When it looks like a horse

Shinygleamy

Shinygleamy

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I thought this might be of interest. It's a pretty outrageous tale of a woman who had a lumber puncture. Had all the symptoms of having had a lumber puncture but her doctors discharged her repeatedly, refused to take obs, to try and get rid of her, and had a visiting neurologist gave her the waffle about her brain just thinking there was something wrong with her . How much more obvious does the cause of a patient's problems have to be? The moral of the story: if it looks like a horse, smells like a horse, sounds like a horse, it's a horse.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
The trouble is we do not know what it is. Things are complicated in this sort of area.
At least the person talking is improving but I don't think we can know why.
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What troubles me is not that we don't know what it is, it's how this woman was treated because those healthcare professionals didn't know what it was and what to do about it.

So instead of admitting they didn't know what to do, attempting to find some symptomatic relief, assisting her and her family to access support they need, they gaslighted her.

This behaviour on the part of those healthcare professionals inspires health anxiety in people because once you've been on the receiving end of this kind of thing you lose trust.

We talk a lot about placebos in terms of drugs but I personally believe that having a relationship of trust and mutual respect with your doctor, even if it's a hospital doc and not the GP, optimizes your treatment. I also believe the reverse is true.

If you feel you can't trust your doctor then, no matter how good they are, you may feel that you haven't received the right or best treatment for you.
 
But do we know what really happened? I am well aware that many of my colleagues are hamfisted but it seems to me they acted pretty reasonably. They diagnosed a CSF leak - since that is th reason for post-lumbar puncture headache. I do not know the evidence on blood patches but I suspect it is pretty dubious - and certainly it did not seem to work twice in this case. I am sure most people are best to rest and wait - after all there must be many thousands of people getting post-lumbar puncture headache.

My concern is that this sort of video encourages people to think they have CSF leaks and need blood patches and it sells the idea that doctors do not know what they should know. I think the situation may be more two-sided. There are probably also doctors who claim to know about CSF leaks and blood patches who don't.

Sure, there is a need to do what is possible with symptomatic relief but that may not be so easy in this situation. With the recent scandal over use of opiates doctors do not necessarily have easy decisions to make.
 
Jonathan Edwards said:
But do we know what really happened? I am well aware that many of my colleagues are hamfisted but it seems to me they acted pretty reasonably. They diagnosed a CSF leak - since that is th reason for post-lumbar puncture headache. I do not know the evidence on blood patches but I suspect it is pretty dubious - and certainly it did not seem to work twice in this case. I am sure most people are best to rest and wait - after all there must be many thousands of people getting post-lumbar puncture headache.

My concern is that this sort of video encourages people to think they have CSF leaks and need blood patches and it sells the idea that doctors do not know what they should know. I think the situation may be more two-sided. There are probably also doctors who claim to know about CSF leaks and blood patches who don't.

Sure, there is a need to do what is possible with symptomatic relief but that may not be so easy in this situation. With the recent scandal over use of opiates doctors do not necessarily have easy decisions to make.
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A linguistic digression: Here is the etymology of "hamfisted." (I do so enjoy British English. Here in the new world the language has become telegramatic, the vocabulary sparse, and the sentence structure really dull. Even authors are writing like this. Anyhow, thanks for reminding me of that good old word: hamfisted: https://wordhistories.net/2017/01/20/ham-fisted/)
 
I do see where you're coming from @Jonathan Edwards & concede you do have a point. We don't hear the doctor's point of view and they can't comment because of patient confidentiality anyway.

I also agree that this video is likely to make some people anxious that they might have this.

There's still a part of me that thinks it's a pity that the doctors who dealt with this lady didn't manage her expectations & develop a relationship where she felt confident in their judgement. I'm not in the least qualified to judge the medical treatment she received but I do question the ability to develop the doctor-patient relationship. The modern health service seems to see that as irrelevant.

If you can't trust your doctor then, regardless of how good they are, videos like this are the result.
 
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