When you have a medical issue, do you hesitate to tell your doctor what you think it could be?

I always tell them that it is Lupus.

How are you feeling now?

“It’s not a toomah.”
The shot they gave you may have been an allergy shot.
Those can be pretty darn effective.
I hope your misery soon abates.

When I start talking about time travel in the ER I fall on the triage list and they make me wait in the waiting room for 5 or more hours and then they offer me some Ativan, and a quick meal and then they send me home.

There you go.

It’s best just to tell the symptoms. They are the medical professionals. They are the ones that should be telling you what it could be.

No I go in crying & demanding better juice

@cinnamonk The same way I’ve felt for the last two weeks. It’s muted now because I started taking 3 Ibuprofen the moment I get up, and repeat every 4 hours. But it’s still there.

@Patty_Melt No, they told me one was for nausea and the other for pain. Gave me no advice or suggestions otherwise. Hardly even got a decent high from it. (I’m a 70’s child. I know what a decent high is!)

The strangest thing about it is I NEVER get headaches. OK, I got one once, back in 1984. So this is so unusual for me. I don’t think they believed me.

Anyway, thanks for your opinions. I have an appoint with my new MD on Tuesday. I’m just going to tell him the symptoms this time, like @anniereborn suggested.

I tell them my symptoms, which symptom specifically led me to seek assistance, and what I think it is.

If necessary I tell them what tests I feel I need.

If really necessary I’ll insist upon it.

I lost my doc in December. I’ve been to his replacement a couple of times. I told him how I was feeling (very funky but can’t put my finger on it) and said I thought a UA was needed and a repeat of chest scans. I can’t remember how I felt when I was coming down with pneumonia, except feeling so so tired, like I was feeling then.
He seemed a bit miffed at my requests, but he did that and only that.
A few days later his nurse called to tell me everything had tested OK. I started to say good bye but then I heard the doc telling her something. Then she said, “He wants you to come back in to discuss the results of the UA.”
I thought, “Okaaay…”
So I did. I refused to pay the office visit charge until I heard what he had to say, which was nothing at all. Nothing. He rattled off abbreviations and numbers and blah blah, all of which was to say the results were normal.
I asked why he brought me in to tell me this.
He tried to insist that I was the one who made the appointment! Shit. No. Bai bai.
I got a bit huffy and he ended up telling me there would be no charge for that visit.

It depends.

When I have a blockage, I know what is happening. I go to the emergency room and tell them, “I have Crohn’s, I had a total colectomy in 2011, I’ve had 3 small bowel obstructions since then, and the pain I am having now is just like those times.” They believe me. I always hope this will get me treatment without a diagnostic CT scan. I want to avoid the big dose of radiation. It never works though; of course they have to diagnose before they can treat. I learned my lesson this most recent time though. The blockage was different and they saw that in the scan. Saw that an NG tube alone wouldn’t clear it, that I needed surgery. Sometimes it’s best to remember that the docs do know best.

In other situations I don’t know what’s going on, and that’s tougher. I was dealing with some upper abdominal pain a few months back; it was moving around enough that some days I thought it was my lungs and other days I thought it was my kidneys. I went to my PCP and described it to her. I suggested my thoughts and she ordered a chest x-ray to check lungs and a urine test to check kidneys. She didn’t really have other ideas of her own for things to test, so I was glad I went in there with my own theories, but then the tests were all clean and I never did end up finding out what was going on. I appreciated that she listened to my theories and ordered tests based on those even though her personal belief was that I was just still sore from surgery. Good docs listen to their patients.

It depends.

Sometimes I hold back divulging a previous diagnosis.

I don’t hold back the telling of my symptoms, or anything that might be pertinent.

I do sometimes tell the doctor what I think it is and ask for specific drugs.

Three weeks ago I went to the doctor, told him what I thought was wrong, he disagreed and wrote me a prescription. I didn’t take it. In the end I was right. Waste of money and time for me.

I am brutally honest with doctors. There is no need to lie. Unless you live in a small town you will never see them outside their office.

I am not embarrassed. If you withhold or lie you are only hurting yourself.

I don’t say a word still gets the best treatment, Reason- Mamma explaining to Doctor.

And we all know what Liam Neeson does

@johnpowell You missed my point. I agree, telling them the symptoms with brutal honesty is important, but in my experience with my new (soon to be ex) doctor, and the ER recently, giving my thoughts on what it could be caused them to address that possible cause, and not look for any other cause.

When my kids were growing up I always told them, “There are 2 people you never, ever lie to: Your doctor and your lawyer.” I wonder when, and if, it ever sunk in that I wasn’t on that list!

Once I had a doctor who did not believe me when I said my kid had pinworms. I brought in the little strip of tape that you use on your behind to collect the eggs, but we had no results, so of course I was “wrong”. Several weeks went by. I was so frustrated.

Then I brought in a pinworm stuck to the tape. Turns out I was right all along. The guy was so excited because by the time I brought the tape into him, the pinworm had laid a bunch of eggs, and he pointed them out to me very excitedly. Never mind what I had been through to get the thing. He was a jerk.

Other times all I had to do was go in, they would look at me and hand me a prescription.

So yes and no.

In a perfect world, they would consider my own thoughts and take them seriously, but then would also use their experience and training to look for other things.

My doctor, who left in December, was so good about that. He often said, “You know your body better than anyone else.” So many doctors just take outraged defense if you “presume” to “tell them their job,” even if all you do is voice suspicions based on what you’re feeling in your own body.

@Dutchess_III Yeah, I had a dentist like that- for an hour. He got outraged because I had the nerve to tell him how to run his business. (I said I was allergic to some of the chemicals my last dentist used on me, and wanted to avoid it being used again.) I walked out. I’ve never seen such unprofessional behavior in a doctor before or since.

Insecurity I guess. But your case is really crazy. I mean, that was some concrete information you gave him, not suspicious.

Can I ask why you didn’t consult your family doctor about your headache? I’m not seeing how this was an emergency, or am I missing something about American healthcare system?