When Diagnostics Go WRONG

 

X-rays, blood samples, and the likes are what it takes to form an educated opinion on someone's health. At least it feels safer than what looks too much as guesses and nothing but that. Still, there may be misjudgments, leading to wrong diagnostics, which may end up killing or maiming the patient. 

Also, one should take into consideration that some diagnoses leave a stigma that may follow the patient for years, describing him or her as "weird", "untrustworthy" or downright "treacherous". Something that I take most often is very unfair, as it's very likely that it stems from bad communications: After all, doctor's language isn't the same as the language of the ordinary nonmedically trained patient. 

As it is, I think that it often is much safer to keep to private descriptions of one's more or less "exotic" symptoms than accepting a maybe non-valid diagnosis. The problem is that not being a doctor, one doesn't know for sure that a diagnosis is erroneous, and that one, looking for the right one, may end up in what's called "doctor shopping": One starts out on a very brave Odyssey to find what one believes is "the right diagnosis" - which there still isn't any guarantee that it is ....

OK, now there is what looks like a 99% safe diagnosis, so off we go to find a cure: The patient doesn't like being ill and thus dependent on his/her family or the social system, and the doctor hates not to be the one who heals the wound, sets the physical system right or whatever. A cure is needed and as we don't believe in magic we can't resort to the medicine of former times. We need science, but the science of today may not be the science of tomorrow! To know what that means, I just have to think of what was done to Queen Anne or Henry VIII of England: Not much of it comes short of what we might call torture - useless torture at that, as it didn't cure any of them, and they suffered for years.

As we are not meant to live forever, The Grim Reaper needs what might be called a "safe way" to pay us a visit. Most of us don't like to think about that day, but we KNOW that, sooner or later, it will happen. That being said, I start thinking about illnesses and cures: I would not accept all kind of cures to treat all kind of illnesses. Actually, I consider some of those cures beneath me, just as I do with some actions like e.g. murdering someone to get body parts, a fetus, etc. from them. However, I'm aware that some people have done - or are planning to do - just that, which is one of the backsides of the advances of modern medicine.  

https://clarkmitchell.com/medical-malpractice-erroneous-diagnosis-treatment/ 

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK499956/ 

 

In Danish: https://www.sundhed.dk/borger/patienthaandbogen/sundhedsoplysning/medicininformationer/den-fejlbarlige-medicin/proever-og-test-er-ikke-perfekte/ 

 

In Danish: https://patientsikkerhed.dk/ny-rapport-om-fejldiagnoser-risiko-stoerst-ved-brud-og-kraeft/ 

 

Wikipedia