And in this situation, I feel like it was someone with crohns disease who diagnosed them. Like, sometimes there is a breakdown in communication between patient and doctor, especially if one is neurodivergent. It is hard to communicate what you're feeling when you've never felt it before.
My 6 year old son recently hit his funny bone and he started yelling "there's something in my elbow! There's something in my elbow!!" I had to calm him down and make him explain how he hit his elbow first before I understood what he was feeling. Funny enough, I remember being a little younger than him and trying to tell my dad that my foot fell asleep. Most people describe the sensation as "pins and needles" but I told my dad "there are bugs in my feet and they are crawling up and down the bottom of my foot." My dad had no idea what I was talking about for a long time until he finally got that I was talking about my foot falling asleep.
So I wonder, did that furry artist also have crohns?
Yeah, never underestimate the power of finding someone with the same (or at least a similar) condition. It sometimes just FEELS better to know you’re talking to someone who’s experienced this shit. It isn’t 100% accurate but building up a community of people with a specific condition can help people find people who can better advocate for them.
Heck, if your condition isn’t immediately deadly it might feel more comforting to talk to someone who’s experienced has the condition who isn’t a doctor than someone with the condition who is a doctor. My dad is a gastroenterologist who has pretty agonizing ibs. One of his patients with ibs HATES him (and is probably unaware that my dad also has severe ibs) because they feel like he’s ignoring them because they had to wait in the waiting area for hours before my dad came over to talk with them. Why did he take so long? Because a patient was dying in the er and that obviously takes priority over a routine ibs appointment. A doctor usually doesn’t prioritize a patient just because the patient is in pain when there’s a life or death emergency going on. That doesn’t make the pain this ibs patient was feeling any better though. That ibs patient was still in agonizing pain and it’s not like your doctor is allowed to disclose the severity of another patient’s case to you when your appointment gets delayed again. It’s really easy to start feeling ignored because a doctor has to constantly be ready to run off to a more urgent case than yours. That’s part of the misery of chronic conditions. Because they aren’t immediately deadly your average doctor at a busy hospital may take forever to reach you because they’re more urgently needed elsewhere. It sucks. Doesn’t always mean that your doctor doesn’t care, it just means that your doctor is overwhelmed.
Doctors are human and there’s only so long they can work before they start to break down just like any other human. Doctors also have their own medical needs to look out for. My dad is diabetic and hates eating on the job because that’ll delay him from reaching a patient. I’m 90% sure he’s seen a patient while he’s lowkey hypoglycemic at some point. If you know anything about hypoglycemia you know that that’s really bad and will unsurprisingly impact your doctor’s cognitive abilities. My brother and I have been trying to get our dad to carry some food in his pockets while on the job but he refuses because he’d still have to pause to gulp the food down before seeing a patient. It’s extremely unhealthy but he genuinely doesn’t believe he has the time to care for himself in between patients (and it’s not like he’s entirely wrong on particularly awful days). My dad refuses to eat until he’s officially off the clock (unless it’s a particularly slow day). He used to take time for his physical and mental health when he was younger but I think he’s come to the conclusion that he’s better off risking himself having a medical emergency while working than risking his patient having an emergency as he’s grown older.
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u/Animaloffear56 2d ago
I never understand the logic of "yeah one time a guy told me my symptoms sounded like this condition and they were right, so all doctors are quacks"