Why Is It Important To Misdiagnose?

When I became sick I later found out it was due to gallbladder issues. I was having severe chest pains and I couldn’t keep any food down, not even crackers. I was never aware of the cause of this till I was hospitalized with the worst chest pain. I had over eight hours of chest pains

As I grew older, the need for me to attend these visits were increased due to my proficiency in English. Fortunately, there was now a translator between my parents and the physician, however the authenticity of the translation was skeptical. This is a common issue among the children of non-English speaking families who are unable to successfully relay issues regarding health and finances from the healthcare provider themselves. Due to the complexity of the conditions and the emotional burden that it may contain, I often found myself struggling to relay these messages to my family. There were times where I found myself sugarcoating the diagnoses given by the physician because I did not understand the severity and because I did not want it to impact my family. Once I became a teenager, I realized withholding pertinent information was actually doing more harm than good.

At the time of my diagnosis, I could not speak and could only make sounds and screams. I for example would scream at the fridge and my mom would figure out that I was hungry. It got really difficult because I would scream for hours because my mom wouldn’t know what I wanted. I would also have frequent meltdowns where I would bang my head on the wall along with screaming and crying. To this day I can’t recall what made me so upset. My mom was the only person who could touch me and I would freak out if anyone else

March 15th, 2010, was a completely normal day. As normal as any day is for a twelve year old homeschooler. I was home with my oldest sister Brittany who was twenty at the time and I was just finishing up my homework for the day. After finishing up my math work I went to go watch television in the living room. Brittany was in her room and my parents didn't get home until later because of work. A few hours into my movie, my stomach started to hurt. Since I was twelve I didn't no the differences of pain so I just left it alone for a while. Later in the day my abdomen was aching so much I couldn't even get off the couch. After wailing for Brittany to call Mom I was sent to the emergency room in an ambulance with severe abdomen pain. After several hours in the ER and multiple tests, doctors found nothing. I was sent home and was told to take Tylenol for the pain. Once I got home, it didn't hurt anymore so I thought they were right and that I could just go on with my crazy life as a twelve year old. I was wrong. Two months after, I got the same

12. Have you had any other physical symptoms, such as chest pain or stomach problems?

During my grade first year in high school I was quite shy and only had friends that I had known from elementary school and through baseball academy. The year was going decent until just after my birthday in the spring, when I started to get random stomach pains. They started off as just an aching pain but slowly with time became more serious and painful, almost as if you were getting stabbed with a knife. As the pains got worse I started missing school in order to try and recover from what I thought at the time was just a stomach flu. After my first couple weeks off school my parents had a suspicion that maybe this was something worse than a stomach flu so they took me to go see a general practitioner. After the GP did some tests, she wasn’t quite sure what was wrong so she referred me to a local Pediatrician. Again, after seeing the pediatrician and having some tests done there was still no diagnosis for what could be causing the pain. The most plausible explanation was that I must have had bacteria in my intestines that isn’t usually supposed to be there, and because

years ago with vague complaints of (C/O) intermittent fatigue, joint pain, low-grade fever, and unintentional

Early in my life I found myself at an immediate disadvantage compared to the average person. Within my first year on Earth, my ears caught an infection. During the time I had this infection, I never expressed any symptoms, like pain, that the infection should have caused. Because I never expressed any signs of discomfort, the ear infection would continue to accumulate. By the time a doctor diagnosed me with the infection, I had already had it for almost two years. I was around three at the time, an age that a normal child would begin to learn his or her first words from hearing his or her parents speak. However, my infection had grown to a point where I was practically deaf. The medical treatment would take around a year to fully cure me from

The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me and soon after that my brother passed away, so; I developed really bad anxiety. I had to continue the rest of my highschool career on independent studies because of the amounts of school I missed. A year after I graduated the doctors found out I had giardia and that I was having muscle spasms from the amount of stress I was going throught. I had to take a series of antibiotics for 2 months and I become a lot better. I had to learn to control my stress so that I no longer had stomach spasms and I had to learn how to manage my anxiety (which I thought i could never overcome). This experience impacted me more than anything else in my life. I learned how strong that I am and that if I could get through that, I can get through

Onset: When did you first notice the fever? Where were you when you first began having the symptoms?

The word “diagnosis” had connotations of tragedy in my head, mostly because of movie depictions of the diagnosis of cancer, which feature drama and despair. The meaning of diagnosis changed for me on the fourth of January, 2012, when I heard the words “Ulcerative Colitis” for the first time. The words flew over my head as I stared out the car window, eagerly awaiting my first solid food over twenty four hours, and when I reflected on that moment for the first time, it didn’t even qualify as a diagnosis to me because of the anticlimactic mood. In my experience, the diagnosis mattered very little in comparison to the disease, despite what I expected.

It is rather difficult to come across a good family doctor, who would actually take the time to listen to your problems and do a simple check up. A powerful ted talk by Abraham Verghese is still clearly running through my head. The way he describes his full attendance to the patients and how he takes the time to listen to their problems. For some people we are not so very lucky to have a doctor like Abraham Verghese, like one of those people I truly hated my family doctor. If you can imagine a nine year old child that has just arrived in a new country and not knowing the language that well has already developed a hatred toward doctors. During the consultation, he would not let us talk and just made us listen about his kids and how smart there are and showed us their pictures. I understand you can be proud of your kids, but at least listen to us first then brag about your kids.

I have been fascinated with health and people watching. Health has been a recent interest of mine because I got sick several years back and dir. couldn’t figure out why. I went through test after test with all kinds of different problems they could not solve, resulting in a diagnosis of fibromyalgia. I was frustrated and I finally looked into fibromyalgia, what I found was a fancy word for wide spread pain. I began to think about the diagnosis and began to wonder why I hurt everywhere. Every morning I woke up wondering when the pain would end. The dir.’s voice kept wring in my mind she said diet and exercise. The dr. sent me to a nutritionist and my friend got me to exercise. I kept a diet journal of everything I ate after the dietician reviewed

After a while of sitting in my grandparents living room mindlessly playing with my toys I decided to get up. I walked towards the commotion going on in the small hallway connecting the living room to the kitchen. The gathering of people consisted of my mom, dad, grandpa, and grandma. Curious about what was going on I walked over to the group. I reached my mom and looked up to see that her eyes were bloodshot, as if she had been crying. I looked over to my dad and his face, like everyone else's, was grim. During this time I kept hearing one repeating word, cancer. I started to listen more closely to the conversation going on around me because even at the age of seven I knew that cancer was bad news. I listened intently and heard my mom explain how she had colon cancer.

How the symptoms began, and how the symptoms changed with time (e.g. Increasing gradually or stepwise /remained