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Two separate doctors have almost killed my wife with incorrect diagnoses over the span of 15 years. She had cancer when she was 18 and the doctor insisted that

Two separate doctors have almost killed my wife with incorrect diagnoses over the span of 15 years. She had cancer when she was 18 and the doctor insisted that women just don’t get cancer at that age, and insisted the lump was benign without testing it. We got another doctor to remove it, and it turns out it was stage 1 cancer. A decade ago she was in crippling pain right in the gall bladder area. The doctor insisted it was indigestion. We found another doctor (thank goodness for PPOs letting us go directly to specialists without a referral) who did an ultrasound and said my wife probably had less than a week before she would suffer a rupture, and she had to have emergency surgery. I’m glad you haven’t had that experience, but it’s a very real problem.

const_cast 1y ago
The inverse of this is people blowing off doctors then dying from very preventable illnesses, which I wager is orders of magnitude more common. That's not to say that you should just believe doctors. If someone is telling you something isn't a big deal but you think it is, then get a second opinion. It's especially common for women, particularly young women, to not be taken seriously. The implication is that young people are healthy, and women are over dramatic. Well... they're not always. I, for one, got cancer in my 20s. The reason, I think, doctors are like this is because they want to err on the side of caution. They don't want to put people on medication unless they're 100% sure. They don't want to put people through anxiety-inducing tests for kicks. They don't want to cut people open unless it's the absolute last resort. And I can understand that mentality to a degree.