- Let's take a look at the Reddit thread
of the worst things doctors have said to people.
I'll start, after my professional boxing match
with Chris Avila,
I went backstage where they do a medical exam
and the doctor that's supposed
to check you over literally goes to me,
well, you're a doctor, are you okay?
And I said, yeah, I feel okay, he goes, you're good.
I'm like, no, no, no, no, no.
Check me and make sure I'm okay,
check my pupillary reflexes.
Don't just ask me you good bro,
and consider that a medical exam.
Just because I'm a doctor doesn't mean
I can take care of myself,
in a situation where I just got done getting punched
in the face.
When I was like 20,
my endocrinologist took a good look at me and asked,
are you okay with your face being so asymmetrical?
I had never really noticed it before,
but boy have I noticed it since.
I need more information on this
because initially my reaction, my gut was to get offended
because why are you judging someone's appearance?
But then I looked at the specialty
of the doctor that said it.
Endocrinologist, this is a non-surgical specialty.
So this doctor is usually not the one performing surgery
or recommending to perform plastic surgery,
appear in surgery.
What endocrinologists do look for is asymmetries in glands
because glands release hormones
and now an asymmetry on the lower portion of your face
or perhaps your neck can signal to the endocrinologist
that something unusual is going on in that gland.
Therefore, they would be pointing out asymmetries.
Maybe they shouldn't point it out like that
where it could be easily misinterpreted,
but they should say something along the lines of,
has your face always been asymmetrical?
Because when you ask it that way, then you could explain
to the patient why you're asking.
Because if it's been there for a long period
of time, that means nothing's changed.
That's the way you were born.
As opposed to if over the last two weeks
you didn't notice it.
But wow, this side is more full
than we can act and start an investigation.
A nurse of some kind took my blood pressure.
He said what the numbers were, I asked, is that good?
He said, I'm not qualified
to give you professional opinion on the matter.
You should ask your doctor.
I asked, but like unprofessionally, is that good?
He said, unprofessionally,
well, in my purely personal opinion that I'm sharing
with you as an individual and not in any medical
or official capacity whatsoever,
you should buy stronger deodorant.
Oh man.
Yeah, just wait for the professional advice.
You have pretty blood followed by,
I bet you have heavy periods.
What, that is some vampire-ish.
I've heard people say you have pretty veins,
but they're not actually commenting
on the beauty of your veins.
What they're commenting on is the fact
that it will likely be an easy blood draw
because if you can visualize the veins, it's a lot easier
to not have to re-poke you multiple times
'cause they keep missing.
Color of blood does not dictate whether
or not you have heavy periods is what I'm trying to say.
Not me, but mom.
She's in remission for a non-Hodgkin's lymphoma
that invaded her brain.
She was getting a scan to confirm the cancer
had left her brain and the doctor came in
and said, good news, we've scanned your brain
and confirmed that there's nothing in there.
This is a common joke.
And I actually say a variant of this,
if I'm looking at the patient's ears, I say like,
I look at one end and I look at the other end.
I'm like, wow, I could see completely through,
I guess there's nothing in there.
Ah, a better one that I do with kids
because they're always like nervous
what you're looking at and they don't know.
So I say that I'm looking in their ears
and I go, wow,
I see someone's been paying attention to math.
It's all really sticking in there, they go, really,
I don't even pay attention in math.
My gynecologist while trying
to remove my IUD when the strings weren't visible
and fishing through my cervix with local anesthesia.
Thank God, okay, come here kitty, kitty, what?
In all honesty, I think he spaced out
and was very concentrated to avoid unnecessary pain.
He most has definitely his cats and the words just came out.
He burst out laughing with embarrassment
and said, sorry, more than I could care to count.
Honestly, I thought it was hilarious.
I've been seeing him for a long time
for many IUDs and he's a gem.
Okay, the only thing that troubles me about this story
is many IUDs
because for example, some IUDs are meant
to come out after five years,
although they could stay a little bit longer
and there's some that stay in 10 years.
I mean, unless you've been seeing this doctor for decades,
many IUDs is kind of interesting.
For those who don't know, IUD means intrauterine device.
It's like this little t-shaped thing
that we insert into the cervix that is a contraceptive.
It prevents you from getting pregnant.
It's actually quite effective.
The strings that we're talking about are strings at the end
of it that end up coming into the vagina
that the doctor then ideally should shorten to some degree.
If you cut them too short, they could actually be sharp
and you won't be able to reach it to pull it out
and put a new one in or just remove it in general.
A doctor here, and I really hate to admit this.
Very early in my career, I was talking to a male patient.
I had to ask him about penile discharge
and I couldn't remember
what the professional way to ask was.
Do I say, no, no, that's not right.
Come on, think dammit, you're a doctor.
Wait, there's too long of a silence, dong, I went with dong.
An easy way out of this is just to point to the region,
say any discharge down there,
and then if they have questions
or they're not sure which down there you're talking about,
then you could specify.
What I run into is issues with poo.
Do you say number two, like you're a 4-year-old.
Do you say bowel movement like you're a GI professor?
Do you say poop like you're now a 4-year-old
and you've graduated from number two?
Or do you say crap, like what, feces like,
like you're an archeologist, what is the term?
I usually lead with bowel movement
and if I sense confusion, I say, poo, what would you do?
- [Sam] I think I'm a poop guy, but I'm not happy about it.
- Oh, and I hate saying stool.
- How does a chair make its way
into your large intestine, rectum outta your anus?
You're looking pleasantly underweight.
I don't know what that means, and that is disgusting.
A doctor should not put flirtatious undertones
on talking about someone's health.
We learned this very early on where we listen
to someone's heart or their lungs
and we're taught to say things are normal as opposed to good
or perfect because they can easily be misinterpreted.
In fact, when we do our simulated patient encounters
where we work with patients to perform a pap smear,
a digital rectal exam, which is a finger in the bum,
when we do those simulated encounters, we're taught instead
of calling the pieces of metal
that patients put their heels in,
instead of calling them stirrups, call them footrests,
because those carry implications.
Instead of saying, I'm gonna insert my finger,
you're gonna say, I'm gonna use my digit.
There's ways to make medical exams more comfortable
and I think we need to do a better job
in the medical community than saying ridiculous,
like, you're pleasantly underweight.
Back pain, I'm not young, doctor just said basically,
well, that's just life for you, you're tall,
so I'm just gonna end up being
a hunched over 90-year-old.
LOL, you're not gonna see 90.
How many tall old people have you ever seen?
Yeah, okay, yeah.
That's douche baggery as a person.
Forget doctor, you're just being a.
Not me, but a friend.
She had just gone through a miscarriage
after trying to conceive for a while,
since she was quite young,
the doctor asked, well, you didn't really want
to have the baby right.
That's really, really wrong.
You could be really hurting someone who just lost a child.
The question you need to ask is,
well, how do you feel about this?
If the patient is willing to open up
and wants to share, you can then build off of it.
It's very common that a patient
of mine will present the situation like
I just got divorced.
Typical human reaction is to say, I'm sorry,
but me as a medical health provider
and a mental health provider, I oftentimes will say,
well, how does that make you feel?
Because they might be like, I am so happy.
That was the worst time of my life and now I'm stoked.
And I would be saying I'm sorry to that,
which is not really appropriate.
So now I say, how does it make you feel?
And then we build off that.
Your breast tissue is extremely dense,
which I'm sure your husband enjoys,
but it's making difficult to get a good view.
Oh my God, that's inappropriate on so many levels.
In younger women, it is common
that they have more dense breasts.
Therefore we don't often just do a mammogram.
If we're suspecting cancer, we also do an ultrasound.
In fact, ultrasound sometimes gives us better views
and even then it's sometimes difficult to catch things.
So you do get a more difficult view with dense breasts.
But you shouldn't talk about people's sex lives
if it's not appropriate to the healthcare.
I asked my cardiologist I had growing up
what the goop was they put on before echoes.
He said, yak snot, I believed him for way too long.
First of all, where was this cardiologist
that they're even aware of what a yak is?
Where are there yaks in such numbers
that the first animal snot
that comes into this cardiologist,
it's not even a regular doctor.
A cardiologist's mind is yak, where are yak's homes?
- [Sam] Mongolia, I think.
- No, don't act like you know.
- [Sam] A Chinese-
- You are not allowed to act like you know that.
If you don't need these pain meds now
you can save them for another time.
ER doc giving me a full bottle of Dilaudid
for a broken thumb.
The early 2000s were a wild time.
Yeah, that's, now, there's rules in place
that actually the ERs can't give long-term prescriptions.
That's both good and bad.
Good in that you're preventing opioid addiction
and patients overusing them,
abusing them, selling them, what have you.
But also it creates issues for patients that aren't able
to get in to see their doctor
'cause doctors are so booked up,
therefore they're stuck sitting in pain.
One time I went in for a general checkup
and my doctor said, well, everything is fine
with you except for that haircut.
I hope you know that doctor really well.
Otherwise that's messed up.
You're not depressed, it's your personality.
It took a while to get over that statement
and give medication another try.
Could this statement be made genuinely?
I think not, because what they're saying is
not even medically accurate.
You can say that you don't meet the criteria
for major depressive disorder,
which has very strict DSM-5 criteria,
which is the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual fifth edition that we use
to make diagnoses of mental health conditions.
Depressed is a mood, I can be depressed right now.
It doesn't mean I have major depressive disorder,
nor does it mean it's my personality.
There are people who their personality trait
can lead them to feel depressed.
And there's a whole set of personality trait disorders
that can lead someone to feel depressed.
There's also something known as dysthymia,
which we talk about quite often, which is a low mood,
but not necessarily all the way to full depression
for an extended period of time.
But saying, you're not depressed,
it's your personality, is wrong for multiple reasons.
You're not depressed is a mood.
You can't tell someone what their mood is
and saying it's their personality is not
even a medical term.
Personality trait is, personality is not.
If you wanna help people, don't go into medicine.
As a doctor, I'm nothing more than a people mechanic
and much like a car mechanic,
I patch people back together well enough
to get them out the door until I see them again.
If I could go back,
I'd run as far away from medicine as I could.
I don't, if a doctor said that to you,
that's kind of strange.
It's a fair critique to some degree
'cause the field of medicine is plagued
by a really bad system behind it.
Even the idea of patching people back together,
that's a win.
That's days you're giving back to a person to be able
to be symptom free and continue on their job.
See their family, do things they love.
Even if you're giving them back a year
until they see you again.
That's a win, yeah, they may come back multiple times
'cause humans do break.
And the beauty about humans as opposed
to cars is cars don't fix themselves.
Humans do, and it's our job as doctors to facilitate
that healing and figure out how to remove risks
to mitigate the times that the body does break down.
Were you a teacher?
Your bladder is huge, OBGYN during a pelvic ultrasound,
I was indeed a teacher.
Do teachers have big bladders?
Is that like a known thing?
- [Sam] They have to hold it
'cause they're teaching classes for so long.
- They have a lunch and stuff.
- [Sam] And would that cause a bladder to expand?
Is that a thing? - I don't know.
- [Sam] Is a bladder flexible like that?
- Well, a bladder is muscular, so it absolutely expands.
It stretches, but to say that it stretches past normal
like that it doesn't rebound,
that's the weird part.
You have a brain tumor, but that's fine, okay.
I maybe hear the message,
but I think it's delivered incorrectly.
And I know people are gonna be like, what do you mean?
How's the brain tumor fine?
There's some brain tumors that are malignant.
They're gonna spread, they're gonna grow,
they're gonna be problematic.
There's some that are benign,
meaning that they're not malignant,
they're not gonna spread.
They're gonna stay in the area,
but they can cause mass effect,
which means that they press on certain areas
of the brain, which obviously causes a huge issue
and therefore they're a problem even though they're benign.
And then there's other ones
that are truly just benign, benign.
Well, it doesn't matter.
Like you can leave them and forget about them
and you don't even need to follow them.
That's on the rarer side, but they do happen.
So I'm hoping that's what this doctor was talking about.
You are really great at relaxing your cervix.
Weird compliment, but I took it dammit.
She sounded so excited, can you even relax your cervix?
Like I don't think that's a thing.
This is no joke, I had a medical professional say,
I used to be a heroin addict, so I'm pretty good at this
as she was putting in my IV.
That's on (indistinct).
Okay, some people will see this negatively.
I agree with the writer and I think this is funny
and I think it's also appropriate to say
because I think those who have overcome challenges
and have experienced certain things can provide value.
And if they're being forthcoming with that information,
as long as it's not inappropriate,
I think it's valuable to share.
I've worked with a lot of psychologists
and addiction specialists who have suffered
with addiction themselves.
Firsthand experience really goes a long way in being able
to function as an empathetic provider.
Following a checkup, we're going to have
to remove your testicles.
Just kidding, you should have seen your face.
I don't know what to, like, it depends.
I know you probably didn't even expect me to say it depends.
You probably were like, no, he's gonna critique this.
But like I've gone into the room, a patient that I've known
for years has something on their arm
and I go, oh man, looks like we're gonna have to amputate.
They already know I'm probably joking, so they get it.
And the reason they know I'm joking
is not because of my tone.
In fact, it's the opposite.
My serious tone and directness,
just jumping to amputation teaches them
that it's a joke because they're so familiar with me.
They know that if I'm breaking bad news,
I wouldn't do it in such a careless way.
But again, it can only happen as a result
of good long form communication that we have,
which is why it's important to get a primary care doctor.
I love that we went from testicles
to talking about primary care doctors,
things you should never do in a hospital.
Click here to check that out
and as always stay happy and healthy.
(upbeat music)