You know you have a bad doctor when a specialist can't diagnose a disease in his specialty

by Melissa
(Minnesota)

I consulted two gastroenterologists, in two separate city's, in regards to abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea, etc. that I had had for six months prior to seeing the first GI doc. I traveled extensively for work and thought I had picked up a bug, or was tired from traveling, or it was from fast food.

About three days before seeing the first GI doc, I had an episode of extreme pain in my upper right abdomen after eating pizza and chicken in the evening. I told the GI doc my symptoms (I had seen a nurse practitioner at my "yearly" checkup a month prior to this appointment, explained to her my symptoms, and she referred me to this guy). After a 10 minute interview (no hands on exam) he sent me for one blood test, an rt. upper quadrant ultrasound, and a stool test.

Two weeks later I was in Florida for my job when one Sunday evening I had a bad episode of diarrhea, nausea, back and abdominal pain. I made it to Monday morning after about 1 hour of sleep, called the GI doc's office, left a message with the receptionist explaining what was going on, and after three hours no call back. I drove to an urgent care clinic where the doc there thought it was my gallbladder. His office faxed the GI doc's office for my lab/ultrasound results.

Well, lo and behold, I found out the GI doc thought I had IBS, that they couldn't find my ultrasound results (I actually had two as the first one the radiologist thought I had a suspicious spot on a kidney but turns out I didn't), and my blood test was ok. The urgent care doctor sent me on my way with some anti-nausea meds. He called as I was driving back to my hotel room to tell me the GI doc had talked to him and the GI doc told him to tell me to come see him when I got back home the next week.

My sister, a retired RN, and her husband happened to be in Florida and she, having worked with gallbladder patients, said she thought it was my gallbladder and told me to eat low fat until the GI doc could see me.

Anyway, I got home called the GI doc's clinic and the receptionist/nurse, despite my telling her the story told me I couldn't get in to see him for 6 weeks! I said no way (as my symptoms kept returning) and made another appointment with a different GI doc in another town closer to home.

Long story short, the second guy, while much more prompt on reports and doing more testing, seemed married to the IBS diagnosis, to the point that two months after my initial visit with him, having undergone a endoscopy/colonoscopy, pelvic ultrasound, abdominal ultrasound, CT scan of the abdomen and a gallbladders ejection fraction test (which showed my gallbladder functioning at 7%-very, very low) he still would not refer me to a surgeon!! He wanted me to go in for even more testing-meaning more radiation exposure.

Fed up my sister, a family practice physician got me in to the hospital she works at (a 300 mile drive from my house), I saw two surgeon's who both agreed the gallbladder was the culprit (I continued to have bad pain attacks quite frequently all this time), and lo and behold it was!!! The duct that empties into the intestine was completely scarred shut and the official diagnosis was chronic acalculaous (without gall stones) cholecystis or chronically inflamed gallbladder. My gallbladder could have ruptured, or more worrisome to my physician sister, was I could have gotten pancreatitis. And these two so-called specialists were seemingly oblivious to the seriousness of my problem!

I also am now dealing with yet another misdiagnoses, this one for more than two decades. Lo and behold what kept being termed as a chronic unstable ankle (i.e. ligaments) is actually a congenital bone condition that will probably have me undergoing yet another surgery less than three months after my first surgery!

This is all on top of a three year quest to get a diagnosis for my hypothyroidism which was misdiagnosed as "depression and anxiety" back when I was in college.

Lots of bad doctors out there unfortunately.