Arguments

A few years ago, I was suffering with some severe back and flank pain that no one could figure out or pin down.
I was referred to a specialist and was warned beforehand that he wasn't exactly a joy to deal with, but could maybe offer some ideas or order the proper testing.

It was one of two appointments I have ever raised my voice to a physician.

At first it wasn't so awful. He had a lot of insight.
But he did not believe that anything was wrong. He automatically assumed that I was exaggerating or even faking this pain. Therein lay the problem.

Pretty soon I understood that he was not going to be of significant help.
He even reduced to a Straw Man argument while he was inquiring about the pain I was experiencing - and the particular argument he used has bothered me to this day.

After a few uncomfortable suggestions from him that also bothered me (that's for another day), he asked me specifically when the flank pain was at its worst.
I explained that when I was going to the washroom and had to 'push' at all, that the pain was sharp and shooting into my back.
Then he said:
"Well why do you have to push if you have chronic diarrhea?" and then proceeded to look smugly like he had caught me in a lie. That I was being deceitful.
I endured his smugness, I endured his random argument that had nothing to do with the topic at hand, I endured him telling me he didn't believe a word I said. By the end of the appointment I was entirely enraged. He had used a tangent argument in an attempt to discredit my concerns.

Let me be very plain about this, because it is evident that people do not necessarily understand the difference.

Chronic diarrhea does not equal incontinence.

You can have the runs all of the time and still have to engage the sphincter in order to go to the washroom. Sure, sometimes the two issues go hand-in-hand, but not always. I have been fortunate in the last 5 years not to have suffered from much daily incontinence. But that doesn't mean that the symptoms of my Crohn's Disease have settled down entirely.
When someone explains that they have the runs, that does not necessarily mean that they have incontinence.

I'm not exactly sure why this still bothers me. Perhaps because he used a false equivalency to undermine my pain. He used a straw man argument to discredit everything I was going through. He was smug about my pain.

Shortly thereafter, I wound up in the Emergency Room with a severe kidney infection that took 3 full courses of antibiotics to clear up, imaging found an ovarian cyst, and then was later (within a month or so) diagnosed with Ankylosing Spondylitis.
The chronic disease, the cyst, and the infection all entirely explained the pain that I was experiencing.

Not only had he insulted me, not only did he refuse to look at me further for other causes of the pains, but he used a false argument to completely ignore me - not just as a patient but as a human being.

Luckily, I stood up for myself, I found another physician who was more considerate and showed more concern, and found the answers and the proper treatments and management. But if I had given up - if I had succumbed to this specialist's opinion and ignored the symptoms, the outcome could have been much worse.

Even now, I am always really scared and anxious to tell a doctor if I have flank pain because I don't want to have to deal with those kinds of smug questions - because I am scared that because I have diarrhea but not incontinence that they may not take me seriously.
How ridiculous is that?

It just goes to show how even ONE awful experience with a doctor can alter one's perception of the medical community and could even deter a person from seeking help. One bad experience. That's all it takes.