I have no energy to go into details and it won’t result in anything, so I won’t. But I’ve been living with chronic pain for ages and it got significantly worse to a point where it inhibits my ability to sleep and drives me mad while I try to work.
Doctors are able to observe and do observe the cause, but refuse to help me, because I lost my medical records when I was either homeless (which I was multiple times) or when I moved countries (also multiple times), which I genuinely am sure aren’t even needed and they use as an excuse.
I have last chance appointment next week. If I don’t get help, I plan to move out of this country asap, because I have to mandatorily pay hundreds of euros each month of healthcare, which I don’t receive, with doctors being extremely disrespectful, with some indirectly, but very clearly, telling me to leave this country. I’m so tired.
I can’t take painkillers because at this point they screw my stomach, making my situation even worse than the pain I have.
Feel free to share your awful stories of bad interactions with medical staff. Reading such is how I cope.
I am Nicaraguan/live in Nicaragua. My experience at hospitals has been… great, I guess. Yes, we have universal healthcare that covers a lot of things, but my experience has been good because both of my parents are doctors. When I was a kid, and I had to go to the hospital, I would get to my appointment pretty quickly, doctors where responsive, attentive and thorough. My parents may have been friends with them or at least they knew each other, so they were nice.
My experience is not necessarily common. Nowadays when my friends share their hospital experiences, they always complain about their doctors: they are rude, lack empathy, are not thorough, misdiagnose them, and the hospital system is a mess. Doctors are overworked, and they are not able to provide the care that they would be able to if the hospitals that are part of the social security system wouldn’t take on so many patients without the necessary number of doctors to care for those patient.
My parents experience with hospitals hasn’t been great either. When my dad quit his job at the Army’s hospital, he was not paid any of the compensation required by law, this was not uncommon at the time, and at least one person made a complaint at the Ministry of Labor, but it was dismissed because… it’s the Army’s Hospital.
My mom worked most of her life at the same hospital, she developed chronic pain in her back due to her work, and was fired after she requested fewer hours. She later tried to file for compensation for an occupational injury and was denied by the (state-run) social security system. The Army’s Hospital is not run by right-wing Somoza-era guards, it is run and owned by Sandinista generals.
I am sharing all this because well, you asked for awful hospital stories, but also to illustrate something that people hate to hear in Marxist-Leninist spaces: Nicaragua is not a socialist paradise, we also live in our very own brand of a capitalist hellscape. A hellscape flavored by Ortega’s desire to enrich himself, his family and his closest allies.
I also live with chronic pain, I sometimes go without sleep for days, but I was able to get a diagnosis and the proper medication because my parents are friends with doctors. Only working class solidarity will save us, not fake socialists in power (I want to point out, unlike other countries, being a doctor in Nicaragua doesn’t necessarily make you wealthy, only until I also started working did our financial struggles eased up a bit.)
I hope you get the medical care and medication that you need soon, good luck with your appointment!! Not being able to sleeps sucks, it’s just trying to get through the day to finally get to bed… and then not be able to fall sleep and repeat. It’s terrible.
I don’t have any connections, but one time I got a surgery I needed solely because a nurse who is also an immigrant overheard the non-immigrant nurses dismissing my case without me even seeing the surgeon. She stopped me, asked about my case, told me she’ll speak to the surgeon, which she did, and then the surgeon took me in and scheduled the surgery very quickly from when it happened. I hope I get lucky next week. My pain can only be addressed with a surgery, unfortunately.
Oh my, that’s genuinely awful. My mom had (and still has) chronic pain and so does my best friend. I had to give massages at night after they couldn’t bear the pain and they wouldn’t ask me because they didn’t wanna burden me or something like that. Since they were always in pain, they didn’t wanna feel needy!! So they’d wait until it was at its worst!
Really hope there’s something out there that can help you somewhat immediately. My best friend did physio (still does… consistently for 4ish years now) and the prescribed exercises & stretches really helped her out.
Medical staff won’t give you what you need when you seem too ‘needy’, it’s awful, it has a long precedent, and it’ll keep happening for the foreseeable future until contemporary medicine changes their modus operandi from zero-sum marginal-numbered positions to allowing anyone dedicated to become a doctor/medical professional.
Since they were always in pain, they didn’t wanna feel needy!!
Yea, people get confused why people in chronic pain may appear fine. When you’re always in pain, you don’t have to “inconvinience” people by expressing it. Some of us may carry burden of getting attacked from birth by people allegedly there to take care of you (family) for having the pain and daring to ever express it.
I am in an endless limbo where doctors are angry that I’m not already diagnosed… So they don’t do diagnostics. I tried all methods of communicating to no avail. I always blame myself first, because I’m the only variable I’ve control over, but I sincerely tried everything I can and nothing works. I’ve no diagnose, so I must be lying, even though the doctors themselves observe the symptoms and record them. I had multiple doctors suggest I’m taking drugs to forge my blood tests - blood tests which I didn’t even know were coming, me being a person who doesn’t smoke, drink or else, and cannot even take painkillers anymore because they make my tummy ache way too much and may fuck up my intestines, so I’d rather just have the pain I have than a new pain and other symptoms with a possibility of kidney and/or liver failure.
I don’t even want to go to the doctors. I just want to get diagnosed, get a treatment and never come back if that’d be possible. I’m so tired of medical staff dragging out the process by refusing to work AND not telling me they won’t treat me (I had one doctor tell me he doesn’t want to be my doctor and at least I appreciate the honesty so I can move on from someone who is uncooperative to someone who may be). I would understand if I had no symptoms and no issues, but they DO measure my issues, note my case as particularly bad and then do nothing.
I’m super poor, but I did a full DNA test and then compiled all the faulty markers into a list myself. Doctors don’t care, because it wasn’t scheduled by their laboratory. And there’s plenty of VERY relevant things in there. I have two visits next week and a dermatologist all the way in August. If next week shows no hope, I’m going to leave this country. Fuck this. I’m so tired. I cannot even afford private healthcare here. My experience with private healthcare isn’t much better, because they give me ineffective treatments, but at least they do something, so eventually maybe I’d reach an effective treatment. Ones paid by my public insurance keep drawing out the entire thing and then instead of going into diagnosing root cause or treating it, they say shit implying I must be lying about my medical history, because they cannot believe no one diagnosed and/or helped me in the many years I’ve been alive WHILE THEY THEMSELVES DO THE EXACT SAME THING.
Sorry for a long rant. I’m just so tired of this trap and I cannot even rest because my “free” time is ridden with pain and inability to sleep due to it. I tried medication for sleep but all it makes me is feeling more tired while continously waking up from pain, if I even manage to fall asleep.
