We trust our doctors with our lives, and for the most part, they get the job done. But every so often, a doctor violates that trust by crossing the boundary between professional and personal—or careful and careless. Was it the gynecologist who shook a Bible in your face for being sexually active while unwed? Or the cardiologist who declared you had an abnormality in your heart—which happened to be a blip on a faulty X-ray machine?

Medical horror stories such as these are truer than you think; just ask those friends of yours who keep switching clinics. Here are a few anecdotes shared by our readers that chronicle their awful encounters with misguided medicine men.


IT'S CANCER—OOPS, NO IT'S NOT!

“After going through breast cancer in 1994, I would have a yearly check-up. My greatest fear as a cancer survivor was metastasis (the spreading of cancer cells). One year, I had my bones scanned and something appeared—cancer cells have a tendency to spread to the bones. Further tests confirmed that there was a mass of some sort in my shoulder and my back.

"I was so scared that it was a tumor, I went straight to the doctor supervising my check-up. She informed me that she wasn’t 100 percent sure, but in all probability, the mass was metastasis. When she said the M word, I was devastated.  That same day, I went to an oncologist, and showed him the results of the bone scan—he told me the same thing. Metastasis.

"I was so depressed; I paid a visit to the kind old surgeon who had removed the tumor from my breast years before and asked for his advice. What he told me was very consoling: ‘Hindi pa naman sigurado.’

"He referred me to an orthopedic surgeon, who had me take an MRI. Three painstaking weeks passed as I waited for the results of the MRI. When I finally went back, the orthopaedic surgeon asked me, ‘Did you have a fall recently?’ I said yes, I had fallen in the bathroom a few months before. ‘It isn’t metastasis,’ he said, showing me the results. ‘It’s the impact of the fall showing in your bones. It should heal quite nicely.’”

– Lelo Castillo, 61, mother


WOULD YOU LIKE A LITTLE PLASTIC SURGERY ON THE SIDE?

“One Christmas, I had such a bad sore throat that I felt I had to go to the clinic. The doctor who attended me, a general practitioner, checked my throat and then prescribed some meds. I noticed that he was looking at me very strangely, as if he were examining my face. I thought maybe he was checking for other signs of illness—but it certainly didn’t seem that way.

"Finally, he said, ‘You know, you have a very beautiful face.’ I didn’t know how to react, so I just muttered my thanks. And then he said, ‘But it would be even more beautiful if you got a nose job.’ He reached across the table and handed me his business card—apparently, he had a sideline job as a plastic surgeon.”

– Jennifer Salvador, 22, writer


DR. GRABBY

“I had a traumatic experience with an endocrinologist once. When he found out I worked at a company that published sexy men’s magazines, he would constantly ask me for a copy of the latest steamy issue. It didn’t seem like a big deal at first, but the way he would persist every time I visited his clinic made it seem a little pervy. He would even say, ‘You have to meet my son. You have to meet my son.’ Then, he prescribed some medicine which I had an allergic reaction to.

"On my next visit, I wore a tube top so that he could see the rashes all over my arms and neck. ‘Look at what happened,’ I told him. He answered, ‘Patingin nga—‘ and out of nowhere, he yanked the top of my tube and peered down my chest! I was completely shocked! But he did it in such a smooth, nonchalant way that I wasn’t sure if I should make a big deal out of it. I still felt violated, though.”

- Andrea Dizon, 35, TV producer


A SLEAZY ACUPUNCTURIST


“I went to an acupuncturist to seek treatment for my hyperthyroidism. He asked me to lie down and describe my symptoms. I told him that when everybody else in my office would be freezing from the air conditioning, I would still feel unusually hot. He said, ‘You’re hot in a different way’—which appalled me. The next time I went to the clinic, the acupuncturist’s female counterpart was there to treat me. I told her about my experience with her shady colleague—and she just laughed.”

– Mina Fernandez, 42, book editor

DR. WEIGHTIST

“I had a health insurance plan as one of the benefits of my job. And as all these health insurance plans are, they require that before you subject yourself to tests, you first get approval by the so-called doctor representative of the insurance company, who also at that time happened to be the managing director of the hospital I went to. This hospital touts itself as the premier hospital in our region.  

"I am overweight, and this doctor took one look at me and said he would deny my application as I already have a pre-existing condition, which is diabetes.  I told him that I did not have diabetes, if I were to go by my last year's check-up which was under another health insurance plan.  

"In the presence of other people (who I guess had the same purpose I had that day), he told me point blank that I was mataba and refused to sign the paper that would make the insurance company pay for these tests. I was so humiliated and angry.  

"I paid for the tests myself, and guess what—all blood test results indicated I did not have diabetes.  Since then, I refused to have anything to do with this so-called ‘premier hospital’ and its one judgemental doctor. To date, I still bristle at the memory of the incident!”

– Becky Tan, 61, consultant


DOCTORS DON'T ALWAYS LET NATURE RUN ITS COURSE

“Using scare tactics, my OB/GYN manipulated me into having a C-section. The nurses wanted to transfer me to the operating table, but I was in a middle of an intense contraction so I told them to wait until after it subsided. My OB, who apparently wanted to get it over and done with, told me, ‘Hurry up, Cathy, there are a lot of other women waiting for their turn.’”

– Cathy Domingo, 30, technical writer


MISDIAGNOSIS IS MORE COMMON THAN YOU THINK

“When I was in college, I came down with what I thought was a really bad cough that didn’t go away for a month. I finally went to see the school doctor, and she prescribed a round of antibiotics which cost quite a bit on a student budget. Then when I came back (because I wasn’t getting better), she prescribed stronger antibiotics, which cost even more than the last ones.

"I still didn’t get better, and on my next visit, she told me, ‘Well, I think you might have TB.’ Aghast (mostly because I was in a literature phase and knew that the Bronte sisters all died of it and that George Orwell wrote 1984 while he was dying from TB), I asked, ‘As in, tuberculosis? Can’t you die from that?’—to which she answered yes, but that there were medicines for it now.

"Already broke, I called my mom and told her what the doctor had said, asking her to wire me money. She instructed me to see a pulmonologist for a second opinion, which I did.

"My new doctor told me not to say or even think TB until I had been checked for it, and gave me a thorough exam. When I went back after the tests, the first thing this doctor told me was I didn’t have TB, and it looked like I wasn’t sick at all. I had actually developed asthma, which is only an allergy. She prescribed steroids and inhalers, which hurt my pocket, but had me feeling improved two days later and back to 100 percent after about a week.”

– Kat Herrera, 25, restaurateur


SINGLE LADIES = VIRGINS?

“I was experiencing incredibly painful migraines so I paid a visit to a neurologist, who was a conservative old man. I asked if the migraines had anything to do with the fact that I had been on birth control for the past 8 years.  

"The neurologist checked my file, and with a smile that was both patronizing and menacing at the same time, replied, ‘But it says here that you’re single—why are you on the pill?’ The wider he smiled, the more malicious it looked. I felt so judged by my own doctor! Did he expect all single people to be virgins?”

- Emma Singson, 30, banker


(Photo source: sxc.hu)