It’s Not Just The Organs That Are Failing

(When my brother is around nine, he wakes up screaming in pain. As we have no vehicle of our own and no way of getting a taxi or a lift, my mother has to walk with a screaming child two kilometers to the hospital. She went to nursing school, but is not currently working as a nurse.)

Doctor: *after barely poking him* “Well, seems to be just some gas. He’s probably just using the pain to get attention.”

(My mother looks at her like she’s crazy, while my brother still cries and screams.)

Mom: “My son is not like that. Look, I am a nurse. I’m pretty sure he has appendicitis.”

Doctor: “Oh, nonsense. You don’t know what you are talking about.”

Mom: “But I do–”

Doctor: “Listen. I am a doctor. You are just a nurse. He is fine. Now leave.”

(My mother leaves the hospital furious. Not surprisingly, two days later, my brother’s appendix ruptures. My mom manages to get a passing car to take them to the hospital, and my brother has surgery. Because the hospital has no full anesthesia, they have to use local — the kind that only numbs the area — and my brother is operated on while awake and screaming. While he is still in surgery, my mother runs into the doctor in the hallway.)

Doctor: “Oh, you are here again. What, does your son have a headache now? It might be a tumor, don’t you think?”

(My mother almost attacked her, but her father entered the hospital on time and stopped her. My brother survived and made a full recovery, and my mother reported the doctor; unfortunately, nothing came out of it at the time, but a few years later she was forced into retirement for repeatedly misdiagnosing patients.)