Question:
There is no point to this, just to let you know. I just want to rant about how ignorant some medical professionals are about herpes!

Scene #1: A few years ago I go to my university nurse and ask if I can have an antibody test to determine which HSV I have (1 or 2). Why I want to know this is another topic. Anyway, I pay for the blood test but the nurse keeps saying things like, "You ever had a cold sore, honey? No? Only "down there? Well then you have type 2, genital herpes!". I insist that I think I got genital herpes from someone's HSV-1 oral herpes (but didn't get the culture type when I was diagnosed with my primary outbreak, thus this visit to the nurse). She doesn't listen. Anyway, I get a call from her a week or so later and she says, "Good news! You only have cold sores! Just stay out of the sun, honey so you don't have an outbreak" I said "I don't have cold sores. Why do you keep saying that?" She says "Because your test came back positive for HSV-1 only!

Scene #2: Today I went to the doctor and I mentioned I was having an ob. She asked a few questions about my diagnosis (when/where/how) and I mentioned it was HSV-1. She shook her head and said condescendingly "HSV-1" (pointing to her lips), "HSV-2" (pointing down there). I said that actually it IS HSV-1 and it IS down there and she shook her head again and did the little HSV-1/HSV-2 north/south pantomime thing again. Now this time it was a freaking DOCTOR so I was floored.

This is one of the most common STDs in the nation and they don't know the basics fact that you can have either kind either (or any) place? WTF????? But I agreed with her because I was going to beg pain meds from her (something I never do) because this time the ob of this HSV-2 (lol) was in and on my anus. Unbelievably painful. I need some help getting through this one and didn't feel like getting on her bad side.

Answer:
You are right about HSV while Most of the time the docs pantomime is right..its no where near 100% and really what does it matter the treatment is the same. The doc was insensitive. I was taught in med school that one can get one or two at either place so....she wasnt listening.

Answer:
I understand the frustration. To add to the b!tch session--and maybe offer some not-entirely-useless info, you might be amazed by the degree of medical error--at least as reported by the Institute of Medicine (IOM). The errors they quantify can appear behemoths compared to "cold sores" (which I HARDLY minimize in the slightest way) but it gives context, albeit dreary, for the general imperfection/incompetence that can be encountered in medicine (a professor used to say 'medical errors amount to a plane crash per day--a BIG plane crash'---it's true). It means we all have to be diligent, even if it means irritating practitioners sometimes (not a disagreement w/ what you did to get the meds).

Anyway here's some more b!tch material (second hand reference):

"The Institute of Medicine (IOM), reports that as many as 98,000 Americans die each year and another 1,000,000 are injured as a result of preventable medical errors that cost the nation an estimated $29 billion."
http://www.medicalmalpracticetoday.c...ticestats.html

Answer:
I've was told loads of RIDICULOUS things when I was trying to get a diagnosis. One nurse said my swollen glands in my groin area were nothing to worry about - as she gets the same thing! And no way were they linked to an STD!

My own doctor told me to throw caution to the wind and just have sex with my boyfriend becasue my anxieties about catching it (I already had it but didn't want to tell my doctor - but that's another story) were getting in the way of the relationship....????

I was told by a consultant at an STD clinic, when I told her I thought I had type 2 orally, that it was highly unlikely and that she'd never seen such a case!!!!

It's all bollocks and we really need to educate ourselves.

Answer:
Wow...your university nurse was a real eedjit! LOL! Of course, you are right...it's absolutely possible to get HSV1 on your genitals. I am amazed myself at all the misinformation I have gotten in the past few years, truly alarming.

Answer:
There are how many medical conditions in this world? Doctors and other medical staff do the best they can, with limited resources, and demanding patients. If you expect them to know everything you do about a condition you have been researching obsessively, when they have another patient in five minutes later who has been researching a different condition, you are asking too much.

Internet has been a great leveller for people like us - we can find out LOTS of information about OUR single condition, because we have the time. How can you expect a doctor or other medical professional to know AS MUCH about EVERYONE's condition? I myself must have spent months researching herpes, all told over the years, and I'm still learning. Imagine trying to do the same with EVERY disease there is.

Ever seen a medical textbook? Genital herpes gets about half a page in a thousand. Maybe doctors feel it's important to be able to know ENOUGH about ALL of them, rather than EVERYTHING about some. Maybe they think that people suffering from gout, MS, endometriosis, OCD, testicular cancer, tinitus, ME, floaters, bat-ears, hypothermia, ectopic pregancy, carpal tunnel syndrome... need to see a doctor who knows just a bit about each of those conditions too.

Are you holding doctors to a higher standard than you hold youself? Do you, in your job, know everything about everything, without having to look it up? Do you never make mistakes?

Are you overlooking the possibility that doctors are capable of providing adequate care without knowing precisely what strain of HSV you have? Have you considered the possibility that they seek to provide more than just technical know-how?

You can rant and rave all you like, but I bet if there was a rant and rave website about your own profession, you could find plenty of complaints about "failings" that you commit daily.

Give doctors and other medical staff the credit they deserve.

Answer:
I spend a lot of time talking to doctors, and most are very well-read and keep up with all health aspects as it applies to the patients they see. Some are better at it than others, but this is true in virtually every walk of life. The key is to find someone you trust and feel comfortable with. 99% of the practitioners I meet are very understanding, compassionate and respectful professionals who truly want to help their patients, esp. those with legitimate problems, physically and emotionally.

Answer:
<<WARNING>> A BIG ‘ole rant ahead.

I couldn’t disagree more:

There are how many medical conditions in this world? • There are how many streets in New York City that any cab driver must immediately know---so many, it apparently can be scientifically linked to disproportionate physical brain growth? http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/677048.stm

• There are how many state and federal legal cases going back hundreds of years to the founding of the U.S., the ruling language of which lawyers and judges are expected to know verbatim; statutes, Acts, amendments, repealed amendments, appellate briefs, pending legislation, and judicial decisions in the U.S.?

• There are how many mathematics theorems proven over centuries (none of which fade into obsolescence with “new technology” or time) mastered by math professors, engineers, and people who design and build space shuttles and planes? (And when a plane crashes / space shuttle explodes, the mistake is (1) obvious to the entire world --not hidden behind a curtain of asymmetrical information in a hospital with few, if any, witnesses. And even when there are witnesses, they must have initiative to break silence. And even if they break silence, malpractice law (in the U.S.) is intentionally designed to significantly protect doctors by imposing an unusually high standard of proof that is unique in the whole body of tort law. No other profession (in the U.S.) is granted such “courtesy” in the law. And even when the standard of proof is met, juries often award a pittance.) And because an engineer can’t hide their mistake in the grave, ANY error they make is automatically critical and often career ending (name somebody on the American space shuttle design team—among the ones who DIDN’T commit suicide-- who got a job after it exploded. Poor little Jet Blue Airlines, didn’t even crash a plane, but is rocking in trouble with financial jitters impacting a whole workforce after a “mistake” in judgment on the runway.

• There are how many hundreds of hours of foreign-language-lyrics + ingenious composers’ music mastered by the average opera singer---and if they sing perfectly for 4 hours all night at the Met in NY or in La Scala but miss ONE note, they are booed?

I know some excellent and fabulous doctors who went into medicine for arguably ethical and noble reasons. But I have also awakened from surgery--by a believed-in-his-community “excellent” doctor—groggy and limp only to find my leg behind my head and masked doctors enjoying examining the intricacies of my genitalia---by the way, I was having FOOT surgery. I was groggy. (What American jury would believe that I could positively identify the “excellent”, “hardworking”, “dedicated”, “well-read” doctors, let alone establish that they aren’t clean as virgin snow and sweet as pie?)

Lets not romanticize about this—or elsewhere, like priests/rabbis/ministers being “pure” and “wholesome”. As a matter of fact, corruption and incompetence, I would argue, is more likely to exist in the very places where people can use their status or unique position of power to abuse and avert responsibility: LAWYERS, DOCTORS, POLICE OFFICERS, PRIESTS, TEACHERS, MECHANICS, FIGHTING SOLDIERS…There’s no halo around any of them that’s absolute—some admit to being attracted to the profession for the power of it.

Doctors and other medical staff do the best they can, with limited resources, and demanding patients. How do you know they do the best they can? Seriously. Explain this. As a lawyer, there are so many avenues to abuse a client and have them NEVER know your head will spin off. “Limited resources”? NOT in the U.S. And unlike patients, doctors have a powerful lobby in the AMA should their “resources” somehow go thin.

If you expect them to know everything you do about a condition you have been researching obsessively, when they have another patient in five minutes later who has been researching a different condition, you are asking too much. Are you absolutely kidding me? OF COURSE I expect them to know more about disease X than I do! Internet or no internet! There is no comparison between what we can learn on the internet and what a doctor is taught and experiences in clinical training—making it all the more inexcusable that they either don’t know, or don’t know that they don’t know so that they can go GET EDUCATED. And please don’t overrate the internet or books: doctors have University labs, access to data and research unpublished years (decades!) before we even hear of it! You think Dolly the sheep was a wild idea some researcher began toying with only 10 years ago? HARDLY. Moreover, MOST if not every single one of the complaints here are not from people saying their doctor didn’t understand and expressed confusion---oh no. Their doctors were VERY certain they were RIGHT in what they were saying. THAT is scary as hell. And some (most?) are even SPECIALISTS who are truly SUPPOSED to know above and beyond.

Internet has been a great leveller for people like us - we can find out LOTS of information about OUR single condition, because we have the time. How can you expect a doctor or other medical professional to know AS MUCH about EVERYONE's condition? I myself must have spent months researching herpes, all told over the years, and I'm still learning. Imagine trying to do the same with EVERY disease there is. You spent months researching American tort law for your website too—and guess what? You were WRONG, WRONG, WRONG! Law (or anything that is “practiced” like many things) is not some technical feat laid out plain in print or on the internet! We are not assembling an étagère! I swear! There are SO many things NEVER WRITTEN in ANY law book, or in ANY finance book in business school--hell, do you think the average filthy rich investment banker on Wall Street got rich because they read how to do it in their business school finance book? HELL no!


Are you holding doctors to a higher standard than you hold youself? Do you, in your job, know everything about everything, without having to look it up? Do you never make mistakes? The point is not the existence of error, but rather the capacity for acknowledging it and learning from it. To their credit businesses—COLD-BLOODED BUSINESSES--actually do it all the time because they want to outperform their competitor, are under constant scrutiny and are being JUDGED by the market.

When medical mistakes go to the grave behind a mysterious curtain of “I’m sorry. There were complications and he just didn’t make it.”, or simply get compiled (somewhat) and studied by an elite think tank, vs. being out in the sunshine, the doctor/nurse’s stock does not drop. They are not demoted. Their career is not ruined if even tarnished, and there is little learning or incentive by the errant parties to fix anything, I argue.

You can rant and rave all you like, but I bet if there was a rant and rave website about your own profession, you could find plenty of complaints about "failings" that you commit daily. But to date, nobody has DIED or fallen ill due to any of mine.

Give doctors and other medical staff the credit they deserve. Well given that healthcare is the fastest growing industry in the U.S., I would say WE DO. But perhaps, more appropriately as individuals, than a sweeping class.

Answer:
I've was told loads of RIDICULOUS things when I was trying to get a diagnosis. One nurse said my swollen glands in my groin area were nothing to worry about - as she gets the same thing! And no way were they linked to an STD!

My own doctor told me to throw caution to the wind and just have sex with my boyfriend becasue my anxieties about catching it (I already had it but didn't want to tell my doctor - but that's another story) were getting in the way of the relationship....????

I was told by a consultant at an STD clinic, when I told her I thought I had type 2 orally, that it was highly unlikely and that she'd never seen such a case!!!!

It's all bollocks and we really need to educate ourselves. Ok.

I hereby declare you the winner of “The Stupidest Things My Doctor/Nurse Told Me” award. UNBELIEVABLE!

My systolic pressure went up some notches just READING it---goodness knows how I would have responded in person to hearing this.

And I can’t figure out which one is worse:

"One nurse said my swollen glands in my groin area were nothing to worry about - as she gets the same thing!"

OR

"throw caution to the wind and just have sex with my boyfriend becasue my anxieties about catching it ... were getting in the way of the relationship."