Okay, I think we need a quote thread here, because every once in a while I see a doozy and wish we had them all in one place so that we don't start feeling like we are the only ones with brainless doctors out there.

My own story is in the "pre-diagnosis" section if you want to know the background, but basically my current status is that I do not have celiac disease according to at least one member of the medical community, and I do according to another. Dr. Negative thinks that Dr. Positive (who is a GP, not a gastro) doesn't know what she's talking about. I personally am not sure either way at the moment.

So. I took my son in for his 9-month checkup today and casually mentioned to his ped that if I am found to have celiac disease after all, I might start my son on a gluten-free diet too, since his growth has slowed down despite eating like a horse, he's STILL not sleeping through the night, and seems irritable a lot.

The pediatrician said that my son didn't have celiac disease because children with that disease are very skinny with protruding stomachs, etc. I said that 60% of kids with the disease don't show outward symptoms. And then he gave me the quote of the day:

"Well if someone doesn't have symptoms, it doesn't really matter whether or not they the disease, does it."

Insert giant slap on forehead... apparently he hasn't heard about what the disease actually DOES to the body.

Okay, what are your quotes of the day? I hope everyone feels better knowing that they are not alone... and that you can get a good laugh out of the fact that some docs are let out of med school with ideas like this in their heads.

I went to a doctor here on Long Island and was telling him I have celiacs disease and he says, "My son has celiacs too, he can't have barley!" I truly hope he does know the difference. I did tell him that in addition to the regular glutens we can't have that I also can't have soy, corn, and tomatoes. I hope he was listening to me, I have the feeling he just keeps barley away from the little guy. Deb

Doctor: "What are the symptoms of Sprue?" I think he needs to hire me.

And this from a gastric specialist

"There is nothing wrong with you, go home and service your husband and look after your children and quit spending so much time thinking about yourself"

I was 89 pounds at the time

Shirley--I can't believe he said 'service your husband'! You should have clocked him one

Holy Cow Shirley....I can't imagine what I would have said. He must have been 99 years old and just got off the Saratogga Wagen Trail, or widowed for 79 years. Hah

In no particular order....

"Children don't get Celiac Disease."
"Gluten enteropathy is rare."
"He has Cystic Fibrosis."
"Oats are safe."
"Sprouted wheat is safe."
"Is that when you can't eat bread?"
"Don't put your family on the gluten-free diet, it's too restrictive. What will you do for birthday parties when they have pizza and cake?"
"Why do you want the other kids tested for Celiac? Are they showing symptoms?"
"Can he eat toast?" <<-- this from the dr who admitted my son to the hospital for pneumonia... we were looking for a safe breakfast the following morning... I was like, "Sure, Dumb-ass.... toasting removes the gluten!"
"Do you bake all your own breads?" I had to wipe the tears away...
"Let me put in a consult to our nutritionist..." HELLO, I was doing it for 4 years already!!!!



Did you educate the moron?

I LOVE this topic. I had to add my stupid naturopath's comment after I told him about my excruciating (bits of broken glass stuck in my intestines) pains from celiac contamination. He said:

"There's no pain receptors in the intestines. You're only experiencing a little pressure from gas."

I was VERY tempted to kick him in the gut and say: "Of course, you won't feel that because you don't have any pain receptors in your intestines."
BURDEE

SERVICE YOUR HUSBAND???!!! I am stunned. I seriously cannot believe some of these horror stories. Just when you think you've heard the most outrageous thing come out of a doctor's mouth, someone manages to top it. That guy NEEDS serviced. Not the kind of service he might want.

<moon unit's doc "Well if someone doesn't have symptoms, it doesn't really matter whether or not they the disease, does it.">

that is CLASSIC. i bet he cleans his house by throwing all the garbage into the closet.

and viola, "service your husband" - HOLY COW. what a freeeeak!

mine seems pale in comparison to y'all's, especially those of you trying to get answers re: your kids.

me: pre-celiac-dx, weeping at third strep throat in a year and a half, the rest of the time filled with other, less severe assorted illnesses and infections, "i can't keep doing this - why am i sick all the time?"

smug internal medicine doc: "you're not sick. i see sick people all the time. you're not sick." (mind you, she was writing two or three prescriptions for me as she says this.)

last week i found out she's still there - she'll get a "thank-you" letter from me soon, copied to the head of the clinic. i had a lot of doctors that didn't know what was wrong with me, misdiagnosed, overprescribed, but she went out of her way to actually belittle me to my face and (successfully!) intimidate me from trying to get care.

said to my celiac husband prior to correct diagnosis, said by a gastro specialist in 1977 - pre HMO days too!

"You just have run of the mill IBS"


Meanwhile, he just lost 30 lbs with D everyday and gas and had anexoric look - this had been going on for 4-5 months; people in the hospital looked better than he did.

Last summer I was seriously ill (after being sick all my life, but this was bad) with chronic diarrhea and awful pain and weakness. One day I got the most awful chest pains, that absolutely took my breath away and seriously put me into shock. My husband rushed me to the hospital, thinking I was having a heart attack. They hooked me up to monitors for five hours, did nothing to alleviate my pain at all. This stupid nurse kept saying, "Slow your breathing down, that is not helpful!" Duh, I know that hyperventilating isn't healthy, but she should have tried that terrible pain for all those hours!

Anyway, they did a lot of testing, and after five hours the doctor comes and tells me that its 'just' severe stomach and bowel cramps, and that my potassium and electrolytes were low, "But you're fine and can go home now". Okay, what about finding out the CAUSE of the awful cramps? How about fixing the potassium and electrolytes? I had to figure that one out myself.

The second visit to the hospital emergency was worse, the doctor and nurses treated me like I was a joke for coming in with diarrhea and dehydration.

Finally, after six months of this, and lots of tests that all turned out negative (for different bacteria and parasites), I figured it out, went to my doctor and told her point-blank that I have Celiac disease.

She said, "Oh, I thought you had the symptoms, but didn't think you could have it because you weren't losing any weight". I gave her an interesting information session on unexplained weight GAIN in many celiacs. I sincerely hope that the next person won't have to suffer for years before she'll diagnose celiac disease, just because they are overweight.

a certain idiot Dr. said to me...

"All your problems are because you are fat. You just need to lose weight" (DUH I need to lose weight moron, don't you think I've tried? And the diet he gave me to follow was very high in whole wheat and I literally GAINED 10 - 15 pounds in a week. So I went back in and screamed at him that that the diet was NOT working)

and he said

"you must not be doing it right"

Ack... no, just following your high in whole wheat diet EXACTLY moron, do ya think that should've been a clue right there? I fired him as my Dr. and went to another one in the practice...

"Even if you have celiac, there's no reason to go on a gluten-free diet. Just take Imodium."

AAACK!

The doctor that told me to 'service my husband' was a specialist I went to 35 years ago. If he was still alive I would like to take the Celiac diagnosis and shove it where the sun don't shine.
He not only said it to me, but to my family, so for the next almost 20 years, I was treated like a "pain in the butt" hypocondriac, with little or no support from anyone.

I can't believe a doctor told you to ignore the diet and stick with Immodium What is the matter with these people!! I'm sure glad I've got a good doctor now.

Pre diagnose and having spent 3 months with very intense symptoms (I had been asymptomatic prior this last Fall when an infection triggered my symptoms of sprue - a very curious thing as I really had not any symptoms I can think of even now 6 months after diagnosis and looking back on my whole life. I really had not been sick or had any overt symptoms. I realize that I was doing damage to my small intestine though but for some reason nothing that would make me even remotely think I had sprue. In fact, I never heard of it until Iwas diagnosed) BUT that being said, in the 3 months of not having a diagnosis, I heard many RIDICULOUS comments from multiple medical professionals in variouson what I might possibly have (if anything at all), including:

"You are pregnant"
"You belong in the psych unit"
"You just have a bellyache"
"You cannot keep coming to the doctor when he cannot find anything wrong withyou"

and my personal favorite (when I was in the ER because I was taken there because of dehydration, etc), a nurse told me "You have had the 85 million dollar work up and your doctor cannot find anything wrong with you, so what are YOU hiding?" to which I replied "Then I guess I need the 86 million dollar work-up".

uggh!! all of this sounds so familiar.
mine all started about 2 1/2 years ago. i would just start getting nauseas after about 5 bites of my meal and most of the time running to the bathroom vomiting or with the D!
after about 5 weeks of not eating at all.. except crackers and bread and still getting sick(know i know why) i went to the dr.
they asked my symptoms and then when they asked me to roll up my sleeve for my blood pressure test and seeing that my arms are FULLY tattooed.. they say to me "OH!! well there you go.. you must have hepatitis" i started bawling and left.
my boyfriend (at the time) called them back, yelled at them, got me referred to another dr.
went and saw him and he sent me in for an ultrasound..found nothing (DUH)
then it dawned on me.. my mom.. my moms sister and my moms mom all had gallbladder disease.
i asked the dr to order a HIDA scan for me to test for gallbladder disease and he waited a month to do that for me.
mean while.. im going on 9 weeks of not eating...lost 21 pounds
i get the HIDA scan .. it hurts really bad.. the guy says.. you probaly have gallbladder disease.
i call my dr everyday to get the "official" test results..and hes out of town .. so i see another dr in the office and she says to me.. "are you sure youre not just anorexic"
i wanted to punch her teeth out.
and i expalin to her.. listen.. i love to eat..i just cant.. i get sick evrytime i eat and it hurts soooo bad..
she says to me (while looking at my tattoos) " look.. im not giving you any pain pills so dont ask"
i was like.. yeah .. thats exactly what i want.. so i can puke some more.
finally they refer me to a GI.. he looks at my results .. says you have GB disease adn took out my gallbladder 3 days later.
i felt a bit better after that.. less vomiting for sure..
but still the instantious bloating after 2 bites of food and the pain.. but the dr said i had to give my body a year to adjust to not having my GB.
so i wait (in pain).. keep going in for tests.. upper GI series.. thing where i swallow the camera and they take pictures of my stomach lining.. catscan..
finally i get a letter from my dr saying.. after all these tests and no conclusions we have no info to help you.. if you think yopu need to come see us agin.. please call...blah blah blah...
so im disgusted at this point..
i go to my health food store and ask the vitamin people for digestive enzymes and they ask my symptoms.. right off this hippy guy with dreads and more patchouli then any one person should ever wear says to me..
oh dude, you totally have celiac disease...
i go gluten free diet for 2 weeks and feel awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
i call the GI.. tell them.. go in fot the blood test.. and hes like "oh yeah.. i wonder why i didnt think of that"
and now i have been gluten-free for 1 1/2 years and feeling GREAT!!!!!!!!!!!

Dermatologist who was looking at what was left of my rash 2 weeks after finishing prednisone: "That doesn't look anything like DH."

Duh, you didn't see it when it did a month ago because it took this long to get an appointment!

******************************************************************
Me on the phone to a pediatrician: " Hello, would it be possible to bring my 6-week-old baby in for aan appointment? He's really looking yellow, and this is definitely something new."

Pediatrician: "It's probably just the fact that your husband is Japanese."

(It turned out that the baby was yellow because his liver was enlarged as a result of congestive heart failure. Also, my husband's skin has never been yellow.)

Now, as sad and disgusting as your story is when it comes to doctors, that quote totally cracked me up. Sometimes the most unlikely people are the ones with the most common sense.

What an amazing story!

I tell you, I should write a book about the misdiagnosed people out there.

Nisla, you must have been seeing my doctor, as that is exactly what she said to me! And I fired her, and went to a completely different clinic.

I went to the doctor and a dermatologist for 2 straight years with my DH. They kept giving me more antibiotics and when those didn't work, the dermatologist said it was "Some kind of dermatitis. Here, use this soap."

Then after that I went to a different doctor. She looked at my rash, then looked in my chart and said "Well, Dr. Dermatologist couldn't figure out what it was, so it can't be anything physical." Then she closed my chart and gave me the serious/sympathetic look in the eye and told me that "It is probably the physical manifestation of emotional distress. Let me recommend you to a good therapist." She actually GAVE me a card for a therapist.

Talk about emotional distress, I cried all the way home. And it still bothers me.

Oh wait, can I add a mother in law quote?

"Can't she just take some benadryl?"

My most recently medical idiot was a nurse not the doctor. When I called for an appointment for my pap smear - I asked that everything While I'm talking to the nurse who kept saying "No problem, I'll check for gluten" I'm feeling like she doesn't know what I'm talking about. So I asked "Do you know what gluten is?" She looked at me for a moment and said "It's some kind of weed, isn't it?"

First GI who actually suspected Celiac and ran panel but didn't tell me at that time - Celiac Sprue is very rare, it's an allergy to wheat and you need to be of Scottish heritage to get it.

Hemotologist (after finding out I have very light monthly cycles) - Some women just get anemia, I promise once you get through menopause, the anemia will go away - until then keep taking iron. Great doc I'm only 42 so I have another 15+ years of iron pills and the extra fiber they require.

Second GI who diagnosed me, after reading me my biopsy report over the phone (classic case of Celiac disease) - Well now the question becomes, do we prescribe the gluten free diet to someone who had not severe GI symptoms? Me - well if I continue to eat gluten won't I get those bad symptoms eventually? Yes you probably will, you should start the diet now...you can still have corn and potatoes...call me in six months and we'll do another biopsy to make sure you're following the diet. He did not offer any help in getting started by the way.

Shirley's guy still takes the cake! Service your husband! Give me a freakin' break! What an absolute moron!

Wow, these are outrageous! In a totally sad and disgraceful way, of course... I just knew there were some doozies out there to be heard. Professional writers couldn't make this stuff up. It baffles me!

I thought of another one. My nurse when I was waiting to see my primary care asked what I was there for, and I said that I had a family history and symptoms of celiac disease so I was getting tested. She asked "what's that?" So I gave the 10-cent answer that it was an intolerance to gluten, which meant you couldn't ever eat wheat again for the rest of your life.

She said, "Oh, that's not true, I'm sure you can just take a pill or something before you eat."

Dude, BEANO won't fix this thing! Way to give someone who hasn't read up on it false hope out of pure ignorance! Yeesh!

I also heard someone today say they knew someone with celiac disease, and "they had to go off gluten for like 6 to 9 months! She's fine now so she can take it again." I don't know this lady very well, but I will try to gently get the info to her indirectly so her friend doesn't do further damage to herself.

Sigh...

Oh man, thanks guys! I am TOTALLY HOWLING reading this thread!!! This is exactly what I needed after the last few days!

You guys always pull me through when I hit rough spots......

"Dude! You TOTALLY have celiac disease"

Oh, I'm dyin' here! That's gut-splitting!!!!

Karen

Oh the things that college health center doctors will tell you:

After telling the doc that I threw up a lot, "Are you sure you don't have an eating disorder?"
Apparently 19 year old girls can't be sick. Make an appointment to see the nutritionist.

After rating kind of low on one of those exhale and make the ball rise tests, without any athsma symptoms "I'm going to put you on a daily inhaled steroid"

"You're anemic, but it's probably because you're a woman." Nevermind that I had been on the pill 5-6 years and my periods were really light

Upon seeing that my red blood cells were small, "You have spherocytosis, a genetic disorder that effects those of middle-eastern and mediterranian descent" This was the look I gave her:
I had to make sure she was looking at me, because I'm white as a ghost and am a total WASP, with the exception of my 16% native american blood. Try again, idiot.

After an endoscopy and the GI doc put me on nexium (teeny ucler from too much advil and no esophogeal damage) and the glass-digesting pain came back near the end of the course of nexium, his nurse said, "That shouldn't be happening. You must not be taking it right."

"your platelets came back high, but I'm sure it's nothing to be concerned about"

This maybe a stupid question. Are you saying you can't have soy, corn and tomatoes or that everybody gluten intolerant shouldn't have these things. I have never heard that before and I have been doing the gluten-free diet for 3 years now.

Let me see. The GI I saw 8 years ago with my Pernicious Anemia said: "This is all in your head you are insane."
The GP prior to that told me for a year; "You are going through menopause, you have the flu." I had neither.
The specialists who refused last year to to do anything about the nodules for my hypothyroidism said: "We want them to get bigger before we will do anything."
The Dermatologist who I forced to do a skin biopsy on my DH said: "DH only appears on the elbows and you are too fat to have Celiac because Celiacs are skinny children."
I proved him wrong, like I proved all the rest wrong

I had a great GP that told me I was mental for about a year! She said if I got a hobbie and stopped imagining peripheal neuropathy, and imagine a bloated belly and imagine I had mono (confirmed by blood test no less) and stop imagining I was gaining weight because I was hypo thyroid(also confirmed by blood test) and stop saying I was anemic even though I was and START believing I was healthy I would become healthy by believing it! Then I just agreed to well, just agree! and I said fine give me some antidepressant then to help me and she had the nerve to tell I didn't need drugs! OH MY GOD! And yes she still practicing. A preoccupied psychic on the 1-800 line could have done better!

Stef 4 Dogs

Age 62, no symptoms

My long-time sickly sister was finally diagnosed with celiac, so I went to my GP to ask about having myself tested. He said "there is no blood test for celiac" -- when I told him there WAS, he went out of the room and came back with a paperback book (Doctoring for Dummies, I guess) -- he searched the book and confirmed that, no, there was no celiac blood test

I went ahead on my own and got the DNA test, and was positive for half of one of the markers.

From GP....."The way they diagnose celiac disease is by trying the gluten-free diet and seeing if it works"

From the GP who was trying to explain the gluten-free diet....."You can still eat pasta!"

From the 1st GI while discussing malnutrition and C...."Well you can't be malnurised uless you have D"
My reply......"what about the whole damaged small intestines thing?"
His reply....."Well yeah, there is that"

As far as things said by people who should not have passed their medical boards, you win.

Hi Dad, I didn't know you joined the board! Hehehe!

You gonna go get the blood work done from a reputable ACTUAL doctor now, or do I have to sic these guys on ya?

(Oh, and just to stay on topic, I'll add a new quote from yesterday... "If I had known you'd get in so quickly to have the biopsy done, I never would have ordered the blood test for you at all because it's really not necessary!" Well no, not the 1/4 outdated panel you did, according to NIH directives you're right, it's not very helpful at all.)

My older daughter was severly ill from 6 years old until 16 years old when I figured it out and had her tested. I had her younger sister tested and she is celiac too. So, when I handed the doctor (actually avery good pediatrician) the results and said, "she has celiac," She said, "Wow, that is really rare; you seldom see that."

My older daughter was severly ill from 6 years old until 16 years old when I figured it out and had her tested. I had her younger sister tested and she is celiac too. So, when I handed the doctor (actually avery good pediatrician) the results and said, "she has celiac," She said, "Wow, that is really rare; you seldom see that."

Shirley:
Did you slap him in the face. How inappropriate! I would tell everyone I knew what an insensitive goof he was. I might even stand outside his office with a sign warning potential patients. How disgusting!

ROFLMAO Doctoring for Dummies, I love that.

Shirley: What were you a prize hefer?

Here are a few of the things some of the doctors have said to me over the years:

"You have IBS and there is no treatment for that (18 years ago). You just need to learn to live with it." Even when if feels like I am slowly dying!

"You just have IBS, you need more fiber. Wheat Bran is good." (Yeah right.)

"You can't possibly have Celiac Sprue because you are overweight." (Not true.)

"I am going to test you for everything else before testing you for celiac disease because you can't possibly have that." He never did get around to testing me for it. I left after a year, before he could "finish" all his testing.

"I will ONLY do a biopsy if you are anemic." (That's dumb. Anyhow I was always borderline anemic until I went gluten-free. Six months into the gluten-free diet and I was able to donate blood for the first time ever!)

"A lot of my IBS patients put themselves on a gluten free diet and feel better. I don't know why." DUH

"There are a lot of false POSITIVES with the Celiac blood tests, but I have never heard of a false NEGATIVE!" (I'm sorry, but the reverse is true...)

When I showed one doctor the gene test results and said that I have the gene, and feel better on the diet so regardless of the negative blood tests I feel I shouldn't eat gluten, she said, "I don't know that you have the gene." I SHOWED you the results, HELLO! "Well, I didn't order that test, so I can't believe it." I swear if you walked into her office with a pregnancy test and said it was positive she probably wouldn't believe it if she hadn't ordered it! Even if you came in later holding the baby! I so badly wanted to shove my results down her throat. Of course I didn't. I just left her office determined that she wouldn't make me cry AGAIN.

and my favorite...when I asked why the doctor didn't take ANY tissue samples during the Endoscopic exam (I mean shoot you are already in there would it be that hard to take a few samples!), the PA said to me:

"You can't test for Celiac with an Endoscopy, you have to do a Colonoscopy."

I told her that she had it backwards, that Celiac damages the small intestine NOT the colon, but she refused to believe me. She probably had no idea what Celiac was and was getting it confused with Crohn's. That was the last time I went to that doctors office. Not that my new GI doc was any better...

Oh Lord! After reading through all these posts THREE times....I don't feel so bad about having cut our pedis and GIs off in my daughter's case! Is this REALLY the best that our med schools have to offer???

Here are a few of my favorites while trying to figure out my daughter's failure to thrive issues:
From the THREE separate pedis and a pediatric GI no less:

When asked if it's "normal" for a nine-month old child to have diarrhea-like stools 7-10 times per day: "Yes. For some children that is normal" So I ask..."even if they don't eat much that day?". The reply, "Yes. That is completely normal." (Looking back now, I suspect that there are a lot of undiagnosed Celiac children in our area)

When asking the pedi if this could be a food allergy or intolerance as I noticed my dd acted up like crazy after having cereal and specifically oatmeal...."There is absolutely NO connection between behavioral issues and food"

When the severe diarrhea began to hit, our pedi told us, "Give her PediaSure twice a day, every day". Shaye would have severe stomach cramps, diarrhea within 4 minutes and then would cry for an hour and a half after each time I gave her PediaSure. After two days, I told the pedi that it just wasn't working. Her response...."I don't care, just make sure she drinks the PediaSure". In two short days, Shaye completely refused to eat or drink anything except for water and fruit. It took me TWO freaking weeks to get her back to eating "normally" again and of course, we went down on the weight charts....AGAIN!

When dd finally fell off of the weight chart completely and I told the pedi that she was refusing certain foods, namely breads, pastas and milk...."I don't care what you have to do! Your child needs more carbs, fats and proteins! Feed her as much bread, pasta and butter as you can! ....Are you still giving her PediaSure?" (Meanwhile, the 2000 July issue of the Journal of Pediatrics states that Celiacs is occuring in 1 out of 57 to 1 in 33 children...so much for continuing education)

Dh also really liked seeing a comment in my dd's chart that read..."Parents APPEAR to be attentive". We of course were told that if we didn't get her to gain weight on their high carb diet (with MANDATORY weigh-ins every two weeks), that they would "have to call social services in to make sure we actually had food in the house, that we earned enough money to support a child and that we were actually feeding our child". Talk about some pressure at every meal!! Here I was following their advice to the letter and was distraught all day long while making 2-3 entrees for every meal to make sure that dd had plenty of selection and wasn't just refusing to eat because she was craving something other than what I had originally planned. Oh, and after that appointment, they did give us 3 free cans of PediaSure!

Desperate, I consulted with an acupuncturist who had been an MD in China for over 20 years and was now teaching in the U.S. and working in pediatric nutrition. After speaking over the phone with me for 20 minutes, she said..."I am 95% sure that your dd has Celiac Disease or in the very least, a wheat allergy and a dairy allergy as her weight loss began within 2 weeks of starting cereals". Hmmm.....this woman NEVER physically saw my child and yet her advice truly jived with Shaye's growth information, eating habits and worked with the obvious FACTS of what we had been observing! Talk about a hand slapping forehead moment! Finally....someone who made sense!

But then we went to the GI. When I mentioned what the acupuncturist said and how Shaye responded incredibly well to a wheat-free diet, her comment was, "Yeah, well the Chinese have their own problems with rice allergies!" WTF does that have to do with anything??? Then she said, "Make sure to give her plenty of PediaSure" Apparently, PediaSure is the best band-aid of the pediatric world! The GI sent us home with a free 6-pack of the stuff!

The only good thing that came out of our appointments was a positive diagnosis of a dairy allergy.....at which point I officially could tell them all to SHOVE their PediaSure!!!

The first doctor that my husand saw ever for his gastro problems in 1977 gave him Colace for his diarrhea. Need I say more?

I have to LOL at the pedia sure Dr. Chey's Ped. GI kept giving us free samples of Pedia Sure and saying that I needed to FORCE her to drink them even if she didn't like them... My daughter got to the point she was calling the ped. GI the "milkshake Dr." LOL! (this is the same Dr. that REFUSED to consider a dx of celiac even though I had it because "it's JUST IBS") yeah right!

Same doctors who gave my husband colace (he had undiagnosed/misdiagnosed celiac disease the whole time from 1977 to now) also berated him when he asked for a lower GI series (after them doing just an upper GI and finding nothing wrong). The doctor said to him "You junkies are all the same. You only come here (making up symptoms and get tests) to get drugs from us!" My husband replied "Why kind of a nut do you think I am that I am asking for a barium enema?" This was the Veterans Administration Hospita in East Orange, NJ in 1977. They never did the test he requested and he HAD to move on to a private doctor who was no better we later found out.

I had one Dr. pull that "junkie" line on me, and I looked at him very sternly and said, LOOK IDIOT, I'm ALLERGIC to anything with CODEINE, MORPHINE, DEMORAL, Any of these so called narcotics you think I'm trying to get from you... Didn't you even LOOK at my chart????? (apparently not)... he then was very dismissive of me and told me I just had an upper respiratory infection and prescribed antibiotics (again, I'm allergic to the ones he prescribed ) So I left and didn't go back to his office. I was so tired of being told I had "upper respiratory infections" every other month!

I hear ya on the upper resperatory infections--for literally years, doctors told me that the cause of my symptoms were sinus infections. This, despite the lack of any nasal symptoms. I took so many antibiotics that I'm allergic to all but one strain now. I also took many rounds of steriods--both oral and by injection. This went on for years. Two years ago, I had a cat-scan of my sinuses done--and they were perfectly normal. Now I know that the steriods seemed to help because they MASKED the symptoms of my then undiagnosed Celiac.

funny how as soon as I went gluten-free, those damned Upper respiratory infections disappeared!

Yea--mine too! Imagine that

Wow some of these are crazy!!!

Mine pales in comparison to some of these.

I had correctly self diagnosed myself for H Pylori. Went to the GI for an endoscopy to 100% confirm the bloodtests where correct before starting the meds. Ofcourse I told the doctor that in addition to this new development that in all honesty I'd been nauseaus for about the last 8 years of my life. Ok fine. Dr. does the endoscopy, I was correct have H Pylori in addition to forming an ulcer from to much Excedrin, Advil and the H Pylori, but here's the kicker. He also proceeded to tell me that my small intestine looked a little funny but we'll look into that later.

Now I'd never heard of celiac before, but for the love of G-d, you are a GI!!! I just came in and told you that I have felt sick for 8 years, you just did an endoscopy where you noticed my small intestine looks funny, yet didn't bother to take a biopsy... and had no clue I had celiac. Thanks!

Fast forward to a 1 1/2 later, my 1st cousin is diagnosed with celiac and the mystery of why I've been sick for nearly 10 years is solved.

Had this been a general doctor, well I'd stil be a bit concerned that this guy didn't know... but this is his specialty for G-d's sake!!!!

Jillian--You'd think that just a little common sense would be in order! Unbelieveable