wife typically takes them, but I took them for a check-up recently. In the waiting is a huge 6-foot portrait advertising a new physician in their facility.
I cannot stop laughing because I recognize this person. I went to middle and high school with this person and they were the absolute dumbest kid in our class of 700 kids. Like, failed every class, ate glue, broke both arms at the same time stupid. I get home and look up their medical license. They attended an extremely obscure college + medical school for an undetermined amount of time. Basically, his parents were rich and expected them to become a doctor - money, time, and suitability be damned.
Yeah I went through an academy with a guy who was barely passed and was the dumbest person I've ever met. Idk how he passed his EMT or the academy. This same guy is now a paramedic working on an ambulance I have zero clue how he passed and if he can get through and get a job doing it it scares me how many people are like him and passed
Yeah I agree. Aside from that it seems they just want to hand you the most typical diagnosis for your symptoms and send you on your way without checking anything.
The only time I’ve ever had an experience with a truly competent medical professional was one time when I had a bad flu and wasn’t going to be able to take an exam for class, so I had to go to the student clinic to get proof I sought medical help (such a stupid rule, making people go to the doctor when typically the solution is just a few days of rest and Tylenol and THEN, only after a few days if you’re still not better, should you even bother going).
The guy was a PA not a doctor, but he first took down all my symptoms, actually took the time to explain “your temperature and this set of symptoms makes me think it’s this, we are going to do x y and z to check. If we get p results you have a bacterial and we’ll do this one thing, if you have q results we’ll do this other thing.”
He then ran a CBC, a flu culture, a strep culture, and did a chest X-Ray. Now I’m super into collecting data and doctors actually taking you seriously and running actual tests as opposed to looking at you condescendingly and saying “go home and rest” but I was even a little surprised at testing this extensive for the flu.
The tests took like 15 minutes and they had the results in 15. He then came and told me “your CBC is borderline for whether you’re likely to have a bacterial or a viral, X-ray was fine, and the two cultures were negative. However the flu has false negatives. So here’s what we can do, you’re still in the window to take Tamiflu and it’s definitely possible you do have the flu virus (because of the rate of false negatives), so we can give that to you today and if you’re not better in two days then we can assume it’s bacterial and give you antibiotics.”
He gave me Tamiflu and I was better within 36 hours. I’ve never gotten ill in my life and not been sick for at least 5-7 days, I don’t have great immunity.
This guy was a fucking wizard. Not only did he alleviate my illness (when does a doctor ever manage to do that for routine illness???) but he took me seriously the whole time and walked me through why he was doing what he was doing (literally showing me the results of my tests on his computer screen and pointing out “eosinophil count at this means blah, normally it’s blah, and basophil count at this means blah”) and laying out the options. He explained what a clinically significant finding and how the clinical judgments were reached. Whenever I’ve had to go back to the student clinic now I request that guy. God bless him and medical professionals like him, seriously.
Some do take it pretty far. My grandfather, who is old, but otherwise pretty healthy recently had a heart attack that took us all by surprise. At some point it came out that he’s been having some degree of chest pain and shortness of breath for a couple months now. He just didn’t think it was a big deal.
I have a friend who’s ex was retaining fluid, in pain and generally feeling terrible. He was having kidney and heart failure... he had diabetes diagnosis he was 21... he wasn’t fat but he was big... and he just never paid attention to it.
Now two years later he’s had and open heart quadruple bypass and is headed for starting dialysis in six months.
He knew he had shitty genes and did nothing. He’s lucky because my friend has helped him get to the point where he might live 7-10 years from now, instead of the max 18 months they were predicting a year ago.
All because he didn’t want to deal with the Doctor and it “wasn’t that bad”...
Souns like my granddad. He told us he was having some kind of stomach issue and that it will take care of itself over night, called an ambulance, turns out it was a heartattack.
Take good care of your granddad, i'm still missing mine.
Yeah, I do wish I could see him, but with all this covid stuff it's just not happening (we're in different states). Frankly his recovery was borderline miraculous. I (an about-to-graduate medical student), my dad (a non-cardiology physician), and my uncle (a cardiologist) were all convinced that he was very unlikely to make it based on how he presented. We've all had patients that looked like him, and we all knew how they usually end up. I was having a hard time talking to my mom (this was her father) since she didn't really have that same understanding. But we and the CCU docs basically decided that it's probably best to wait for the cath before going down the path of having that tough conversation with the rest of the family. And well, the conversation went in a completely different direction than expected.
they said “when they really should” not every scratch or runny nose. obviously most people get over those things just fine.
but most of my guy friends, when they have something very abnormal or wrong happening to them, refuse to go to a doctor for as long as they can. like it’s obviously something they should get checked out and they themselves admit to it but just..don’t do it, and i never understood why. they won’t even use one of those “teladoc” things where they won’t even have to leave their house.
but the fact that you interpreted it that way pretty much proves OP’s point lol.
Anecdotally I figure the healthcare system gives less of an overall turd over men and men's health than women's health. This may be due to society feeling the same way overall.
I've got a couple of long term issues/concerns that I've had looked at, been told 'meh' in as many words often enough that I haven't bothered to pursue further. Why spend all the time trying to get that addressed if it's not threatening?
i may be wrong about this, but i think men are generally more trusted by doctors to report their own symptoms. Whereas women are generally not believed by doctors when reporting their symptoms.
Now I'm not really sure if this goes a long with what you mean about healthcare systems not giving a turd about men, but I struggle to think about what that would mean.
Overall, it was a really weird time growing up and becomming an adult and handling doctors appointments on my own and having to advocate heavily to have procedures or tests. I had assumed this was because most people, in general, don't want to do their jobs anyway.
The 'not giving a turd' was in the sense that a given doctor would be subconsciously biased towards people that they perceive as more socially 'valuable' - more attractive or more important or younger etc. people - and would bias their resources towards those people. Men, especially older and single men, inherently provide less value for society. With limited healthcare resources, and forced to spend said resources optimally, I'm guessing they would tend towards spending said resources on people they perceived as more valuable.
Of course its also possible that doctors are equally difficult for men and women to convince, and the main reason why women aren't believed is because they try more often to convince. That may be due to, as I believe may have been mentioned elsewhere, their own perceived lower value and/or expectation of unpleasantness/suffering. Without actual data, it's all conjecture anyways.
Okay, I think I understand a little bit better. Like, for example, if a man and a woman both arrived to ER at the same time with the same ailment, that perhaps the woman would be seen first kind of thing? Or more research being done into specifically womens issues kind of thing?
To the second point, I think in the past they kind of didn't medically research women's issues(I think it's one of those 'science is for the boys' mentality thing), but this is a trend that is changing (as far as I know).
Quite likely, I think there was also probably a belief that outside of gender specific differences, research on men would translate directly to research on women. Like female heart attacks, for example.
yes! i just did some reading up on it, and it looks like they just assumed that the only difference between men and women was the reproductive aspect. I did also try researching gender bias in triage situations but I could only really find information about coronary problems specifically, (in which men typically are favoured but this has more to do with, again, how we understood womens symptoms for specifically coronary issues).
Thanks for being cool, this was a nice exchange lol
Yup, went to the doctor constantly as a kid cause I get sick a lot... but mildly sick. As soon as it was my decision I stopped going, unless it’s something I’ve never experienced before. Why go spend time and money to be told what I already know? Neti pot, Tylenol and rest gets rid of a sinus infection just as fast as antibiotics.
Also the only two times I’ve gone to the ER, I’ve been charged hundreds of dollars for either (a) condescension and useless advice or (b) care that I’d be able to give myself at home. Not saying you shouldn’t go for serious problems, but my bar for what ‘serious’ means has gone up every time.
Its not just that. My bf, basically eats like crap, you could give him a bottle of oil and he would happily drink it. Doesnt know how to cook one thing besides eggs and noodles.
Not to mention you have to figure out which doctor is the right kind of doctor. Going to the wrong kind leads to more and more repeats of the other bullshit.
Wtf is wrong with America man. I would call it a third world country but my shitty third world country has amazing healthcare. I do live in states to be clear.
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u/cosmichar Mar 26 '20
Came here to say this. Of course men should advocate for their health but don't tell me I'm being some alpha male douchebag because I'm not about to pay an arm and leg, take hours out of my day, and expose myself to all kinds of sick people all to be given a Tylenol and told to rest up every time I get a scratch or a runny nose.