Consult Your Doctor and Yourself [OPINION]

Being your own advocate gets incredibly exhausting very quickly. However, this is what we need to be doing in today’s day and age.

You see this a lot. The Women’s March started as women advocating for themselves. March for Our Lives started as students taking a stand for their own safety.

However, most people typically do not think about the need to be their own advocate in the sense of health care.

Doctors are trusted professionals. Eight years of school on top of several years of residency are required in order to obtain a medical license.

However, it is important to remember that these professionals do not know what you are feeling.

When I was 20-years-old, I spent several months incredibly ill. Every time I went to the doctor, my nurse practitioner informed me that it was “just a virus.” I followed up three other times over a span of a month and a half.

I had lost a lot of weight. You could see all of my ribs. I eventually went into the emergency room to which I was told to follow up with a gastrointestinal doctor.

Two minutes into my first appointment with my new gastrointestinal doctor, I was told he thought I had Crohn’s that has been present for years. I left with a scheduled colonoscopy.

The colonoscopy confirmed his suspicion which was previously brushed off as “just a virus” no matter how many times I had gone into my doctor’s office. Two months after my colonoscopy, the disease had become so bad that surgery was required.

I had a complete inability to pull nutrients from food I had eaten and there was nowhere for the food to go as I only had a diameter of 3 mm of opening through my intestines when the small intestines are typically a 3 cm diameter opening.

If I had not gone into the emergency room, not gotten another opinion, who knows what could have happened.

This is not the only story like this.

A 30-year-old woman in Alabama, Kayla Rahn, had been experiencing abdominal pain and when she saw her physician, she was told she needed to lose weight. Despite all of her efforts, she kept gaining weight. Eventually, she went into the emergency room where it was found that she had a 50-pound ovarian cyst.

In December of last year, a 12-year old girl from California, Alyssa Alcaraz, was diagnosed with the flu when her health kept declining. After three days, she had passed away from sepsis. Her family has been pushing for doctors to utilize tests to avoid more misdiagnoses.

Misdiagnoses can have serious consequences. Being your own advocate is necessary.

But what happens when you cannot be your own advocate?

Not only is being your own advocate important, but so is recognizing the support system around you. I was stubborn for a while and wanted to be able to take care of myself. Had I not allowed my father to take me into the emergency room, I would not have gone.

Rahn from Alabama’s mother took her into the emergency room in a gesture of support. Alcaraz from California’s mother had said in a statement, “my thing is, yeah, I could point fingers, but as a mother, I missed it, too.”

So how do we better become advocates for ourselves and prevent a possible misdiagnosis?

Being an advocate in any situation takes a lot of knowledge. Information is the best power you can have. However, most of your information comes from what you can feel internally. Identifying the key issues that you are encountering is the main feat.

Identifying goals, possible solutions, and what you want is another thing of importance. Doctors cannot understand what you are feeling and what you want to be achieved unless this is communicated.

Seeing a specialist is very crucial to treatment. If the issues reside in the digestive tract, it does not make sense to see a doctor who specializes in respiratory. Writing down symptoms and knowing medical history helps a great deal with appointments with a specialist.

People often forget, myself included, medications they are taking and the dosages. This is important to know because some medicines can affect different organs as a side effect. For example, some corticosteroids can increase the risk of gastrointestinal bleeding.

Most importantly, talk to your doctor. Question your doctor. Make sure you understand each other. Make sure you are getting the information and care you need. If you are not satisfied or getting better, seek further help. Deaths from misdiagnosis can often be prevented.