My doctor called me a skunk!

posted July 12th, 2020 at 9:38 AM

I was in the hospital and couldn't shower because the shower was broken. I was really embarrassed because I had to see a specialist, but the nurse said I was ok. The doctor said my drop attack was from fear, like playing possum, but in my case more of a skunk. I had him repeat it, because I couldn't believe he would be so crass. So he said it again. I think he thought it was funny. WTF. The irony is, he says my serious neurological symptoms (they had diagnosed and treated me for Parkinson's for 2 years previously) are from "emotional distress". It's pretty distressing, not to mention humiliating, to be called a skunk, so I don't know how he thought that was helpful....

5 Comments

Please don't

Jul 12, 2020 at 12:22pm

cancel culture him for that though. It's not that bad.

We have...

Jul 12, 2020 at 12:54pm

... a serious crisis in the West with incompetent physicians. If it doesn't have a very specific lab test, they are likely to just call it something for which they can prescribe a psychiatric drug. I had an injury that would not heal, just wouldn't. I was told "depression can cause pain." I was offered SSRIs.

After methodically working through all of the essential nutrients that we supposedly need, I found biotin and took 1000ug a day for a month and the injury healed. If I can do this sort of study on myself, you can bet it's feasible to do this sort of study on patient populations. But you'd spend thousands, if not a million or two in the course of doing it, and, in the end, if all you determine is "10% of people with chronic pain are biotin-deficient," or whatever, you have no way to recover your costs through a patent, because none of the essential vitamins and minerals are patent-able.

Anonymous

Jul 12, 2020 at 7:52pm

Doctors have a long-standing tradition of poor bed side manners. Intellectuals typically spend a lot of time in their heads and are not known for their charm and charisma or maybe many are on a spectrum? He probably thought he was being funny. Medical schools try to teach it but what can you do? Don't take it too personally, be concerned about your health. That's the priority here.

@we have

Jul 12, 2020 at 9:08pm

I couldn’t agree more. I have a long-term chronic illness that affects a large percentage of the population, and yet finding any local physician that has any understanding of it is virtually impossible. I’m so exhausted, not just from the illness, but from trying to find any medical professional that knows anything about it! Add to that the fact that we have so few family physicians around here because they’ve all gone to walk-in clinics where they can push through as many people in a day without actually having to do anything for most of them, and we have what I think is an impending total collapse of decent medical care in BC.