r/interesting • u/tyrion2024 • 10h ago

MISC. A Virginia man inadvertently left his phone recording while he was under anesthesia for a colonoscopy, which captured audio of the doctors: mocking him, instructing a medical assistant to lie to him, and discussing giving him a false diagnosis of hemorrhoids. In 2015, a jury awarded him $500,000.

Post image
13.3k Upvotes

95% Upvoted

1.5k comments sorted by

View all comments

288

u/troveofcatastrophe 7h ago

Just popping in to say colon cancer in rapidly rising in young adults. They have zero idea why. It’s up 6% year before last, 20% last year. If you have changes to your gastrointestinal norm, get checked! Dont wait!

It’s much more deadly in young adults because 30 year olds don’t think they can get colon cancer and by the time it’s discovered, it’s too late or more radical treatments are needed.

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/colon-cancer/symptoms-causes/syc-20353669

27

u/xannieh666 6h ago

I am as low risk as you come. I have 0 people in my family that have had it. I dont drink , smoke or anything else like that. Finally had my colonoscopy done. They removed a pre cancerous lesion and now I have to have another in 3 years. I was shocked

28

u/masimbasqueeze 6h ago

Gastroenterologist here - pre cancerous polyps are exceedingly common. I remove them in about 70% of the colonoscopies I perform. It’s good to remove them when they’re small, long before they ever cause you a problem.

4

u/imightwin 6h ago

I'm not asking for any medical advice outside of how urgent do you think I should get it done, but I'm 29 and started having intolerances to food and intense gastro abdominal pain with the cramps, especially when I eat certain foods, started about 4 years ago. I do drink and smoke marijuana.

Is any of that cause for concern as a gastroenterologist and do you think I should see one?

3

u/ThePepperPopper 4h ago

Get checked but that's about the time I started not being able to eat much super spicy food (I'm a chile head and the hotter the better) without it it giving me the worst gastrointestinal cramps and pain trying to shit. It was like a switch flipped. Just before 30. I'm 44 now...

2

u/Guiltyostric 5h ago

Dude I have the same thing started about 4 months ago.

2

u/masimbasqueeze 4h ago

Lots of people have these type of symptoms, and in this situation, it is most likely something related to dietary intolerance, environmental exposures, gut, motility, etc. Rarely it could be due to something more serious such as inflammatory bowel disease. Cancer is unlikely in a 29-year-old although not impossible. Nothing wrong with getting it checked out.

2

u/imightwin 3h ago

Okay thank you for the reply. Reading the other stories of vastley different ways everyone found out they had cancer or cancer polyps got me scared about my own ngl. I'm gonna ask my primary to order the testing done

3

u/hankmoody699 2h ago

Remember that these stories, while they are factual, they are unusual. This physician is telling you about the likelihood and is encouraging you to get it checked out.
I held my dad's hand while he died from a heart attack and they were doing compressions on him. I also have some average level of coronary artery issues for my age. I can't get it out of my head. I'm getting cardiac care just to feel better about it.

1

u/GoldburstNeo 47m ago edited 42m ago

This comment needs to be pinned, especially since the original post here wasn't even about colon cancer but rather an asshole doctor.

I say this as someone who lost my dad to cancer, but while comments like the original one here reminding us about colon cancer are well-meaning, on a post like this (in which again cancer wasn't even the focus), they really aren't helpful and are just serving to create an echochamber of fear.

Yes, push for a colonoscopy if you feel something is wrong and/or if it will bring peace of mind (I had to push for a cystoscopy and CT urogram last year due to rule out the worst after a scary bathroom trip per se, thankfully nothing cancerous), but at the end of the day, even with rising rates, the chances are still very small. Reminding random people at every corner that 'cancer can get you and you and YOU' is not exactly helpful.

2

u/tf1064 5h ago

I had a friend with similar symptoms. It was colon cancer. He got diagnosed far too late and nothing could be done. He died.

Just saying: get it checked out ASAP. It might be something completely different, but you should never ignore unexplained pain or other symptoms.

1

u/delicateflora 4h ago

Do the colonoscopy, but also get checked for an h.pylori infection. Firsthand experience, but also seeing that pop up a lot for people I know.

1

u/themetahumancrusader 6h ago

Are all/most polyps pre cancerous? I had a colonoscopy a few years ago and apparently a small polyp or two got removed, but nothing scary was mentioned to me or in the paperwork

1

u/Grasshopper_pie 6h ago

There are different kinds of polyps; I believe the tuberous (?) kind are precancerous. That's what I had, and I think they are pretty common.

1

u/masimbasqueeze 4h ago

Not necessarily. Sometimes we take out something that looks like a polyp, but it is just normal tissue, or something called a hyperplastic polyp, which has no cancer potential. For the most part we try to only remove “pre-cancerous“ polyps although it doesn’t always work out that way. You would need to check your pathology report.

1

u/xannieh666 5h ago

Yeah it was a Sessil Serrated Lesion and yeah exactly I am glad they found it. I am a huge proponent if getting your colonoscopy because you just never know

1

u/beardofmice 5h ago

I thank you for contributing that nugget of knowledge. Just had my colonoscopy and Dr said they removed one small polyp. Being loopy from the anesthesia I just said ok, and here's my ride. And honestly, I don't mind if you crack jokes bout my butthole because it's been through some shit!

1

u/denizen_1 4h ago

It's convenient to have that opinion when you make lots of money on pointless screening colonoscopies, which have no demonstrated OS benefit in human RCTs.

1

u/masimbasqueeze 4h ago

Well that is absolutely false but you can go ahead and skip yours. If you want to have a debate about wise use of resources in our healthcare system, we can do that. But removing dysplastic (especially advanced) colonic lesions absolutely is lifesaving for some people. The healthy debate is whether it is worth doing this for all comers, and at what age to start to optimize resource utilization.

1

u/denizen_1 4h ago

I don't know what you're talking about.

There is one human RCT testing whether colonoscopy improves OS. It's NordiCC. It failed to show an OS benefit. The response of gastroenterologists who don't understand EBM, you will see if you Google it, is merely to explain that the per-protocol analysis showed OS benefits. That of course is nothing more than an admission of not understanding evidence-based medicine or the basics of critical appraisal. Per protocol analysis is statistically invalid and breaks the necessary assumptions to make RCTs work; intention-to-treat analysis is mandatory. There is no doubt that the only RCT to ever test OS failed to show an OS benefit.

All of the other RCTs test whether screening colonoscopies reduce colon-cancer death. That is not a useful endpoint. It's a surrogate which hasn't been validated for the relevant endpoint of OS. Thus it says nothing about a clinical endpoint, which is all we care about.

1

u/Nyx_Gorgon 3h ago

They removed a TVA from me and want to do another colonoscopy after a year - but insurance wont cover it. Im terrified. Do you think waiting for my 3 year check out would be disastrous? (I know you are not my doctor... and dont know my case... but thought I'd try to ask!)

1

u/Exact_Stranger_7889 5h ago

Do you eat processed meats?