r/comics • u/TheNectarineDiaries • Jun 19 '26

OC Why didn't you say so?

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Best medical advice I ever got was to bring a man to your appointments

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u/Varderal Jun 19 '26

Thank the lawyers that made our Healthcare (usa) cost so much! Malpractice suits! Oh and rhe insurance companies playing doctor. Even if your doctor says you need a test the insurance can go "we dont think so".

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u/[deleted] Jun 19 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Easy-Musician7186 Jun 19 '26

"To young" is such a shitty form of saying "Don't bother me" imo.

I know 3 people with herniated discs before they reached 30 years.

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u/Mondschatten78 Jun 19 '26

I went to school with a guy who had a heart attack before he turned 18, he was put on a heart transplant list not long after.

No one is too young for testing imo.

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u/ClancyBShanty Jun 19 '26

I've been waiting for months for my cardiologist appointment despite the fact my older cousin dropping dead of a heart attack and heart trouble running rampant in my family. Finally seeing him on Monday though, WOO!! And I'm in my 40s

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u/High_Hunter3430 Jun 19 '26

I was 25 with my first one

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u/Sizanllikew Jun 19 '26

My 15 year-old kid just had back surgery last year for a herniated disc. No injuries, no sports, thin as a rail. We have no idea how it happened.

1

u/CoSh Jun 19 '26

Most people have herniated discs and are asymptomatic.

Doctor is just trying to get you better using the most conservative method that works. Sometimes that means doing nothing because many herniations heal or become asymptomatic on their own.

Tell them you have persistent sciatica, it's significantly affecting your quality of life and it hasn't got better in months. They'll put you through pain and anti-inflammatory treatments first, and/or physical therapy and if it doesn't get better after a few months then ask about a discectomy or spinal fusion.

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u/Justisperfect Jun 19 '26

That's also the reason why the age to get things like this seem higher. If you say everybody who are less than the expected age  that they are too young, the statistics are biaised. Plus, it's an average so there are people who will get symptoms before or after the expecting age.

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u/AmberKinza Jun 19 '26

Got mine at 19.

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u/tacoman2488 Jun 19 '26

Hey so im rare disease haver like 4 in a million 4 out 5 of which are women but im man and on top of that mine presents atypically. Id recommend telling them exactly what tests you want done and pester them till they fucking do them. Just cause its rare doesn't mean its impossible

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u/tacoman2488 Jun 19 '26

You deserve adequate Healthcare so make em gove it to you

1

u/Most_Mountain818 Jun 19 '26

I don’t know how useful it is since I’m very lucky to be healthy, but I’ve heard that if you ask them to document in your chart the fact that you asked for a test and they denied it that it can be helpful in getting them to change their tune.

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u/Long-Broccoli-3363 Jun 19 '26

They don't want to deal with insurance denying it too.

So you say there's no way except bloodwork, to see if I have this particular problem, if I don't have active symptoms. But the insurance won't approve the bloodwork unless I already have the thing you're trying to diagnose, so I actually have to wait to get worse, or have these symptoms to get bloodwork approved?

..."yes"

"I'd like to mention, I forgot earlier, I have these symptoms."

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u/Wild_Marker Jun 19 '26

Same for arthritis despite it being on my family genetics

I had arthrosis diagnosed at 33. Get better doctors! A doctor not believing in disease is like a farmer not believing in ham!

Took me like six months of horrible pain to get the diagnosis, not because they wouldn't believe it, thankfully, simply because they didn't think of checking for it, until someone did. Had to take some heavy pills while being prescribed "go to the gym" and that eventually helped me switch to lighter pills (just paracetamol).

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u/Long-Broccoli-3363 Jun 19 '26

Plus arthritis can be mechanical in nature anyway. I have had a SLAPP tear in my shoulder since I was 20, I've had arthritis in that joint since my late 20s, cause the bone just kinda goes wherever it wants bouncing around in the joint causing arthritis.

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u/Try-To-Support-78 Jun 19 '26

Not sure if you're going to an orthopedic doc but i had the same until one daybwhen I sleeping and woke up paralyzed and couldn't move. It took 2 days and i got most of the feeling back bit not all. I still get treatments. Also I test negative for all those other things like lupus etc but all my symptoms match 😑 I am an odd body.

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u/hfsh Jun 19 '26

Non-specific lower back pain is marvelous, isn't it?

At around 19 I started having back pain. Cue almost year or so of random physio exercises, orthopedic doctors that barely examined me, and being constantly brushed off by the GP who even suggested homeopathy at the point I was no longer sleeping due to the pain.

An acquaintance recommended a physio at the national Olympic training center that happened to be nearby, two minutes of examination and she walked to the phone, called my GP and started yelling at her for not catching that there were entire muscle groups not functioning in my legs, and that I needed to see a neurologist immediately.

The neurologist took one look at me in the waiting room, and admitted me on the spot. Within a day I was moved to another hospital and woke up pain-free (i'm sure the morphine helped) after about ten hours of neurosurgery removing the large slow-growing tumor that had been compressing my spinal cord.

Needless to say, my GP was quite shocked and came by later at home to apologise, which I guess is something at least.

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u/nafurabus Jun 19 '26

I started PT a few months ago for my lower back issue and its crazy what targeted daily stretching and loading has done to ease the pain and discomfort that I had just been living with.

I feel lucky that it took one doctors appointment, some X-rays same day, and then finding a convenient PT location with good reviews.

Insurance isn’t covering any of it though, thats a whole separate issue 🤦‍♂️

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u/Justisperfect Jun 19 '26

One of my friend has polyarthrisis. A lot of people in their family got it. But they are 25. So the doctors tell them to just do more sports. It would cost too much to recognize they have such a disability this young.

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u/lesgeddon Jun 20 '26

I've had severe arthritis since at least my mid twenties, you're never too young to get it especially if you're very physically active.

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u/imapluralist Jun 19 '26

Sure, blame the lawyers for holding doctors to their own standard of care. It's not like the basis of this entire thread is the threat of lawyers that make the doctors do the right thing (both in the comic and in the real world).

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u/ColdIceZero Jun 19 '26

No no, you misunderstand. Holding someone accountable for their misconduct is the cause of all these extra expenses.

If we didn't hold people accountable, then everything would be less expensive.

So the lawyers are to blame!

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u/imapluralist Jun 19 '26

I see it now! Everything is extra cheap if we just dont look at what we're paying for.

0

u/Varderal Jun 19 '26

No misconduct sure. Its the frivolous ones that are driving up the costs. The malpractice insurance for a small allergist/immjnologist clinic is over a quarter million a year. There's where most of our Healthcare costs are. The rot is the pharmaceutical companies who'd rather trat than cure.

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u/TheRussianCabbage Jun 19 '26

Bro they recommend MAID to para-olympic athletes. Insurance isn't the only bad guy out there.

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u/greg19735 Jun 19 '26

i mean, those malpractice suits would mean they're more likely to do tests you don't need. Because they'd be covering their ass.

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u/Allegoryof Jun 19 '26

Actually you can thank a lot of things, including doctors themselves for making it unnecessarily difficult to become a doctor unless you're already wealthy and difficult for foreign credentialed doctors to continue working at all (pre-trump, obviously since it's white South Africans only now lol). Blaming lawyers is too easy, don't let doctors off the hook for the physician shortage

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u/ehs06702 Jun 19 '26

Malpractice suits are not the reason medical racism and misogyny are so prevalent.

Malpractice was not the reason I was accused of being a drug addict in the midst of a seizure and also called a liar for saying I'd never been pregnant at 17.

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u/i_am_a_real_boy__ Jun 19 '26

It's not the lawyers. It's your for-profit insurance industry.