How do doctors typically react when patients arrive with their own self-diagnosis?
For eight months, I kept telling my doctor that I might have cancer. I had all the symptoms: rapid weight loss, constant fatigue, flank pain. But he kept dismissing me. He would roll his eyes, ask the usual questions, and I always had the answers. When he suggested B12, I reminded him I was already taking it. I also told him I was on thyroxine, and it was all in my records, but he clearly hadn’t checked.
Instead, he focused on an old prescription for antacids from a decade ago when I had mild heartburn. His advice was to lower the dose and take it twice a day, then return in six months. I told him this wasn’t heartburn; I knew exactly what it felt like. Plus, I had already visited six times; after the third visit, they should refer you.
He reluctantly gave me a referral but marked it as ‘non-urgent.’ When I found out, I broke down—the only time I cried. The receptionist took pity on me and squeezed me into a cancellation slot that Friday. The specialist immediately recognized something was wrong. The CT scan showed a massive tumor wrapped around my kidney. I lost the kidney, part of my stomach, and some core muscles, but I survived. Ten years clear.
Later, I blew up the scan image to poster size, wrote across it in red marker: 'DOES THIS LOOK LIKE HEARTBURN TO YOU?' and glued it to his office door with industrial adhesive, the kind used in construction.
For the record, that tumor was bigger than a honeydew melon.
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