Yet another case of thyroid patient being disbelieved

[siskin]

Daily Mail

dailymail.co.uk/health/arti...

[humanbean]

At least on this occasion it wasn't the NHS at fault. The woman's problems happened in Sweden. But it does seem as if thyroid patients get a raw deal more often than sufferers of many other conditions.

[Clutter]

Her Swedish doctors were incompetent. When presented with a lump and hoarse voice an ultrasound scan and fine needle aspiration biopsy should have been done to rule out cancer. Papillary cancer is more likely to affect people <30. Good job papillary thyCa is so slow growing.

[gabkad]

This is a classic case of gender biased medicine. Of course men around here will yell and scream. But let's face it, thyroid problems are mostly in women and women are fobbed off all the time. We are over stressed, we can't cope, we have all sorts of reasons (according to doctors) for why we are not experiencing vibrant life. It's like we are expected to be dragged out and exhausted all the time. LIke it's par for the gender. All this fainting and whatnot went out of fashion after the Victorian age. We want to be strong and robust.

Except it's not.

[greygoose in reply to gabkad]

And even that was due to the corsets and not the weakness of women!

[Marz]

It happened to my daughter in the UK. She was declared normal by her GP on more than one occasion and he would not look at her scan and tests done here in Crete. A private appointment was made eventually....and yes she had thyroid cancer.....

I think it is important to be insistent and as the article says - you know when things in your body are not right.

[Fruitandnutcase]

My sister in law had the same sort if thing after having her second child. She was in her early twenties, found a lump, went to the doc who said it was likely to be a cyst and as she was breast feeding just to leave it until she had finished.

A year later when she had finished breast feeding she had a TT and radiotherapy. That was about forty years ago and she has been fine ever since.

There was never any mention of ' being vain' though just the fact that they left her because they assumed it was likely to be a cyst.

[cario]

Unfortunately as a lot of us know, this does happen in the UK too. Reminds me of how I went to my GP complaining that my voice was altered and he said if it continued to come back again. At the time I had a large goitre and the man didn't even look at me or my neck. He continued to treat me as a hypochondriac, on one occasion with utter contempt. I went on to be very ill during pregnancy and I lost the first 2.5 years of my daughter's life; in and out of hospital and very ill. Eventually it was the ENT surgeon (when a large sinus operation had gone horribly wrong) noticed the goitre and discovered I had Graves disease, my T4 as 139. One of my biggest regrets was that I did not sue the GP, unfortunately even more than 22 years later I think of him often with hatred. If more of us took a stand maybe their attitudes would change.

[ThyroidThora]

Yep! Been there, done that and now got the thyroidectomy scar and mine was on the NHS!