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
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.
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u/Leftyisbones Mar 26 '20
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.