• SharkEatingBreakfast@sopuli.xyz
    892·
    2 days ago

    I was shitting blood, turned grey, and fainted in public. I did go the hospital. They literally said “idk” and sent me home with a 4000$ bill. It kept happening.

    Went to a specialist that also resulted in a literal “idk”, and they wouldn’t clear a colonoscopy because I am “too young” and “don’t have a family history.” I was begging them to figure it out because this was a fucking nightmare. Nope. At least the bill was 400$ this time around.

    It kept happening for over a year at random. Actually terrifying.

    FINALLY, I put myself on a diet of oatmeal and water for a month and slowly introduced new foods every week. I was curious to know if maybe certain foods triggered it?

    Turns out: yes. I triggered a reaction using one of my favorite foods/ingredients. No idea why, but I had developed some kind of severe intolerance to it. And I had to figure it out myself.

    • medgremlin
      5·
      14 hours ago

      I’m very sorry that you went through that. I know it sucks with the American healthcare $ystem, but you are always allowed to seek a second opinion and any provider that is opposed to that is a bad provider and you shouldn’t see them again anyways.

      One thing to keep in mind about the ER though, is that they’re there to rule out anything that is going to kill you quickly, and if you didn’t lose enough blood to drop your hemoglobin count (a measure of how many red blood cells you have), it is perfectly within the standard of care for them to discharge you and tell you to follow up with your primary care physician or a specialist. The ER has a lot of resources, but not enough resources to fully diagnose every possible problem. They can make sure you’re not on death’s doorstep, and stabilize you if you are, but beyond that, they’re pretty strapped for resources and staffing which make it hard to fully work up every mystery diagnosis.

        • medgremlin
          2·
          8 hours ago

          Unfortunately, a solid diagnosis can be really hard to find and there are a lot of diseases and conditions that require more testing than can be completed in the ER. Part of why the ER is expensive is because the tests they do get come back almost immediately, but they very rarely order the tests that take a long time anyways. Expediency and staffing are the main contributors to the cost of emergency care.

          With the example of your case, how would the ER get you the diagnosis of a food intolerance without spending weeks on an elimination diet? There are some allergies that can be tested for, but that testing involves injecting a sample of the offending agent under the skin and watching to see if it causes irritation… but allergies and food intolerances are not the same thing and the only way to test for food intolerances is an elimination diet. For the allergy testing, the ER doesn’t have the samples to do the subcutaneous injections. It’s really only allergy specialists that have those available.

          • SharkEatingBreakfast@sopuli.xyz
            3·
            4 hours ago

            how would the ER get you the diagnosis of a food intolerance without spending weeks on an elimination diet?

            They sent me out without literally any clue as to what it was. My body felt like a ticking tine bomb, and I was terrified it would happen again. And it did. Several times. I had no idea it was an intolerance until nearly a year later. My weight kept yoyo-ing and I lost almost 30lbs in 2 months. I was terrified of my own body.

            No medical professional told me about the elimination diet or even that it could have been food-related. I got desperate enough to try it on my own after my sister was talking some shit about “cleansing toxins” and mentioned it. I looked it up and did it on my own accord.

            I get that ER is for emergencies, sure, but I left with zero answers and didn’t have access to another specialist, as they’re at least an hour and half drive away from my town. And VERY full. Not everyone has access to a second opinion.

            • medgremlin
              2·
              4 hours ago

              This is true and the healthcare access problem is more than just cost. If you’re an hour and a half away from any specialists, then the ER you went to likely doesn’t have access to set up those referrals. I have worked in both metropolitan and rural medical systems, and the biggest problems in rural healthcare are almost always access-based. If a hospital/ER is not in the same medical group as a specialist, they can’t put in emergency referrals to that specialist, and I have worked in rural hospitals that don’t even always have imaging services available. There’s an MRI on a trailer that gets brought around to the various hospitals in the group meaning that each hospital has one day a week or one day every other week where an MRI is available. The other option a small, rural ER has is to call EMS to transfer you to another hospital with more resources, but if your insurance doesn’t like the reason they give, you end up on the hook for that 90 minute ambulance ride. Small community hospitals are really between a rock and a hard place when it comes to connecting patients with resources while trying to avoid unnecessary expenses.

              The best advice I have for anyone in a rural area with poor healthcare access is to establish care with a family physician for primary care because, most of the time, the primary care physician is the one that actually gets to the bottom of things or coordinates the referrals for specialists. If you have a standing relationship with a physician, it’s a lot easier to make an appointment and they have a baseline to work from as opposed to starting from scratch like an ER physician has to.

    • AquaTofana@lemmy.world
      13·
      2 days ago

      Semi-Funny story. I had never eaten beets before, but I started eating those beet and sea salt chips (so good!), and I freaked the fuck out when I peed red that next morning.

      I have hella good healthcare through my job, and so I made an appointment with my primary care doc right away, and he was like “Any changes to your diet?”

      Felt bad about wasting his time, but Jesus, I was not expecting that amount of red in the bowl!

      • medgremlin
        2·
        14 hours ago

        Don’t feel bad about that! There are no stupid questions when it comes to your health and it’s important to ask someone who can give you accurate answers (and there’s no one better to ask than your own physician that you have a relationship with).

      • Vespair@lemm.ee
        9·
        1 day ago

        Ask anyone in primary patient care - people make that exact same appointment because of beets regularly. Beets are absolutely delicious, but boy can they be a little mindfuck for a moment if you aren’t expecting the side effect!

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
          5·
          1 day ago

          As someone who temporarily switched from carrots to beets due to an allergy, golden beets are a solution to avoid giving people you cook for a good scare

      • medgremlin
        3·
        14 hours ago

        Painless hematuria (blood in the urine without pain when peeing) is one of the first (and frequently only) signs of bladder cancer. Especially if it’s frank blood (meaning that you can see it without a microscope).

    • shawn1122@lemm.eeEnglish
      21·
      2 days ago

      Many if not most men are like this. It’s usually their wives or another woman in their lives that drags them in when something is about to fall off. It’s another way in which husbands leave 71% of a household’s ‘mental load’ on their wives, down to their own well being.

      • Didros@beehaw.org
        4·
        13 hours ago

        Men are raised to bring money into the household, and it can easily be half a years wages to go to the hospital. It’s weird to act like they are being malicious to their partner by being this way.

      • Entropywins@lemmy.world
        3·
        2 days ago

        So that’s why I accomplish nothing and only have 29% well-being is I don’t have a wife to do it for me…

        side note haven’t been to the doctors in years and last time I went it’s cause my girlfriend made me… at the same time, I’m the reason she could find her car keys, so fair trade, I guess…

    • Zink@programming.dev
      8·
      2 days ago

      That’s a whole part of my cynical conservative upbringing that I have to consciously work against.

      You can’t do the obvious thing you’re SUPPOSED to do. What are you, some kind of sucker and/or [gay slur]?

    • bobs_monkey@lemm.ee
      52·
      2 days ago

      Guaranteed, anyone with access to real healthcare would’ve had that checked out immediately.

      • nexguy@lemmy.world
        15·
        2 days ago

        Yeah we all know older european men aren’t stubborn about anything and would go to the doctor at the first sign of anything

        • superkret@feddit.org
          1·
          4 hours ago

          Yeah but it would get me a paid day (likely more) off work that doesn’t count against my vacation.

        • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
          3·
          1 day ago

          As an American, we’ve got it similar but expensive. We’ve got emergency rooms which triage and cost like a thousand dollars or more, then there are urgent cares which usually cost $50 (copay) and tell you whether or not to go to the er (usually you can get in somewhat quickly and occasionally they can even help), then there’s your regular doctor and that’ll typically be about a month if you’re a returning patient though some like mine keep an appointment slot either every day or every week open for same day appointments so you can call first thing after they open in the hopes of being seen.

          Oh, and insurance tells you who you get to have as a doctor. And every January the list may suddenly change

  • 58008@lemmy.worldEnglish
    16·
    2 days ago

    I’m currently pissing blood on the regular and I have free healthcare, so I think this is more of a “dumb dude” thing than an “American with an overdraft” thing.

    I will go to the doc eventually, but I need more. I can’t be turning up there with one thing to report. I need stabbing pains, memory loss, night terrors and maybe some jaundice before I pick up the phone.

    I know I can’t die early, because I’m not getting off that easy. So I’m safe for the time being 👍🙃

    • WhiteOakBayou@lemmy.world
      24·
      2 days ago

      Painless gross haematuria is one of the most common first signs of bladder cancer. A very treatable cancer for most people. Peeing blood for no reason can be bad. It can also be beats.

    • Concetta@lemmy.blahaj.zone
      14·
      2 days ago

      Holy fuck just go to the doctor so at least they can do simple blood work and make sure it’s nothing obvious. I pissed blood once, turns out along with the leg pain my kidneys were about to shut down. Go to the fucking doctor

    • FrederikNJS@lemm.ee
      25·
      2 days ago

      Can confirm, dude is indeed dumb ;-)

      If symptoms linked to kidney failure isn’t enough to send you to the doctor…

    • Tiempo@ttrpg.network
      1·
      10 hours ago

      Plenty of reasons. Twice i woke up with my pijama pants full of blood, like, full. No scar, no wound, nothing, just blood. I never knew where it came from (as all places from where it could have come were with blood) but I assume it was urinated. It was a side effect of an antidepressant I was taking that start happening two years after beginning the treatment. I had to change the antidepressant and it never happened again

    • pixelscript@lemm.eeEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      Piss is blood, in a sense. It’s the bits of your blood that get sieved out and rejected by your kidneys.

      Normally those are the only bits supposed to be getting out. But if the filter is busted (kidney trouble) or if the walls of the storage tank it sits in after filtering become damaged (bladder trouble), you can end up pissing actual, unfiltered blood.

      Alternatively, you ate something recently with a strong red pigment that can survive digestion, enter the bloodstream, get strained out by the kidneys, and collect in your piss in high enough concentration to turn it red. Beets are a pretty famous culprit.

    • _bcronEnglish
      9·
      2 days ago

      Not only bladder cancer but a whole bunch of things. I used to run home from work and I would always pee right beforehand so I wouldn’t risk having to find some sort of place to pee, but then I started peeing blood every couple of weeks when my mileage went up to around the 10 mile mark. Apparently hematuria can happen from basically having a totally empty bladder chafe itself raw if you run long enough lol. I quit peeing before leaving work after my doctor recommended giving that a shot and it cleared up

    • Umbrias@beehaw.org
      1·
      1 day ago

      yes though normally pee is brown/red from myoglobin accumulation (muscle breakdown) which is a sign of many things, some of them normally fine but many are extremely life threatening, and can lead to kidney failure. if your pee is ever brown or red you should most likely see a healthcare professional and have them do a urinalysis.

    • captainlezbian@lemmy.world
      1·
      1 day ago

      Yep. Kidney stones can make anything coming out of your urethra bloody. And holy hell does pissing blood that way hurt.

    • Liam Mayfair@lemmy.sdf.org
      1·
      2 days ago

      Yes, even for some minor things. I once got a UTI and didn’t get it checked out for a week (I was mega dumb back then). What pushed me eventually to get a doctor to see me was when I started pissing blood. Not loads, but even a single drop was enough to spook me. Got some antibiotics and all was back to normal in a couple days.

  • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
    712·
    2 days ago

    Not going to lie LLMs give pretty solid medical advice. They are trained on huge medical datasets. Works well as long as you have a common problem.

    • Umbrias@beehaw.org
      3·
      1 day ago

      they do not and saying this sort of thing actually harms people. do not trust an llm with anything medical, ever.

      llms have no conception (of anything) of truth, you are getting a probabilistic bullshit. in a literal sense.

      • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
        2·
        21 hours ago

        You do not trust them. Fact check their recommendations. Check the diagnose and see if the symptoms match on google. And if it is something possibly grave then go to a doctor.

        But many people do not feel like going to the doctor for every small thing they wonder about.

        • Umbrias@beehaw.org
          1·
          15 hours ago

          the effort to fact check the bussshrt machine is exactly the same hs not using the bullshit machine inethe first place.

            • Umbrias@beehaw.org
              1·
              10 hours ago

              except the “answer” is likely to be wrong such that the same search needs to be done sans ai to verify it. you do not understand ai if you think they provide the same answers, they are probabilistic bullshit machines. Google does not provide answers (well didnt used to, when it was better). it catalogued places to find them. your analogy is more accurately “who needs libraries when you have books”.

              Do not ever use llm for medical advice, doing so will literally harm and kill people. if you want bullshit, just make some up, you dont even need the llm for that.

              i will repeat this in no uncertain terms, llm cannot provide information, trusting one with your healthcare in any capacity is Stupid. it is stupid, harmful, and will kill people. if you value your health at all, just use normal web searches to get info from medical websites, call nurse hotlines, use urgent cares, call doctors offices for advice or appointments.

              • geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml
                1·
                10 hours ago

                My dude you don’t need to believe all medical advice it gives. Just use it to get a feel in the right direction and then check whether the symptoms match. It will often suggest multiple options and rate them by likelyhood.

                I do not think you understand how much training these LLM’s have on medical material. They can accurately diagnose almost any common disease it is not like WebMD always suggesting you have stage 5 cancer.

                Seriously try it once before going full anti AI mode.

                • Umbrias@beehaw.org
                  1·
                  9 hours ago

                  You quite literally cannot trust them, their produced information entropy is too high. I understand how much training they have on medical text, you dont understand how little that means. These models are fundamentally incapable of assessing the truth of a statement, you are using something you dont even understand to give you advice about something it cannot reliably give and lack the expertise needed to understand how accurate they actually are at any given answer, on a topic that directly influences your actual physical wellbeing!

                  “just try it bro it’s good i promise” you should actually prompt an llm about a topic you know about in detail. the amount of errors are rampant, then apply that same inaccuracy to topics you know nothing about.

                  my next recommendation is that since you are not a healthcare professional, do not give medical advice like “use llm” as you personally clearly cannot verify the accuracy of llm for this role.