me_irl

Translation: “I’m out of my depth here. I don’t know how to help. I would refer you to the right person but I don’t even have a good, professional referral network.”

If your lucky. Often it’s just “I’m too overworked and busy to take you seriously”.
Or “I don’t believe you / think you are exaggerating”.
- I still remember the time I was like 17, hiking, and got bit by a tick just over my belt buckle, and a rash started to develop and the doctor was like “it’s a byproduct of an allergy to your belt” and prescribed me steroids. I basically begged for a Lyme disease test. If I didn’t get that test and those meds at the time (after testing positive for lyme), life would be way more fucked up right now
For me it's more like 'im out of my depth here. I don't know how to help. I would refer you to the right person, since there is a good, professional referral system in place in this country. But that would require me to admit I'm out of my depth, which I will never do'.

I have a tongue issues which five different doctors have decided is geographic tongue, and told me it will go away “in a couple of weeks”. The last two times I heavily prefaced adding “Before I get into it, it’s OK to say you don’t know, but don’t tell me it will go away in a couple of weeks because it’s been over ten years.” Both times as soon as they saw my tongue they cut me off with a “it will go away in a couple of weeks” and refused to discuss it further.

😭…
average medical appointment.
My ex's doctor refused to refer her to a specialist because he didn't think she had the condition they specialized in. Until I went along one time and just asked "what makes you rule it out?"
At that point, he admitted knowing nothing about the condition and said he'd do some research. Which he did do and promptly referred her to the specialist because it matched her weird symptoms very well and she's since been diagnosed with two variants of it (one from each parent).
And the sad part is that doctor was her better newer doctor after getting rid of one whose advice would have killed her because he didn't realize the birth control he wanted her to finish the course of was causing her organs to shut down because he didn't bother with the follow up blood tests he was supposed to do or take her severe symptoms seriously.
You know what? There's this thing called AI...and it somehow cares more than an actual human.
The fuck we need meatbags for anymore?
- And medical diagnosis is one of the areas very well suited to automation, the only thing is answering some of the binary questions in the flowchart involve giving and interpreting complex tests. But a machine could decide what tests need to be done and would probably do a better job than a lot of doctors out there as long as they don't add a bunch of conclusions like "patient is probably just looking for opiates" or "pain can't be that bad if the patient is still able to function and talk about it" or "it's never rare condition".
  Then the human doctors can be left to do the interesting work or find a new career if all they wanted to do is say whatever words will make the patient go away (and pay their bill).
That's usually related to vitamin deficiencies, have you been screened for that at all? Doctors tend to skip over vitamin deficiencies
- I’ll ask the next one!

If your Dutch they will tell you to take paracetamol for 2 weeks and make a new appointment if you still have the same problem.

Dutch medicine is the worst, man. They will Google symptoms in front of you and just treat those, no thinking of the bigger picture.
I go abroad to visit doctors now.
- meanwhile i have multiple friends who moved from America to the Netherlands to get their medical issues actually treated
- Unless you're close to death they won't put any effort into diagnosis but once you actually get diagnosed the treatment in the Netherlands is pretty good.
  The healthcare system suffers from years of budget cuts, bad working conditions and our education system being gradually demolished.
Hahahha experienced that in Austria too
Here in Germany they won’t even recommend the paracetamol, they’ll just tell you to drink tea and rest.
Wait until you see what "insurance" costs.