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"Would the doctor even tell you if there was a problem going on?"
There is a post here on the forum that has really taken off from legal matters to patients trying to figure out how screwed up the health care system is here and abroad (the UK). One of the topics throughout that post is whether or not a doctor would even tell you if there was a problem; I wanted to keep this going to see if any of you have found this to be the case.
I do want to address Kenkeith as he believes a doctor would never withhold information, even life threatening information, which happened in our case. (we were told our daughter had nothing wrong with her heart at 6 years other than WPW. She had a severe cardiomyopathy (HCM), ended up in heart failure by 13 and had to have a transplant at 22) Doctors do have issues with patients even going as far as to not treat them while they are hospitalized. Here's an example, Ken, I would like to know what you think about this:
My daughter was seen at a major medical center who had a pediatric cardiology department with 2 physicians; one being her doctor. She went into A-Fib (which could have killed her because of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy; this is a very serious problem because of the HCM) The night she was admitted, her own cardiologist was there, but he left for a week the following day. The other cardiologist refused to take care of her for that week; we saw him several times because he had one of his patients on the same floor . He never once came to see our daughter or do anything to help her, not even when she had to be transferred to the CCU (Coronary Care Unit) when she got into trouble one night, The residents on the floor took care of her, even though they didn't really know what they were doing either. ( I can't blame them for that one) What do you think about a doctor like that? (Don't kid yourself, our doctor was absolutely LIVID when he returned the following week. So not only have doctors withheld information from us; they have gone as far as to not treating her! Remember that if a doctor does not tell you something, you don't know about it unless you really understand exactly what is going on to ask the right questions. I knew the questions to ask and all it got me was a doctor and his group of 10-12 Fellows who were obviously TORKED off at my audasity to even question them! We have been all over this country to the best medical facilities this country has to offer from Houston's Medical Centers ,to The National Insitutes of Health; we've seen good doctors and bad, believe me! There are A LOT of doctors out there who withold information from their patients; they judge you on how they think you will react to what they say and if they see any panic, they watch what they say, just the same as when medical records get rewritten saying tests were done on a certain day, even if you have had a blotched up surgery. (My major surgery actually disappeared from my hospital records and was replaced with a cath report that had actually been done 5 years earlier!!) So, as I asked earlier, what do you think about things like these happening? ( I do want to add a note that the doctors who first diagnosed my daughter as being perfectly fine were in the UK, not the US)
Anyone else out there have experiences like this?
I do want to address Kenkeith as he believes a doctor would never withhold information, even life threatening information, which happened in our case. (we were told our daughter had nothing wrong with her heart at 6 years other than WPW. She had a severe cardiomyopathy (HCM), ended up in heart failure by 13 and had to have a transplant at 22) Doctors do have issues with patients even going as far as to not treat them while they are hospitalized. Here's an example, Ken, I would like to know what you think about this:
My daughter was seen at a major medical center who had a pediatric cardiology department with 2 physicians; one being her doctor. She went into A-Fib (which could have killed her because of the Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy; this is a very serious problem because of the HCM) The night she was admitted, her own cardiologist was there, but he left for a week the following day. The other cardiologist refused to take care of her for that week; we saw him several times because he had one of his patients on the same floor . He never once came to see our daughter or do anything to help her, not even when she had to be transferred to the CCU (Coronary Care Unit) when she got into trouble one night, The residents on the floor took care of her, even though they didn't really know what they were doing either. ( I can't blame them for that one) What do you think about a doctor like that? (Don't kid yourself, our doctor was absolutely LIVID when he returned the following week. So not only have doctors withheld information from us; they have gone as far as to not treating her! Remember that if a doctor does not tell you something, you don't know about it unless you really understand exactly what is going on to ask the right questions. I knew the questions to ask and all it got me was a doctor and his group of 10-12 Fellows who were obviously TORKED off at my audasity to even question them! We have been all over this country to the best medical facilities this country has to offer from Houston's Medical Centers ,to The National Insitutes of Health; we've seen good doctors and bad, believe me! There are A LOT of doctors out there who withold information from their patients; they judge you on how they think you will react to what they say and if they see any panic, they watch what they say, just the same as when medical records get rewritten saying tests were done on a certain day, even if you have had a blotched up surgery. (My major surgery actually disappeared from my hospital records and was replaced with a cath report that had actually been done 5 years earlier!!) So, as I asked earlier, what do you think about things like these happening? ( I do want to add a note that the doctors who first diagnosed my daughter as being perfectly fine were in the UK, not the US)
Anyone else out there have experiences like this?
I also have to question just how much input is made by drug companies with their very persuasive purses of money. Heart patients are like sheep, consulted, probed and then put onto statins. I know a few people who are on statins and yet had normal cholesterol levels. If you ask your cardiologist "if 75% of people with normal cholesterol get heart disease, why is it the number one blame" they simply say "because it is the cause". Since fat was seen lining arteries in an autopsy, a brilliant scientist decided "hmm, fat, so it must be caused by fat in the flood, end of story". For decades this idea has stuck and yet still not everything is understood about the chemical processes with cholesterol. It actually frightens me each time I take a statin/aspirin because I wonder if I am really doing the right thing. Am I doing something which is based on real fact, or am I simply another sheep doing what the drug companies claim is the right thing to line their pockets. I feel sure I'm not the only one who feels this way.
maybe I should finish that last statement (LOLs!) do not withold information, I would love to understand why you have come to that conclusion.
I haven't been on the forum in a few days and really got a shock coming back on finding all of your posts! Heck this has been such interesting reading, I haven't even wanted to stop long enough to go grab a second cup of coffee! And Pika, your last comment really made me laugh!! :)
Ken, you asked me what I believed was the underlying cause of my daughter's mistreatment for good medical care. With everything that Ed34 has written about, I have to question if that was what was actually going on with us. It was obvious that the cardiologist that she was first sent to had predetermined that he was not going to diagnose her with HCM, which is terminal That was established BEFORE he ever saw her or examined her. There must have been a huge arguement between the cardiologist and the cardiologist who ran the echo on her; the doctor who ran the echo on her agreed the HCM was not only there, but was so obvious, that there was no way anyone could miss it; her wall thickness was that of a grown man. The diagnosing of children with terminal illnesses is different than diagnosing adults; children haven't lived a life yet. many young doctors look at the child and think about their own children at home who may be the same age and they consider what this sick child's life is like. They have, for the most part, a great deal of empathy for the parents. We've had many doctors over the years, who would not even look at us when they would talk to us. As odd as this may sound, knowing the right questions to ask can actually hurt you as a patient. I've had doctors who admitted being scared to death of me because of the knowledge I had with this disease; I've had doctors ask me HOW to treat my daughter when she was in the ER because they didn't know what to do with her. They didn't know how to treat her, because they had nevcer seen a patient like her before; if they tried to deal with the electrical problems, the muscle problems became worse and vise-versa. A few of the doctors resented the knowledge I had; including the doctor I mentioned at the beginning of this posting. The vast majority of care my daughter received was very good care; even when the doctors didn't have a clue, they certainly tried above and beyond. Monetarily, there was no real gain as far as I know, with the exception about what I am finding out about the bonuses Ed has been writing about on here.
Erijon, You made mention about checking out the doctors on line; not everyone has a computer or access to a computer and there are some of us who are just flat out computer dumb! LOLs! Asking the hard questions can be really difficult, that is why so many write on forums like this; they are too afraid to confront a doctor in a one on one basis. You also have to know WHAT questions to ask. It's the same old thing of "How do you look up the spelling of a word if you can't spell it in the first place?" The vast majority of patients don't have a clue what to ask; many want to know how long do they have to live, being faced with heart disease, but are just too afraid to ask. I would never agree that the cardiologist we saw was incompetent, not by a long shot; why he chose to keep a life threatening condition from us is really beyond me. I can't even say it was because there was no prognostic value; I could have allowed my 6 year old to run around and drop dead as a result of that. There was a life that had to be lived without free reign, but with major restrictions. Had it not been for the fact that she also had Juvenile Rhuematoid Arthritis and she was restricted by that disease, she could have dropped dead from the HCM and arrhythmia problems. For a period of eleven months, she had no treatment for a cardiac disease that was killing her.
So if many of you believe that doctors
Ken, you asked me what I believed was the underlying cause of my daughter's mistreatment for good medical care. With everything that Ed34 has written about, I have to question if that was what was actually going on with us. It was obvious that the cardiologist that she was first sent to had predetermined that he was not going to diagnose her with HCM, which is terminal That was established BEFORE he ever saw her or examined her. There must have been a huge arguement between the cardiologist and the cardiologist who ran the echo on her; the doctor who ran the echo on her agreed the HCM was not only there, but was so obvious, that there was no way anyone could miss it; her wall thickness was that of a grown man. The diagnosing of children with terminal illnesses is different than diagnosing adults; children haven't lived a life yet. many young doctors look at the child and think about their own children at home who may be the same age and they consider what this sick child's life is like. They have, for the most part, a great deal of empathy for the parents. We've had many doctors over the years, who would not even look at us when they would talk to us. As odd as this may sound, knowing the right questions to ask can actually hurt you as a patient. I've had doctors who admitted being scared to death of me because of the knowledge I had with this disease; I've had doctors ask me HOW to treat my daughter when she was in the ER because they didn't know what to do with her. They didn't know how to treat her, because they had nevcer seen a patient like her before; if they tried to deal with the electrical problems, the muscle problems became worse and vise-versa. A few of the doctors resented the knowledge I had; including the doctor I mentioned at the beginning of this posting. The vast majority of care my daughter received was very good care; even when the doctors didn't have a clue, they certainly tried above and beyond. Monetarily, there was no real gain as far as I know, with the exception about what I am finding out about the bonuses Ed has been writing about on here.
Erijon, You made mention about checking out the doctors on line; not everyone has a computer or access to a computer and there are some of us who are just flat out computer dumb! LOLs! Asking the hard questions can be really difficult, that is why so many write on forums like this; they are too afraid to confront a doctor in a one on one basis. You also have to know WHAT questions to ask. It's the same old thing of "How do you look up the spelling of a word if you can't spell it in the first place?" The vast majority of patients don't have a clue what to ask; many want to know how long do they have to live, being faced with heart disease, but are just too afraid to ask. I would never agree that the cardiologist we saw was incompetent, not by a long shot; why he chose to keep a life threatening condition from us is really beyond me. I can't even say it was because there was no prognostic value; I could have allowed my 6 year old to run around and drop dead as a result of that. There was a life that had to be lived without free reign, but with major restrictions. Had it not been for the fact that she also had Juvenile Rhuematoid Arthritis and she was restricted by that disease, she could have dropped dead from the HCM and arrhythmia problems. For a period of eleven months, she had no treatment for a cardiac disease that was killing her.
So if many of you believe that doctors
I believe my cardiologist wrote all over my file "anxiety". He won't admit any of his patient will die of heart related. If he admits his patient die of heart related then he is the one - cardiologist has to take responsiblity. MY CARDIOLOGIST WILL WRITE ON MY DEAD REPORT AS I DIE FROM "ANXIETY"!
"There are legitimate reasons for a doctor to withhold something if it has no prognostic value."
A doctor can write anything in the records and say anything to a patient if he needs to. How can we possibly know the information in a doctors head. If a doctor decides a patient will not be cost effective, he could simply say he/she is doing very well on medication. It is unlikely if there will be any come back because we can all die of heart attack at any time. I know that in the UK the body will only be examined if the doctor is unsure of the reasons for death. If someone is know to have heart problems, this is simply written on the death certificate and end of story. We talk of ethics in hospitals but even in the uk it was discovered certain hospitals were taking organs from the deceased when no donor card was issued and without next of kin consent. Mothers discovered their babies had been mutilated to remove vital organs for transplant without their knowledge. Believe me, if we dig deep enough, the discoveries will have us all too scared to ever go into a hospital again.
A doctor can write anything in the records and say anything to a patient if he needs to. How can we possibly know the information in a doctors head. If a doctor decides a patient will not be cost effective, he could simply say he/she is doing very well on medication. It is unlikely if there will be any come back because we can all die of heart attack at any time. I know that in the UK the body will only be examined if the doctor is unsure of the reasons for death. If someone is know to have heart problems, this is simply written on the death certificate and end of story. We talk of ethics in hospitals but even in the uk it was discovered certain hospitals were taking organs from the deceased when no donor card was issued and without next of kin consent. Mothers discovered their babies had been mutilated to remove vital organs for transplant without their knowledge. Believe me, if we dig deep enough, the discoveries will have us all too scared to ever go into a hospital again.
I'm enjoying this - more than I should - so I'm not letting it go.
I'm not sure what you find conclusory other than my extrapolation of this seemingly isolated incident. I admitted that was conclusory.
When you read a legal case, you see findings of fact made by the court. In the particular case I'm talking about, the jury found that the physician had concealed a diagnosis. Yeah, maybe that's conclusory, but what else would you conclude when the physician himself admits that he did it? That he didn't do it?
What's conclusory is going off on a tangent about how crooked lawyers are when the point of this entire thread is whether doctors conceal information. Whether lawyers are crooked has no bearing on whether doctors conceal information.
I'm not sure what you find conclusory other than my extrapolation of this seemingly isolated incident. I admitted that was conclusory.
When you read a legal case, you see findings of fact made by the court. In the particular case I'm talking about, the jury found that the physician had concealed a diagnosis. Yeah, maybe that's conclusory, but what else would you conclude when the physician himself admits that he did it? That he didn't do it?
What's conclusory is going off on a tangent about how crooked lawyers are when the point of this entire thread is whether doctors conceal information. Whether lawyers are crooked has no bearing on whether doctors conceal information.
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