Stupid things medical professionals have said to you

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By child psychiarist after spending two years trying to get her to understand my sons issues "So, what do you think he has?", my response... err maybe AS or HFA? "Oh, yes thats probably what it is, we should get him assessed" ! !! !

Wow, I was told the almost the same thing by a neurologist about college . He told me he doesnt think I will make it to graduate school for physical therapy so I should settle to be a physical therapist assistant or something else. thanks for the encouragement!

O my god rebel, that is so familiar. a bit off topic, but my mum tried for about a year to get me to go to a holiday course on "grooming" because I was a tomboy and basically didn't give a s**t what people thought of my appearance at that stage. I was 11.

I told her grooming was what they did with horses, and I wasn't a horse. Like I didn't have enough self esteem issues without being put in a room with a bunch of superficial teens and preteens obsessed with makeup.

After telling my psychologist that I had gone out to dinner with some of the girls at work and was actually being social

"You'll never be social Opal"

Way to go.

Me: "I think I have hypoglycemia"
My GP: "You just need to exercise more."

When I told him I did he compared my level of exercise to a 50 year old. Now my intense level of exercise actually gives me seizures. Great advice, doc.

And when I said I thought I was having seizures he laughed and said "You're 25, it's not like people your age have cancer or any other serious medical conditions."

Seriously? Yes we can. Then when I told him my symptoms his eyes widened in horror and he wrote me a referral.

I also had a psychologist who told me to give up my routines because normal people don't have them. She also told me my meltdowns had more to do with anxiety. I don't see her anymore.

I've been to several doctors regarding sleep problems who often were suspicious of me just trying to get sleeping pills. They alway give the same spin of obvious info that takes five minutes to find on the internet.

When I went to the doctor about AS he said 'I can tell you that you don't have it'. I asked how could you know that from a 2 second observation. After I spoke to him for about 10 minutes he said I was probably a borderline case. I could tell that many of the 'signs' I mentioned, he didn't even know were signs. I told him I had strange experiences from listening to Beethoven & Bach and he gave me a heap of burnt classical CDs, so it wasn't all bad.

I've been to doctors a few times and they continue to disappoint. The worst example was about 15years ago, my girlfriend at the time had vaginal discharge, we went to doctor, he said 'you have gonorrhea'. My girlfriend was furious as you could imagine. I kept saying 'that's impossible'. She got a second opinion... it was thrush.

The absurd part of this being that Aspergians and HFA's often have superb use of language, hence Aspergers being associated with Hyperlexia.

I can't think of any one sentence that a shrink said that made my jaw drop.

Most of them just drugged me up however they saw fit, for depression/anxiety/bipolar because my parents dragged me there and told them how weird I was (up until college) or how much of a f*ckup I was (after). The sessions would consist of them talking with the shrink about me right in front of me as if I wasn't there, and then prescribing medication, which my father would administer to me every night to make sure I took it. (That continued until this last year.)

There was precisely ONE psychiatrist I connected with personally, and felt he took my concerns seriously (I have a lot of health problems, some of them remaining undiagnosed, which to my parents means "the doctors found nothing wrong" and I'm a "hypochondriac") but he turned out to be the exact same way. I'd built up a real rapport with him, and then he started belittling my concerns- the anxieties which I'd come to talk to him about, and I just sat there dumbfounded. I never saw him again.

Two years ago, my reliably-perfect porcelain skin absolutely exploded for seemingly no reason, which was devastating to my already-horrible self esteem, and it took SEVEN dermatologists until I found one who would prescribe something that would actually work (Accutane). That caused a lot of strife with my parents, who felt I was "doctor shopping because I didn't like their opinions." Uh...I was doctor shopping til I found one who was willing to freaking HELP THE PROBLEM. One doctor put me on it at 10mg a day for a month, and then took me off when there was no improvement (no s**t!). The absolute ANGEL of a derm I see now has me on 40mg for a tentative 6 months, and maybe longer. Finding her has restored a bit of my faith in the medical community.

My doctor is pretty good, but one area in which he is really bad is in motivating me to lose weight. Instead of being positive about the amount of weight that I have lost, he focuses on how much more I need to lose. That has the exact opposite effect of what he thinks it will. My doctor tells me that I should keep to a rigid diet, and never relax it. My experience is that sort of rigid diet just guarantees binge eating. He told me that I should be more like my father, who lost a lot of weight. My father lost weight by going on a tofu and vegetable diet for years. He started coming down with problems due to his unbalanced diet. When he got off the crazy diet, he started eating all of the wrong foods. I'm trying to find a sane diet that I can actually keep to, not some ridiculous one that I will abandon after a few months.

I had an allergy doctor who gave me ineffective allergy shots for about five years. (Typically, the shots are used for a year, maybe two.) He never checked to see if anything was happening. He sometimes gave me shots for the wrong patient. He said that I shouldn't worry, because the other patient had similar problems.

My problem is that doctors stereotype me as a gluttonous fatty just like anyone else:

"Well, you're going to want to cut down on the soda."
"Haven't had one in probably a decade, thanks."
"Maybe less red meat would help, as well."
"I don't eat meat."
"Most people eat lots of dairy; you should cut back a lot."
"I don't eat dairy, either- I'm vegan."
"Eat less refined sugar, and white flour."
"How does one eat less than zero, exactly?"

They end up either looking at me with a confused expression or accuse me of lying.
The former's quite amusing.

Yes....I wasn't hyperlexic but I had a verbal IQ of 140 (I had already been assessed at that time) and I had memorized several books and would go around reciting them.

I have health anxiety and unfortunately as soon as a doctor (psych or not) realizes that you're a hypochondriac (in my case because I tell them) they become very dismissive, which in turn makes me more anxious because then I think that if there is (or ever is) anything really wrong with me it won't be caught because my doctor won't take me seriously...just like my psych doesn't!

I feel much better now that I've found even *A* doctor who will listen and address my concerns.
She's not much older than me, either, so she's stuck with me til she dies or moves her practice.