Thread by @gravislizard

so i had a bunch of weird fucked up health problems from Dec-March that have been slowly getting better, but they happen every year. So I went to my doctor.

the tl;dr is "our healthcare system is literally incapable of solving any problem that doesn't involve visible external bleeding, heart arrythmia or cancer" so let's just get that out of the way

if you try to get anything else fixed, you're ramming a square peg through a star shaped hole half its size. the entire system RESISTS. it gets ANGRY and FRUSTRATED. the doctors don't like you. insurance won't pay.

I was having bizarre arm pain and numbness and my arm veins were swollen. I was worried that I had a clot, and studies over the past few years indicate that upper extremity clots are less rare than believed and hard to detect on examination, so tests are indicated.

After a couple months of this I managed to get an ultrasound. Just found out today that it cost me $699 *after insurance.* The arm turned out to be fine, but that's not how medicine works. You're supposed to be cautious, so that people don't fucking die.

$699 is too much money for a preventative or "let's just be sure" procedure. If I actually had clear symptoms of a clot I should have paid nothing for the test, but even though I was wrong here I shouldn't have paid nearly this much.

This is incentive not to do tests unless someone's obviously dying. That's fucking obscene. That's not how medicine should be practiced.

I have extreme heartburn and trouble swallowing things that happens from like november to march every year. This has gotten worse over the years. The right thing to do here is an endoscopy, but doctors don't want to do that unless you're puking blood or can't eat. This is wrong.

My doctor admits that an endoscopy is what we need to do to find out if there's something seriously wrong with my stomach or esophagus. This isn't in dispute, but I'm discouraged from doing it. Because it costs money and time. It doesn't matter that I could be sick.

I am not a statistic. I am not a set of numbers floating in space and if I die or suffer needlessly we nod and say "well we should try to get that number lower next time." I only have one life. I have to protect it.

You know what "hypochondriac" means in the medical industry? It means "oh that guy thinks everything is going to kill him." But that's not true. That's not what I am, and I don't think that's what many "hypochondriacs" are.

It never starts out as "i'm going to die." It starts out as "wow, that really hurts" or "why have I been nauseous for days" or "why do I have crippling headaches" and then after months or YEARS of suffering it becomes "what if this fucking kills me"

It metamorphosized into "i'm going to die" after I discovered that doctors don't care about me unless I'm dying. I figured this out in my teens, unfortunately, so I never really had a life where I felt there was anyone who would help me if I was in trouble.

So yes, I jump to that conclusion quickly now, and it's never because I think "this pain in my belly means I have cancer," it's because I think "this pain in my belly I've had for six months, that no doctor will even speculate about, could be cancer"

Even before the six months have passed. Right from the beginning, I see the long road of suffering. The moment something goes wrong with me I can see myself weeks or months later, completely disabled by pain or constant discomfort, and with zero avenues to pursue.

If you go to a doctor with "vague symptoms" they will do nothing because of the profit demands of the industry, when they should be throwing tests and guesses and speculation at anything that walks in their fucking door.

There are things wrong with me that I'm certain someone somewhere could explain and maybe even do something about if anyone cared, if my doctor cared enough to get someone else involved without it being a months long nightmare with a four digit bill behind it.

Doctors and medicine only exist if you're having a heart attack or you're bleeding. For everything else, you're just supposed to go home, sit in your broken husk and remember that this is working *great* for people who have easily identifiable problems. Let that assuage you.

I'm probably going to cancel my upcoming endoscopy, four weeks out, because I already have a $1000 bill to pay because I was in excruciating pain nobody would investigate and nobody would give any clear answer or even guess to.

I played the game. I got a job, I got insurance, I paid my fucking copay and now I owe a thousand dollars because I tried to get help when I was unwell.

Our medical industry only treats low hanging fruit. Everything else, just sit and suffer and hope it goes away. Universal healthcare won't fix this. It won't do shit. The problem is we think of medicine as saving lives, not fixing problems.