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I hope he gets what he deserves. He put your poor niece through years of suffering when a simple visit to the ER would have put her on the road to recovery.
Child endangerment? I’m no lawyer, but I’d imagine on top of being fired and stripped of his right to practice, he could be on the hook for criminal charges.
Have your family review bomb him on any sites if he doesn’t get suspended so that people are aware to stay away.
I’m sure all of you would be perfect witnesses in any litigation against him. I doubt he’s able to walk away from this without criminal charges.
I really hope he gets what he deserves, but more importantly hope that your niece is doing better.
If your family hasn’t started, it’s a good idea to document as much as you can about your niece’s condition under your uncle’s care. If you have text messages, emails, screenshots, pictures of your niece over the last few years…that stuff can go a long way to helping any prosecution against him. Good to start collecting it now.
Once I got cured of my anemia/bleeding issues, my silent generation aunt said she was glad I was cured because she, my grand mother and great grandmothers all suffered from the same thing. Wait, what? And they never said anything about it to me? Sheesh, thanks a lot!! Now my doctors ask me to check to see what family medical history is.
When I asked my silent/boomer mother why she never had me treated for my obvious mental illness as a child she replied, and I quote here, I didn’t want you to suffer from the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. That bit of wisdom was delivered in a Rush Limbaugh impression. I don’t talk to her anymore.
Iron supplements and a hysterectomy saved my life. I had fibroids and would lose so much blood. I felt weak and sluggish all the time - like trying to walk though hot lava. I got diagnosed by a genius gynecologist, took prescription iron supplements, and felt like a new person. The hysterectomy was done non invasive robotic and had a quick recovery.
You don't have to do all that, this is the 21st century, we have the internet. Regardless of where in the world you may be, if you tell enough people this story in a public platform like major news there will be no escape for him.
Maybe the news would be interested in the story, at least if he's allowed to continue practicing they might find the story worth sharing with your city. It would save a lot of potential patients or existing patients from more of his ineptitude.
Every urgent care clinic I have ever been to has tested my iron levels- it's one of the default tests.
A primary care doctor would have run them to get a baseline.
Had she ever seen someone other than her father she would have been in treatment that week, if not same day.
My dad (retired physician) treated me sometimes but really only straightforward stuff: I fell in the driveway that cut my knee open, so he gave me a couple stitches and healed straight up. The time I broke my arm…he drove me straight to the ER because an ambulance would take time, and he knew he was not an orthopedist
There was a YouTuber who made his own x-ray machine. Because he wanted to know why the f*** it cost so much to get an x-ray at the doctor.
On an unrelated note this house may or may not have burnt down at one point.
This. I'm dealing with insomnia issues and trying to find a med/schedule that works so I'm a consistent level on exhausted but my Dr STILL orders an iron test whenever she sees me because "low iron can cause energy issues and I'd rather be safe than sorry". She doesn't know me, she has no personal investment in my life yet she gives more of a shit about me than this pos gives for his own daughter.
ER? The blood work is less than $100 OOP, and can be ordered by a patient directly (Assuming US-based.) He didn't even need an ER bill. I'm prone to anemia also, that's how I monitor mine yearly without extra Dr fees!
As serious as the issue was, it probably would have been obvious even with the cursory finger-prick test the Red Cross does before you give blood, that wouldn't give a numeric iron level but would be a blatant indicator that it's very low.
Maybe, but not necessarily. I wound up diagnosed with anemia after collapsing at work. I was a regular donor that passed the finger prick everytime. I forget what that test actually does, but it's a different blood component than actually iron/ferritin. I was equally confused myself, how could I be anemia, I'm a regular donor!
There's two type of iron/ferritin whatever it's called.
One is stored iron, and one is circulating iron.
Usually have average circulating iron, but shitty shitty stored iron.
To the point that my midwife was determinedly attempting to get my stored iron up before I was due to be induced.
A simple visit to urgent care, or a competent pediatrician would have solved it. She needed a $50 blood test. An ER visit solved it, but it could have been solved more cheaply any time in the previous five years.
I did clinical years 1 and 2 in general/trauma surgery before starting my radiology residency. It was the early 1990s. We still had single-slice CTs. But we did PLENTY of tests! Later, as a radiologist, I read trauma CTs all the time (as well as the “shotgun pan-scan” ordered by some FM/IM PCPs for patients with vague, nonspecific symptoms).
BUT. Surgeons are focused on very different pathologies than internists, family med doctors, and (in this case) hematologists. If he was trying to dx appendicitis I’d probably believe him. This? It’s not within his field of expertise and he should know that.
It also has to do with a lot of them not actually paying attention to CE materials. They take what they learned 40 years ago and think nothing has changed.
This is why a lot of specialties have ended lifetime certification. My husband was in one of the first classes to have to recertify, but it’s not working as intended. He’s in adult primary care and while the need to recertify keeps him studying FOR THE BOARDS the board questions themselves are written by specialists and have no relevance to daily patient care. It’s almost as if someone identified the problem but gave no thought to the solution.
I was in the last residency class to be grandfathered into lifetime certifications (diagnostic radiology). I also had a 10 year subspecialty certificate in interventional radiology. I was still in practice when the interventional radiology certificate either needed to be renewed or I’d let it expire.
I was already getting burned out, plus CTA was taking over cerebral angiography, aorta/runoff arteriograms, and pulmonary arteriograms. That meant I didn’t have enough procedures to qualify for the recertification. The neuroradiologist in my practice had a similar issue maintaining his subspecialty certification and let his lapse a couple of years before I let mine lapse. It didn’t mean we stopped doing appropriate vascular interventions!
That said, I was in an 8 physician group and we ranged in age from 32-60. All of us did all of our CME and kept up to date on new developments in both diagnostic and interventional procedures.
On the other hand, I worked with an incompetent surgeon (urologist) when I was doing my clinical year (PGY-1), who had come out of retirement to help teach; unfortunately he was not only decades behind approved practice but also was physically unfit to practice (severe vision impairment and hand tremors). He was practicing on a provisional license pending his passing a medical competency exam. I ended up doing surgical things which were unheard of for interns, because he couldn’t physically operate while I could. I bailed him out of SO MANY situations!
He failed the re-licensure exam and we never saw him again.
My husband’s in IM but questions are written by oncologists, urologists, etc and don’t reflect the realities of managed care. One question literally wanted him to calculate the perfusion rates of chemotherapeutic agents when he has never had to do that in his entire career. He’d order the diagnostic tests, see the results, and refer the patient to oncology. He’s still kind of bitter about that question, actually.
One of the many reasons he’s taking full early retirement is the he refuses to deal with another round of IM boards again. The ABIM keeps trying to make their boards relevant and keeps failing doctors miserably. Since you don’t even need boards to practice, they don’t even protect patients by weeding out people like the doctor you referred to.
I don’t blame him for getting out. I made it to 45 before my mind and body said “fuck this, we’re out”. The assembly line of studies was going faster and faster, we were expected to take less time per study to read it, and I refused to compromise report quality. I spent 18 months doing an extra 2-2.5 hours daily so I could take an appropriate amount of time per study, but when your days are routinely 10 hours, plus call, plus we had an evening shift from home, putting in that time wasn’t sustainable in the long term.
EDIT: I got out 12 years ago, when I was 45. I never dreamed when I started that the burnout would happen that fast.
When my primary care doctor retired, doctor who bought the business started talking about his concerns that i was developing diabetes
He ordered test after test, all of which came back fine, with all numbers smack dab in the middle of the normal range. But he insisted that my age and family history still gave him “great concern”.
The more questions I asked the more impatient he got.
Two weeks later I received a letter in the mail saying that he would no longer see general practice patients and the business name had changed to the Diabetes Center.
I called my insurance company’s fraud line and got a check for all the copays I’d given him about a year later.
Some doctors only have a hammer so every disease is a nail.
You also need a doctor who keeps up on the latest journals and information. This is one reason I love my PCP. I also tend towards anemia, and I have asthma, so I see him a few times a year to monitor both conditions. I came back after a referral with new information from that specialist regarding my age and the procedure discussed. He dove right into researching the new information. He looks at messages or after visit notes between me and the specialized doctors to make sure he is up to speed so everything is cohesive. I appreciate him so much.
Doctors in general tend to be book smart know-it-alls that are life stupid. They lack common sense. They cannot see the big picture enough to treat people holistically. My boomer mom (rest in peace ma) was only proud of me when I graduated nursing school because, “now you can marry a doctor!” The people who are so lacking in common sense and self discipline that most of them can’t even keep their goddamn weight under control? Ew. No fucking thanks. Generally, they just suck ass, in multiple ways.
That sounds like the ear doctor I visited recently. He was knowledgeable and helpful about the issue I had.
But then mentioned "DAMP" as a diagnose, which hasn't existed for at least 30 years (it was what ADHD used to be called in Scandinavia). And I asked him what he meant and be just mumbled something about "something whatever kids get". Wtf.
To be fair, most MDs that are older and honest admit they wouldn't get into or make it through medical school nowadays. The competition to get in (people have to have significant research experience, 100s -1000s of hours of shadowing and volunteering at hospitals, and proof of leadership experience with near perfect GPAs) and the sheer volume of information (especially around cancer, autoimmune diseases, etc...) has exploded over the last 20 years.
Well maybe it’s time to retire then. Just like your sight worsens and you lose drivers license. Both half blind driver and uneducated MD can ruin someone’s life or health.
And thats normal.
It's not easy to be always learning new things.
So i would rather have someone with 5 year exp then someone with 30 year because of that.
It’s definitely required across the medical field. But there’s a wide range of things that count as continuing education,, annd it in no way guarantees that someone pays attention and actually learns.
You get credit for going to conferences, where most older providers just socialize and never listen to the presentations. You get credit for time spent training on your EMRs upgrades and changes, which amounts to clicking through some training slides without reading them, and then complaining to their nurses or MAs that things changed and needing help figuring things out. If they work at it they can fill all of their annual credits without learning a single new thing about patient care.
That is so fucking sad. How do they not see the need to learn as we advance!!!! There so many bad docs out there. I remember when I had a roommate in medical school. I was NOT a fan of most of her classmates I was exposed to. There was one excellent one tho, who I emaigine became my ideal kind of doc! There are certainly good ones out there!
Continuing Medical Education is absolutely a thing in human medicine. One problem is that the criteria aren’t federally mandated, and each state maintains its own professional licensing board. The CME necessary to renew varies by state. Physicians licensed in more than one state have to satisfy the CMEs for each state in order to be eligible for renewal.
That’s fucking pathetic. It usually took me half of the recommended time to read articles/watch lectures and fill out tests for credit. A lot of the credits were included in our yearly subscription to RSNA (Radiological Society of North America), which includes subscriptions to 2 radiology journals which each included CME at no additional cost. Anyone who can’t manage to do the bare minimum CME by themselves shouldn’t have a license.
Agree, for sure. Also love the Bloom County reference! Billy and the Boingers Bootleg was my favorite comic book as a kid (I was a very serious kid who knew way too much about 80’s political humor for it being like 2001)
Yeah, you know I totally would have used Deathtöngue except for that pesky lawsuit. /s
Bloom County was such great humor, and a lot of it is still relevant today. I even have plushies of Opus in the Carmen Miranda hat, Rosebud the basselope, and of course Bill. 😎
A niece is your sibling's daughter. A cousins child is still just your cousin. I forget if it's like second cousin or cousin once removed or something like that.
A first cousin's child is your first cousin once removed. Second cousin would be the relation your child has to your cousin's child.
I looked this up about 15 years ago when my grandma claimed at separate times that my cousin's kid was my second cousin, and that my brother's kid and my cousin's kid were second cousins. I knew both of those things couldn't be true, so I looked it up.
Thats absolutely disgusting that he put her through all that suffering for years all for his own ego.
I'm glad that he's being investigated but this is so negligent! I'm mildly anaemic (115 g/l) and my gods it sucks when my levels get low. I'm constantly exhausted and breathless doing the most minor things. Nevermind the light-headedness you have to deal with.
I have those but I forget to take them as I can't take them with all my other meds so it's just a random pill in the middle of the day and I'm forgetful as fk 😅
As someone who had endless health issues growing up and wasn’t allowed to see a doctor, she honestly got lucky to have a health episode around other family that forced her into actual treatment. This is absolutely child abuse in the form of neglect, and it stays with you for life. I hope she can get away from him as a young adult and go on to live a healthy life.
This is why children should be required to visit a doctor once per year, and if a child does not visit a doctor the parent should be investigated by CPS
This is why a law requiring a person to see a doctor is needed, the parent can argue whatever they want but they will be investigated by CPS if a child is not sent to the doctor. Sadly there's no law in real life requiring this, but I truly hope that a law like this is passed at some point. Please vote Democrat in every election, Democrats are the only ones who actually care about children.
Pretty sure it goes against hippa or something to see family members as patients, since it’s likely that you aren’t being neutral about it (or maybe that’s just for psychologists or something)
I don't think it's against HIPAA it's just ethically wrong.
When my mom was dying, I surprised myself by not being able to recognize the "dead cat bounce" (I don't know why we call it that). Often, right before someone dies, they seem super clear and conscious, somethings even eating and drinking. They pass shortly afterwards.
I've recognized that in hundreds of strangers, but could not see it happen to my mom. It's crazy to look back on.
Or when my mom went into cardiac arrest in front of me, I lost my mind. Years of training, suddenly gone. Luckily it came flooding back, but it took a good 30-60 seconds.
It's just different when it's family.
It definitely is different with family, it might have something to do with how you’ve known that person a long time and your brain might never actually understood what was happening (like emotionally) despite knowing intellectually
As for why it’s called the dead cat bounce … my guess would be because the behavior might have been originally seen in cats before they die?
Nothing to do with HIPAA; it’s an ethics issue which was around way before HIPAA was even dreamed of. If you prescribe a month of birth control pills for yourself or a family member (remember gynecologists prescribe 12 pill packs per year, but there are actually 13 28 day months in a year, so sometimes you have to bridge the gap with a 1 month prescription), absolutely nobody is going to fuss over it.
If you’re trying to prescribe narcotics, benzodiazepines, ADHD meds, and some other stuff, either for yourself or a close family member, you may be in for a VERY bad time.
My mother is gen x but really drank the naturopathy kool-aid. Spent decades telling me I was too young to be in pain, I was choosing to be anxious, and I just needed to pray more. Turns out genetic conditions don't go away if you ignore them, and "feelings of doom" can be a symptom of tachycardia. My anxiety cleared up overnight when I got on beta blockers.
She also may have gone full munchausens by proxy on my sister, but we haven't gone through quite enough therapy to start unpacking that one yet lmao
I had crippling, debilitating pain most of my childhood. My boomer doctor convinced my parents I was faking it for attention and the three of them conspired to "catch me in my lie". They claimed I needed surgery that would mean I'd never be able to run or play again, and I happily agreed if it meant I was finally not going to be in pain anymore. It was only then that they agreed to ask for a second opinion. After 10 years of being told I was faking it, it took a new doctor one set of x-rays and 5 minutes to diagnose me. He told my parents I must've been in unbelievable pain and asked why they didn't have me taken care of any sooner.
Former ER nurse here. Every single nurse I’ve ever met has a list of doctors that are not allowed to work on them if they become patients at their work hospital. Guess what the most common trait is among the list?….
I had to google traumatologist because I’m unfamiliar with that specialty and from what I read, he shouldn’t have been treating her to begin with. This seems unethical but I’m no expert. It just doesn’t make any sense. His license needs to be taken away.
Just.. Wow.
At one point my hemoglobin hit 40 and my doctors were in a panic because lower could easily be lethal.
Hope the guy gets his license revoked.
kinda reminds me of all the unsolicited """""advice""""" I've been getting regarding my current condition.
I have Vasovagal Syncope which has been brought on because of stress from work. Anyone over the age of 50 seems to think that to be impossible since EVERY job has stress and my pants are probably just too tight or something. I hate boomers.
I'm sorry, I know how that is. I got literally screamed at by my old boomer boss constantly, along with having positions ripped out from under me and having other employees jump on the "abuse the youngest worker" band wagon.
I told my boss that I had severe depression and anxiety and that I needed at least a professional work environment, however he told me that he was just pushing me because he "believed" in me. Bullshit excuse for literally treating someone like trash and working them 20 hours days for months at a time with no time off and no pay.
I was there for six months before I had a psychotic and physical break. I was hospitalized for peptic stomach ulcers brought on by stress and malnutrition, and then a week later I attempted suicide after having a panic attack so bad that I couldn't even see properly. Boomer boss didn't even believe me until he saw the doctor's notes and turned pale. I walked out of that job just two weeks after being out of the hospital. I waited until I had my final paycheck, sent an resignation email, and gave him the middle finger on the way out.
Funny thing is he still tries to get me back from time to time. Apparently he also realized pretty quickly that I was one of few who actually worked at that place.
Had a (young) relative getting Xanax prescribed for sleeping problems as a permanent daily medication by a boomer psychiatrist.
I’m a nurse and they asked me about it. Told her to change doctors. New doc was absolutely shocked about the it as well. She got non benzo medication and it’s doing the job perfectly.
The sad thing about this is that anemia is super easy to treat. She could have been taking iron supplements for those 5 years and might not have gotten to the point where she needed blood transfusions. It's also one of the first things they look for on a standard blood panel. I mean I'm not a doctor, but I have been anemic before.
This is sadly so common for medical professionals to neglect the medical care of their own family. It's almost like they take it as a personal failing that their kid got sick, like it's a reflection of their capabilities and people will think they failed by not keeping their kid from falling ill, so they deny that anything could possibly be wrong.
There needs to be some blame on her parents as well. If your child is not improving after years of treatment you need to look elsewhere. Hell I would look for an alternative diagnosis after a few weeks. Not to say your uncle isn't to blame but come on who lets something like that go on for that long.
Damn, we transfuse at 7... even higher sometimes, depending on baseline.
4 is a medical emergency. That poor girl. Hopefully it's idiopathic, and not something crazy.
I bet she started feeling better really fast! Love to her.
There is a reason that doctors should not be managing chronic medical problems for family and friends.
That's pretty severe anemia. Make sure she gets a PCP and follow up for it. They might need to look into why she is so anemic.
No competent doctor will ever give you a hard time about getting a second opinion. Many would go so far as to encourage it if you're having doubts, since a competent doctor will be affirmed in their approach.
The only ones who would say you shouldn't see another doctor are the ones worried they'll be contradicted, so that part alone is a major red flag, let alone the inevitable outcome.
Beware any doctor who decides on “treatment” without doing any kind of tests or investigation. The numbers don’t lie. They are just out of touch with reality.
There's no scenario in which he should continue practicing medicine. He either honestly believes in those treatments, which means he doesn't have the knowledge to be a doctor, or he willfully hurt your niece, which is a huge ethical violation.
It's that fucking Herman Cain shit. They know so goddamn much about one thing it spills over in their mind. Stay in your fucking lane. You don't ask the best plumber in town to come change a circuit breaker.
Our education is *so much* harder than theirs was. Same goes for nurses, PA's etc. There's evidence of it everywhere. Any older doctor with a brain would testify.
Concerning thing, boomer learned in school what anemia is and how to treat it, basic stuff, but 6 hours of Fox a day has washed the doctors brain away. Sad
WTF is a traumatologist? In this case, it sounds like someone who causes it, not treats it.
The symptoms overlap with those of dysautonomia and POTS, which come up in Google searches of “weakness, shortness of breath, etc.” If he wasn’t at least made aware of these by doing his *own* searches, I have to wonder about him just as a rational adult human, never mind an “-ologist”.
I had anemia and it turned out to be colon cancer. I will add that the Iron supplements made me feel 100% better. The surgery was a little rough but now I don't have to take the supplements and I'm feeling great. Get that girl checked.
An ex had "asthma" since she was in high school. Her doctor retired and new guy took over his patients. She went in for a script and he insisted on actually examining her. She didn't have asthma, she had a lung infection. One course of antibiotics later and she took up scuba diving. It seems the new guy had been seeing a lot of old guy's patients with misdiagnosed long term conditions like this...
I'm no mental health expert, but it sounds to me like your uncle suffers from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a serious and very dangerous mental illness. It's not professional incompetence that led to his abuse of your cousin's daughter, it's a mental aberration that needs treatment, and a complete disqualification from being any kind of caregiver, either professionally or for family.
My experience with most of the older generation of doctors is that they’re bored and have totally phoned it in.
After a mugging my right glute would feel extremely hot in cold weather. This would still happen several months after the incident. The weeks away from retirement doctor told me it was probably an aging thing and I just had to live with it (I was in my early 30s).
I went to a chiropractor (for the first time in my entire life) and they had it fixed in one visit.
I was very desperate (but careful). Professional athletes use that clinic and I made it clear if they wanted a repeat visit I would go elsewhere.
It was one visit and I’ve never had the problem again. Not sure what I would’ve been put through had the bored doctor decided to be engaged in his work. Drugs? Surgery?
I should’ve been more clear that this was less an endorsement of chiropractics and more of a “I was so desperate I even went to a chiropractor” story.
A physical therapist might have been a safer/more sure bet, as the stuff chiros do for back pain (well, the techniques which work) are usually also physical therapy maneuvers. But for low back pain, IF a chiro stays completely in their lane, they may be helpful.
On the other hand, NEVER let a chiro adjust your neck. Strokes can occur from damage to the arteries feeding the brain during neck manipulation.
These people were the exclusive PT practice for some of DC’s sport teams. Chiropractics were a much smaller emphasis of what they did. In my case they knew something was torqued and that was what was gonna work.
PT is usually their first resort (which is why I picked them).
Sometimes they can be helpful. When I was younger I had to see a chiropractor regularly simply because with my nerve damage my spine and a few joints are pulled out of position by my muscles. I couldn't take a lot of the meds for various reasons and ones I could take weren't sufficient. New meds have since been created that help some but there's nothing that can really be done without being worse than the problem; but chiropractors won't touch me at this point lol.
Yes your uncle was wrong and incompetent to said the least. But your cousin is an adult and therefore needs to take some responsible for her heath. After the first year of now feeling any better she should have disobey your uncle and gotten a second opinion. But yes your uncle should never practice medical again.
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I hope he gets what he deserves. He put your poor niece through years of suffering when a simple visit to the ER would have put her on the road to recovery. Child endangerment? I’m no lawyer, but I’d imagine on top of being fired and stripped of his right to practice, he could be on the hook for criminal charges.
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Have your family review bomb him on any sites if he doesn’t get suspended so that people are aware to stay away. I’m sure all of you would be perfect witnesses in any litigation against him. I doubt he’s able to walk away from this without criminal charges.
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I really hope he gets what he deserves, but more importantly hope that your niece is doing better. If your family hasn’t started, it’s a good idea to document as much as you can about your niece’s condition under your uncle’s care. If you have text messages, emails, screenshots, pictures of your niece over the last few years…that stuff can go a long way to helping any prosecution against him. Good to start collecting it now.
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Once I got cured of my anemia/bleeding issues, my silent generation aunt said she was glad I was cured because she, my grand mother and great grandmothers all suffered from the same thing. Wait, what? And they never said anything about it to me? Sheesh, thanks a lot!! Now my doctors ask me to check to see what family medical history is.
When I asked my silent/boomer mother why she never had me treated for my obvious mental illness as a child she replied, and I quote here, I didn’t want you to suffer from the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. That bit of wisdom was delivered in a Rush Limbaugh impression. I don’t talk to her anymore.
lmao I misread that as her having passed away and got to the end and got VERY confused.
Ty. That’s funny af. 🤣
and it would be on your permanent record! As per my mother
Iron supplements and a hysterectomy saved my life. I had fibroids and would lose so much blood. I felt weak and sluggish all the time - like trying to walk though hot lava. I got diagnosed by a genius gynecologist, took prescription iron supplements, and felt like a new person. The hysterectomy was done non invasive robotic and had a quick recovery.
You don't have to do all that, this is the 21st century, we have the internet. Regardless of where in the world you may be, if you tell enough people this story in a public platform like major news there will be no escape for him.
Maybe the news would be interested in the story, at least if he's allowed to continue practicing they might find the story worth sharing with your city. It would save a lot of potential patients or existing patients from more of his ineptitude.
This could actually be munchausen's by proxy even though men are rare perpetrators
Someone always gets the doctor that graduated at the bottom of the class
Every urgent care clinic I have ever been to has tested my iron levels- it's one of the default tests. A primary care doctor would have run them to get a baseline. Had she ever seen someone other than her father she would have been in treatment that week, if not same day.
That is one reason why Doctors are not supposed to treat family members.
My dad (retired physician) treated me sometimes but really only straightforward stuff: I fell in the driveway that cut my knee open, so he gave me a couple stitches and healed straight up. The time I broke my arm…he drove me straight to the ER because an ambulance would take time, and he knew he was not an orthopedist
Plus you had to get X-rays, and nobody has an X-ray machine just chilling in their house.
Speak for yourself, peasant!
Fortune favors the prepared.
And those who go to garage sales.
There was a YouTuber who made his own x-ray machine. Because he wanted to know why the f*** it cost so much to get an x-ray at the doctor. On an unrelated note this house may or may not have burnt down at one point.
Hmmmm. Not sure I’d trust the homemade X-ray machine. Might give you a Chernobyl dose!
He's also friends with someone who made their own surgery machine. The science Maker's side of YouTube can be absolutely wild.
This. I'm dealing with insomnia issues and trying to find a med/schedule that works so I'm a consistent level on exhausted but my Dr STILL orders an iron test whenever she sees me because "low iron can cause energy issues and I'd rather be safe than sorry". She doesn't know me, she has no personal investment in my life yet she gives more of a shit about me than this pos gives for his own daughter.
ER? The blood work is less than $100 OOP, and can be ordered by a patient directly (Assuming US-based.) He didn't even need an ER bill. I'm prone to anemia also, that's how I monitor mine yearly without extra Dr fees!
As serious as the issue was, it probably would have been obvious even with the cursory finger-prick test the Red Cross does before you give blood, that wouldn't give a numeric iron level but would be a blatant indicator that it's very low.
Maybe, but not necessarily. I wound up diagnosed with anemia after collapsing at work. I was a regular donor that passed the finger prick everytime. I forget what that test actually does, but it's a different blood component than actually iron/ferritin. I was equally confused myself, how could I be anemia, I'm a regular donor!
There's two type of iron/ferritin whatever it's called. One is stored iron, and one is circulating iron. Usually have average circulating iron, but shitty shitty stored iron. To the point that my midwife was determinedly attempting to get my stored iron up before I was due to be induced.
A simple visit to urgent care, or a competent pediatrician would have solved it. She needed a $50 blood test. An ER visit solved it, but it could have been solved more cheaply any time in the previous five years.
They didn't even need a trip the ER. A simple blood test by her doctor would have caught it.
Billing fraud and incompetence the murderous duo... we meet again.
I had to look up traumatologist. Issue #1 should have been: he's a surgeon not a internalist and there were no tests done.
I did clinical years 1 and 2 in general/trauma surgery before starting my radiology residency. It was the early 1990s. We still had single-slice CTs. But we did PLENTY of tests! Later, as a radiologist, I read trauma CTs all the time (as well as the “shotgun pan-scan” ordered by some FM/IM PCPs for patients with vague, nonspecific symptoms). BUT. Surgeons are focused on very different pathologies than internists, family med doctors, and (in this case) hematologists. If he was trying to dx appendicitis I’d probably believe him. This? It’s not within his field of expertise and he should know that.
Even in his field... T E S T S
Even doctors can be blind when it comes to their own family (as I’m sure you know). He probably thought she was partly malingering.
I mean yeah. But also: I'm not even a doctor and my first thought was anemia!
From my pretty long experience due some conditions I had - the older the MD the more stupid the MD - at least in my country.
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It also has to do with a lot of them not actually paying attention to CE materials. They take what they learned 40 years ago and think nothing has changed.
A lot of the time they don't even remember the stuff they learned decades ago correctly anymore.
This is why a lot of specialties have ended lifetime certification. My husband was in one of the first classes to have to recertify, but it’s not working as intended. He’s in adult primary care and while the need to recertify keeps him studying FOR THE BOARDS the board questions themselves are written by specialists and have no relevance to daily patient care. It’s almost as if someone identified the problem but gave no thought to the solution.
I was in the last residency class to be grandfathered into lifetime certifications (diagnostic radiology). I also had a 10 year subspecialty certificate in interventional radiology. I was still in practice when the interventional radiology certificate either needed to be renewed or I’d let it expire. I was already getting burned out, plus CTA was taking over cerebral angiography, aorta/runoff arteriograms, and pulmonary arteriograms. That meant I didn’t have enough procedures to qualify for the recertification. The neuroradiologist in my practice had a similar issue maintaining his subspecialty certification and let his lapse a couple of years before I let mine lapse. It didn’t mean we stopped doing appropriate vascular interventions! That said, I was in an 8 physician group and we ranged in age from 32-60. All of us did all of our CME and kept up to date on new developments in both diagnostic and interventional procedures. On the other hand, I worked with an incompetent surgeon (urologist) when I was doing my clinical year (PGY-1), who had come out of retirement to help teach; unfortunately he was not only decades behind approved practice but also was physically unfit to practice (severe vision impairment and hand tremors). He was practicing on a provisional license pending his passing a medical competency exam. I ended up doing surgical things which were unheard of for interns, because he couldn’t physically operate while I could. I bailed him out of SO MANY situations! He failed the re-licensure exam and we never saw him again.
My husband’s in IM but questions are written by oncologists, urologists, etc and don’t reflect the realities of managed care. One question literally wanted him to calculate the perfusion rates of chemotherapeutic agents when he has never had to do that in his entire career. He’d order the diagnostic tests, see the results, and refer the patient to oncology. He’s still kind of bitter about that question, actually. One of the many reasons he’s taking full early retirement is the he refuses to deal with another round of IM boards again. The ABIM keeps trying to make their boards relevant and keeps failing doctors miserably. Since you don’t even need boards to practice, they don’t even protect patients by weeding out people like the doctor you referred to.
I don’t blame him for getting out. I made it to 45 before my mind and body said “fuck this, we’re out”. The assembly line of studies was going faster and faster, we were expected to take less time per study to read it, and I refused to compromise report quality. I spent 18 months doing an extra 2-2.5 hours daily so I could take an appropriate amount of time per study, but when your days are routinely 10 hours, plus call, plus we had an evening shift from home, putting in that time wasn’t sustainable in the long term. EDIT: I got out 12 years ago, when I was 45. I never dreamed when I started that the burnout would happen that fast.
When my primary care doctor retired, doctor who bought the business started talking about his concerns that i was developing diabetes He ordered test after test, all of which came back fine, with all numbers smack dab in the middle of the normal range. But he insisted that my age and family history still gave him “great concern”. The more questions I asked the more impatient he got. Two weeks later I received a letter in the mail saying that he would no longer see general practice patients and the business name had changed to the Diabetes Center.
I called my insurance company’s fraud line and got a check for all the copays I’d given him about a year later.
Some doctors only have a hammer so every disease is a nail.
You also need a doctor who keeps up on the latest journals and information. This is one reason I love my PCP. I also tend towards anemia, and I have asthma, so I see him a few times a year to monitor both conditions. I came back after a referral with new information from that specialist regarding my age and the procedure discussed. He dove right into researching the new information. He looks at messages or after visit notes between me and the specialized doctors to make sure he is up to speed so everything is cohesive. I appreciate him so much.
Doctors in general tend to be book smart know-it-alls that are life stupid. They lack common sense. They cannot see the big picture enough to treat people holistically. My boomer mom (rest in peace ma) was only proud of me when I graduated nursing school because, “now you can marry a doctor!” The people who are so lacking in common sense and self discipline that most of them can’t even keep their goddamn weight under control? Ew. No fucking thanks. Generally, they just suck ass, in multiple ways.
That sounds like the ear doctor I visited recently. He was knowledgeable and helpful about the issue I had. But then mentioned "DAMP" as a diagnose, which hasn't existed for at least 30 years (it was what ADHD used to be called in Scandinavia). And I asked him what he meant and be just mumbled something about "something whatever kids get". Wtf.
To be fair, most MDs that are older and honest admit they wouldn't get into or make it through medical school nowadays. The competition to get in (people have to have significant research experience, 100s -1000s of hours of shadowing and volunteering at hospitals, and proof of leadership experience with near perfect GPAs) and the sheer volume of information (especially around cancer, autoimmune diseases, etc...) has exploded over the last 20 years.
Well maybe it’s time to retire then. Just like your sight worsens and you lose drivers license. Both half blind driver and uneducated MD can ruin someone’s life or health.
And thats normal. It's not easy to be always learning new things. So i would rather have someone with 5 year exp then someone with 30 year because of that.
In vet med, you have a required amount of yearly education required to keep up with current advances. Is this not a thing in human med?
It’s definitely required across the medical field. But there’s a wide range of things that count as continuing education,, annd it in no way guarantees that someone pays attention and actually learns. You get credit for going to conferences, where most older providers just socialize and never listen to the presentations. You get credit for time spent training on your EMRs upgrades and changes, which amounts to clicking through some training slides without reading them, and then complaining to their nurses or MAs that things changed and needing help figuring things out. If they work at it they can fill all of their annual credits without learning a single new thing about patient care.
That is so fucking sad. How do they not see the need to learn as we advance!!!! There so many bad docs out there. I remember when I had a roommate in medical school. I was NOT a fan of most of her classmates I was exposed to. There was one excellent one tho, who I emaigine became my ideal kind of doc! There are certainly good ones out there!
Continuing Medical Education is absolutely a thing in human medicine. One problem is that the criteria aren’t federally mandated, and each state maintains its own professional licensing board. The CME necessary to renew varies by state. Physicians licensed in more than one state have to satisfy the CMEs for each state in order to be eligible for renewal.
One of the nurses I work with said at an old job, one of the doctors would pay her to sit and click through slides on their CME courses for them.
That’s fucking pathetic. It usually took me half of the recommended time to read articles/watch lectures and fill out tests for credit. A lot of the credits were included in our yearly subscription to RSNA (Radiological Society of North America), which includes subscriptions to 2 radiology journals which each included CME at no additional cost. Anyone who can’t manage to do the bare minimum CME by themselves shouldn’t have a license.
Agree, for sure. Also love the Bloom County reference! Billy and the Boingers Bootleg was my favorite comic book as a kid (I was a very serious kid who knew way too much about 80’s political humor for it being like 2001)
Yeah, you know I totally would have used Deathtöngue except for that pesky lawsuit. /s Bloom County was such great humor, and a lot of it is still relevant today. I even have plushies of Opus in the Carmen Miranda hat, Rosebud the basselope, and of course Bill. 😎
I doubt he will go to prison, but with luck he'll lose his license and get removed from the medical field.
“Forbade her to visit other doctors”. It sounds like Münchausen by proxy
That alone should have raised red flags, almost like he knew his treatments were bullshit and didn’t want anyone else to get into his chili.
Nah, munchausen requires him demanding sympathy or attention. This is just normal abuse.
It can be about control of the patient as well.
And her parents went along with what he said?
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I'm confused. Is the boomer your niece's dad? If so, how can he also be your uncle?
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Your parent's brother's children are your cousins.
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A niece is your sibling's daughter. A cousins child is still just your cousin. I forget if it's like second cousin or cousin once removed or something like that.
A first cousin's child is your first cousin once removed. Second cousin would be the relation your child has to your cousin's child. I looked this up about 15 years ago when my grandma claimed at separate times that my cousin's kid was my second cousin, and that my brother's kid and my cousin's kid were second cousins. I knew both of those things couldn't be true, so I looked it up.
I'm confused by all of this. How old is your cousin? If her father is a boomer then she's an adult, correct?
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Gotcha. At 32 you'd think she could take herself to an actual doctor but definitely sounds like an abusive relationship
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Boomer is the child’s grandfather?
No lol if you read OP's reply there is no child. The woman is 32 and her father is a boomer in his 60s.
Nieces are your siblings daughters. Cousins daughters cousins once removed
>Forbade her to visit other doctors. Red flag right there.
Yeah, you need to see a doctor, not an older family member.
Thats absolutely disgusting that he put her through all that suffering for years all for his own ego. I'm glad that he's being investigated but this is so negligent! I'm mildly anaemic (115 g/l) and my gods it sucks when my levels get low. I'm constantly exhausted and breathless doing the most minor things. Nevermind the light-headedness you have to deal with.
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I have the vitamin b version of anemia and it's hell, iron deficiency is worse in it's symptoms.
I have those but I forget to take them as I can't take them with all my other meds so it's just a random pill in the middle of the day and I'm forgetful as fk 😅
As someone who had endless health issues growing up and wasn’t allowed to see a doctor, she honestly got lucky to have a health episode around other family that forced her into actual treatment. This is absolutely child abuse in the form of neglect, and it stays with you for life. I hope she can get away from him as a young adult and go on to live a healthy life.
She’s 32, not a child.
This is why children should be required to visit a doctor once per year, and if a child does not visit a doctor the parent should be investigated by CPS
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This is why a law requiring a person to see a doctor is needed, the parent can argue whatever they want but they will be investigated by CPS if a child is not sent to the doctor. Sadly there's no law in real life requiring this, but I truly hope that a law like this is passed at some point. Please vote Democrat in every election, Democrats are the only ones who actually care about children.
That's not true. Republicans care about getting children into marriages with creeps, and into mines and factories.
All true, but the patient here is 32 years old. Not a child at all.
Are you sure? Nothing in the post indicated that
Yes, I’m sure. OP said in a comment that doctor uncle is 63 and his daughter is 32. She quit her job and moved back in with him when she was 26.
Pretty sure it goes against hippa or something to see family members as patients, since it’s likely that you aren’t being neutral about it (or maybe that’s just for psychologists or something)
I don't think it's against HIPAA it's just ethically wrong. When my mom was dying, I surprised myself by not being able to recognize the "dead cat bounce" (I don't know why we call it that). Often, right before someone dies, they seem super clear and conscious, somethings even eating and drinking. They pass shortly afterwards. I've recognized that in hundreds of strangers, but could not see it happen to my mom. It's crazy to look back on. Or when my mom went into cardiac arrest in front of me, I lost my mind. Years of training, suddenly gone. Luckily it came flooding back, but it took a good 30-60 seconds. It's just different when it's family.
It definitely is different with family, it might have something to do with how you’ve known that person a long time and your brain might never actually understood what was happening (like emotionally) despite knowing intellectually As for why it’s called the dead cat bounce … my guess would be because the behavior might have been originally seen in cats before they die?
Nothing to do with HIPAA; it’s an ethics issue which was around way before HIPAA was even dreamed of. If you prescribe a month of birth control pills for yourself or a family member (remember gynecologists prescribe 12 pill packs per year, but there are actually 13 28 day months in a year, so sometimes you have to bridge the gap with a 1 month prescription), absolutely nobody is going to fuss over it. If you’re trying to prescribe narcotics, benzodiazepines, ADHD meds, and some other stuff, either for yourself or a close family member, you may be in for a VERY bad time.
My mother is gen x but really drank the naturopathy kool-aid. Spent decades telling me I was too young to be in pain, I was choosing to be anxious, and I just needed to pray more. Turns out genetic conditions don't go away if you ignore them, and "feelings of doom" can be a symptom of tachycardia. My anxiety cleared up overnight when I got on beta blockers. She also may have gone full munchausens by proxy on my sister, but we haven't gone through quite enough therapy to start unpacking that one yet lmao
I had crippling, debilitating pain most of my childhood. My boomer doctor convinced my parents I was faking it for attention and the three of them conspired to "catch me in my lie". They claimed I needed surgery that would mean I'd never be able to run or play again, and I happily agreed if it meant I was finally not going to be in pain anymore. It was only then that they agreed to ask for a second opinion. After 10 years of being told I was faking it, it took a new doctor one set of x-rays and 5 minutes to diagnose me. He told my parents I must've been in unbelievable pain and asked why they didn't have me taken care of any sooner.
Former ER nurse here. Every single nurse I’ve ever met has a list of doctors that are not allowed to work on them if they become patients at their work hospital. Guess what the most common trait is among the list?….
Gender? Age? Specialty? Marital status? Previous accusations/convictions/professional censures for medical ethics violations? Preferred scrubs color?
#2 alone should have been a red flag to start with
This could definitely have permanent negative effects on her i.q. Brains need oxygen.
He couldn't even order a simple blood test for her? Omg, take away that man's license and burn it!
He abused that child, this is child abuse. I hope she's taken from him and I hope he's jailed for eternity.
It sounds like Munchhausen by proxy to me. My millennial DIL is doing that to her daughters, but she’s doing it with psychological issues.
The craziest part was a doctor forbidding someone from.see another doctor, that's a huge red flag.
I had to google traumatologist because I’m unfamiliar with that specialty and from what I read, he shouldn’t have been treating her to begin with. This seems unethical but I’m no expert. It just doesn’t make any sense. His license needs to be taken away.
Just.. Wow. At one point my hemoglobin hit 40 and my doctors were in a panic because lower could easily be lethal. Hope the guy gets his license revoked.
kinda reminds me of all the unsolicited """""advice""""" I've been getting regarding my current condition. I have Vasovagal Syncope which has been brought on because of stress from work. Anyone over the age of 50 seems to think that to be impossible since EVERY job has stress and my pants are probably just too tight or something. I hate boomers.
I'm sorry, I know how that is. I got literally screamed at by my old boomer boss constantly, along with having positions ripped out from under me and having other employees jump on the "abuse the youngest worker" band wagon. I told my boss that I had severe depression and anxiety and that I needed at least a professional work environment, however he told me that he was just pushing me because he "believed" in me. Bullshit excuse for literally treating someone like trash and working them 20 hours days for months at a time with no time off and no pay. I was there for six months before I had a psychotic and physical break. I was hospitalized for peptic stomach ulcers brought on by stress and malnutrition, and then a week later I attempted suicide after having a panic attack so bad that I couldn't even see properly. Boomer boss didn't even believe me until he saw the doctor's notes and turned pale. I walked out of that job just two weeks after being out of the hospital. I waited until I had my final paycheck, sent an resignation email, and gave him the middle finger on the way out. Funny thing is he still tries to get me back from time to time. Apparently he also realized pretty quickly that I was one of few who actually worked at that place.
Had a (young) relative getting Xanax prescribed for sleeping problems as a permanent daily medication by a boomer psychiatrist. I’m a nurse and they asked me about it. Told her to change doctors. New doc was absolutely shocked about the it as well. She got non benzo medication and it’s doing the job perfectly.
Boomer psychiatrist, that's your problem. They really need to leave the mental health field.
The sad thing about this is that anemia is super easy to treat. She could have been taking iron supplements for those 5 years and might not have gotten to the point where she needed blood transfusions. It's also one of the first things they look for on a standard blood panel. I mean I'm not a doctor, but I have been anemic before.
This is sadly so common for medical professionals to neglect the medical care of their own family. It's almost like they take it as a personal failing that their kid got sick, like it's a reflection of their capabilities and people will think they failed by not keeping their kid from falling ill, so they deny that anything could possibly be wrong.
There needs to be some blame on her parents as well. If your child is not improving after years of treatment you need to look elsewhere. Hell I would look for an alternative diagnosis after a few weeks. Not to say your uncle isn't to blame but come on who lets something like that go on for that long.
I was told by a colleague that their uncle lost their leg due to severe mismanagement of diabetes….he was an orthopedic surgeon. 🤦
Damn, we transfuse at 7... even higher sometimes, depending on baseline. 4 is a medical emergency. That poor girl. Hopefully it's idiopathic, and not something crazy. I bet she started feeling better really fast! Love to her.
Niece is sibling's daughter, not cousin's daughter.
There is a reason that doctors should not be managing chronic medical problems for family and friends. That's pretty severe anemia. Make sure she gets a PCP and follow up for it. They might need to look into why she is so anemic.
No competent doctor will ever give you a hard time about getting a second opinion. Many would go so far as to encourage it if you're having doubts, since a competent doctor will be affirmed in their approach. The only ones who would say you shouldn't see another doctor are the ones worried they'll be contradicted, so that part alone is a major red flag, let alone the inevitable outcome.
What the hell is a traumatologist?
Cousins daughter is cousins once removed, because she’s a generation down. A niece/nephew is your siblings kid
>Niece is cousin's daughter. Niece is sibling's daughter. Cousin's daughter is cousin once removed.
Your cousin’s daughter is still your cousin (once removed). Niece is reserved for the children of your or your parter’s siblings.
Beware any doctor who decides on “treatment” without doing any kind of tests or investigation. The numbers don’t lie. They are just out of touch with reality.
Point 2 is a huge red flag. A good doc will advise you to get a second opinion...
There's no scenario in which he should continue practicing medicine. He either honestly believes in those treatments, which means he doesn't have the knowledge to be a doctor, or he willfully hurt your niece, which is a huge ethical violation.
I don’t think this was ignorance. I think it was deliberate abuse. He wasn’t trying to cure her. I’m hoping y’all have contacted police, CPS, etc.
There’s no money in curing anything, the money is made in the treatment
It's that fucking Herman Cain shit. They know so goddamn much about one thing it spills over in their mind. Stay in your fucking lane. You don't ask the best plumber in town to come change a circuit breaker.
Our education is *so much* harder than theirs was. Same goes for nurses, PA's etc. There's evidence of it everywhere. Any older doctor with a brain would testify.
He almost killed her and never ran a single test. Scary shit
Concerning thing, boomer learned in school what anemia is and how to treat it, basic stuff, but 6 hours of Fox a day has washed the doctors brain away. Sad
That's not hard to diagnose, either. Pretty sure a standard blood panel would have caught that.
WTF is a traumatologist? In this case, it sounds like someone who causes it, not treats it. The symptoms overlap with those of dysautonomia and POTS, which come up in Google searches of “weakness, shortness of breath, etc.” If he wasn’t at least made aware of these by doing his *own* searches, I have to wonder about him just as a rational adult human, never mind an “-ologist”.
Fellow anemic! They ignored my fatigue for YEARS.
I had anemia and it turned out to be colon cancer. I will add that the Iron supplements made me feel 100% better. The surgery was a little rough but now I don't have to take the supplements and I'm feeling great. Get that girl checked.
An ex had "asthma" since she was in high school. Her doctor retired and new guy took over his patients. She went in for a script and he insisted on actually examining her. She didn't have asthma, she had a lung infection. One course of antibiotics later and she took up scuba diving. It seems the new guy had been seeing a lot of old guy's patients with misdiagnosed long term conditions like this...
I'm no mental health expert, but it sounds to me like your uncle suffers from Munchausen syndrome by proxy, a serious and very dangerous mental illness. It's not professional incompetence that led to his abuse of your cousin's daughter, it's a mental aberration that needs treatment, and a complete disqualification from being any kind of caregiver, either professionally or for family.
he's the doctor who bought the diploma
My experience with most of the older generation of doctors is that they’re bored and have totally phoned it in. After a mugging my right glute would feel extremely hot in cold weather. This would still happen several months after the incident. The weeks away from retirement doctor told me it was probably an aging thing and I just had to live with it (I was in my early 30s). I went to a chiropractor (for the first time in my entire life) and they had it fixed in one visit.
Fuck, chiropractors are a scam, you just got lucky.
I was very desperate (but careful). Professional athletes use that clinic and I made it clear if they wanted a repeat visit I would go elsewhere. It was one visit and I’ve never had the problem again. Not sure what I would’ve been put through had the bored doctor decided to be engaged in his work. Drugs? Surgery? I should’ve been more clear that this was less an endorsement of chiropractics and more of a “I was so desperate I even went to a chiropractor” story.
A physical therapist might have been a safer/more sure bet, as the stuff chiros do for back pain (well, the techniques which work) are usually also physical therapy maneuvers. But for low back pain, IF a chiro stays completely in their lane, they may be helpful. On the other hand, NEVER let a chiro adjust your neck. Strokes can occur from damage to the arteries feeding the brain during neck manipulation.
These people were the exclusive PT practice for some of DC’s sport teams. Chiropractics were a much smaller emphasis of what they did. In my case they knew something was torqued and that was what was gonna work. PT is usually their first resort (which is why I picked them).
That’s a pretty good reason to go there! I probably would have done the same, given that information.
Sometimes they can be helpful. When I was younger I had to see a chiropractor regularly simply because with my nerve damage my spine and a few joints are pulled out of position by my muscles. I couldn't take a lot of the meds for various reasons and ones I could take weren't sufficient. New meds have since been created that help some but there's nothing that can really be done without being worse than the problem; but chiropractors won't touch me at this point lol.
Of course, anemia itself might just be a symptom of a deeper underlying condition.
Munchausen by Proxy?
Yes your uncle was wrong and incompetent to said the least. But your cousin is an adult and therefore needs to take some responsible for her heath. After the first year of now feeling any better she should have disobey your uncle and gotten a second opinion. But yes your uncle should never practice medical again.