Not the worst medical treatment perhaps, but horrible when I found out how many women this happens to. Both the insertion and removal of my iud were done with no painkillers except the ibuprofen I decided to take an hour before my appointment. Going in, I nearly fainted from the pain. The gyno casually laid me down for a while and told me it happens every other day that someone faints. I was in bed for a day afterwards from terrible pain and cramps. Then, for the removal, the wire has disappeared so she had to go “find it”. I was crying and could barely hold my legs still. Why the hell this procedure is still done without warning and options for better pain relief I have no idea.

I have a chiari malformation, which is essentially my brain falling down the back of my neck. During the period if time where we were still figuring out what was going on I was asked to get a CT mylegram. Now no one explained to me what this was, but i thought it was a CT scan. So i show up to the hospital, having driven myself, and sort of kick around until my appointment.

Then the doctor has me lay on a table face down. There is a man there, big muscles, standing next to the table. The table has a hole in the head pillow. The doctor says hell be right back hes just grabbing the needle. I say wait what needle?

Hes like oh its the needle for the contrast dye for the CT scan. I’m like oh ok and settle down. The doctor comes back and asks me to lift the bottom of my shirt so he can access my back. I stop again and go what are you talking about.

He let’s me know at this point, for some fucking reason, that the dye is going inside the spinal column. This is a god damn spinal tap and i learn 2 seconds into it about to happen.

I’m nervous but i lay back down and the big guy puts all his weight on my shoulders to hold me still and they start the procedure. The actual needle doesn’t hurt that much, no more than any other needle. But then they inject the dye.

There is this…hot pressure feeling. My chest starts feeling tight, like an elephant is stepping on it. The muscular guy has to really push to hold me down because involuntarily I jerk. My head is swimming, I feel hot, and i feel like my chest is being crushed to dust.

They transfer me to a movable table and quickly wheel me to the CT room. I don’t remember much of this because i was hyperventilating and cursing. I didn’t have much control over what i was doing and I’m shocked I was able to stay still enough for the CT scans.

When the burning and crushing sensation started to pass I was laying on a bed with the muscular guy who was watching over me. He asked if i was ok and then asked if i wanted a sandwich from the cafeteria? He ordered me one, never got charged for it. We talked about videogames for a couple hours, and then they released me to drive home. I almost passed out on the way home and ended up later developing a CSF leak.

Worst experience of my life 0/10 do not recommend.

My grandfather had a bad case of flu. Went to the hospital and they put him on IV fluids but found out he was allergic to something. Fucked him up good and wouldn’t accept he was having issues until it was too late.

Had to traych him up so he could breathe.

Blew out his kidneys.

Basically significant organ failure. He walked into the hospital for the flu and they mistreated him, and he never walked out. Came home in a walker and a dialysis schedule and breathing out of his neck.

Took him 8 years to die after that. He was basically a corpse. Grandmother sold her business, sold their lake house, sold their classic car, all to try and pay all of the medical bills and be his full time caretaker. Just an awful situation.

Not me, but in the span of a couple weeks I had some really awful experiences with pediatricians. My middle kid was almost three when they had a horrific fever and was complaining about a stiff neck, which is a huge red flag… But the ER sent us home with the diagnosis of “neck torsion.” A few hours later we went to a different ER because they had a lump the size of a grapefruit in their neck from an infected lymph node. Required several days in the hospital to get IV antibiotics.

A couple weeks after that I gave birth to our youngest, and at her 3 day check up her doctor claimed to see sores in her mouth and was worried about herpes (despite the fact that neither me nor my spouse have any STDs) so she sent us to the ER… No one there bothered looking in her mouth until after a lumbar puncture. Then someone realized there were no sores at all, but harmless gum cysts that are extremely common in infants. They kept her overnight for monitoring and that morning a med student presented the case to her peers as a cautionary tale to verify symptoms before jumping into an LP.

The recovery after an hemorrhoidectomy, pooping was almost traumatic. I say almost only because when everything ended, it was worth it, but I dreaded going to the toilet for ten days.

I called to book a time. The answering machine told me they did not have time to pick up the phone today and call again tomorrow.

Lumbar puncture, hands down. They insert a needle into your lower spine to extract fluid for analysis. It was horribly painful and took them several tries to get right.

They gave me incorrect instructions. At least for my case they were incorrect. It is done sitting up. And they told me specifically not to round my back but to slump down. And they poked and prodded and just couldn’t get the needle in. Finally I rounded my back and oh wonderous thing it was suddenly much easier to get the needle in.

That was painful enough but sucking the fluid out is downright sickening. You can really feel it along your spine and in your head. Absolutely awful. I felt like passing out.

And of course they found absolutely nothing.

A doctor once gave me a month’s supply of a drug only approved for use for 10 days due to liver toxicity. I learned about the limit from a news article and stopped taking it.

I experienced no ill effects that I know of, but his malpractice put me at risk of death or lifelong complications. I learned to double-check everything myself after that.

My urologist didn’t believe me when I told him I have an incredibly high tolerance to local anesthesia.

He also didn’t believe me that I could feel him make the initial incision.

So that’s how I had my vasectomy without anesthesia. At least the recovery was completely pain and swelling free, so I kinda speed ran the pain. I was also able to confirm my suspicion that my pain tolerance is extremely high. I’d give it a 9.5/10 because I didn’t lose consciousness.

Second worst is regaining the ability to form memories during a colonoscopy as a child. Again, that pesky anesthesia metabolism. When they had to surgically set my arm in 6th grade, they put the anesthesia mask on me and told me to count down from 100.

I got to 46 before they just went ahead with the IV.

Treatment for head and neck cancer. Surgery (not so bad), Chemo and Daily radiation. The chemo was rough, and the anti nausea pill did nothing. Radiation starts out fine, but half way through the sunburn inside your throat is horrible, and the combo of chemo and radiation kills your salivary glands and so instead of thin saliva you just have a thick mucous like hot mozzarella cheese strings on a pizza that you can’t seem to spit out and it chokes you to swallow. Your body is so tired that 10cc of water into the Gtube feeder makes you vomit. You lose all taste, so everything is like chewing soggy cardboard.

The only positive is I no longer have to shave my neck, the beard hair there just never grew back.

Antidepressants. They don’t help and cause tons of additional issues like brain zaps, constipation and sedation. The real awful part is the pin prick of hope that this one will work…

I’ve had a few laser lithotripsies for kidney stones, nothing too bad except for one of them the anesthesiologist decided for some reason that he was going to put in the breathing tube while I was still awake. That was fucking horrible.

In the poor treatment category…

Long story short as I can make it and make sense, had a falling accident at work. I got hit in the head by flying piece of iron and gotten knocked off a scaffold, falling down 7ish? feet and belly flopped onto a concrete floor with my right arm under me. They x-rayed my arm, stitched the wound on my head, and said I was good to go. My arm… not sure how to word it… just felt wrong. I’m used to a lot of pain and have a high threshold, but something just was off about it. I asked the doc and they reassured me two doctors had looked at the x-ray and it was fine, but if it still hurt in a month to go to my family doctor.

K great. Go home, and for the next few weeks I do my thing, trying to use my right hand fairly often to help “walk it off” so to speak. After nearly a month of it not getting any better made an appointment to see my doc. (one month to the day of the accident.) Got another x-ray. I had barely got home when I got a call from my doctor, he saw the problem immediately when he got the pics. Turned out that when I fell, one of the bones in my wrist got dislodged and the tendon that attaches to it pulled it back into my carpal tunnel, pinching off the nerves to my thumb and two fingers. (Apparently our other two smallest fingers nerves run separate and to the side.) Sorry to any med ppl if I skewered that explanation. Perilunate dislocation is what they called it.

So basically, two different doctors didn’t notice the bone on the wrong side of my wrist. Me being the idiot I am, kept using it for a month like it was fine. I don’t like taking painkillers so I smoked a shitton of weed that month lol all because two doctors didn’t look close enough at an x-ray.

As a zebra patient… too many to list lol

But the one that stands out is my original POTS diagnostic test. They did something called a “tilt table test”. They strap you on a table like a torture film, literally head straps and everything, and then raise the table vertically. The idea is to see how well your body adapts to gravity.

Normally I have pretty good compensations for my condition. I’ve learnt specific ways to stand, lean, and hold my body so that my circulation works… not well, but decently. I can get up to make toast every now and then, stuff like that.

The table bypasses all that. Immediately I suffered extremely bad effects. I could feel all the blood draining from my brain and my body and pooling into my legs. Couldn’t breathe properly, vision going white, feeling absolutely horrible. I can’t accurately describe the feeling of all your blood leaving your vital organs. It felt extremely bad, I felt like I was dying. Like a cold shower on the inside, hollowness, pain.

Worst part was, I was too weak to even ask them to cancel the test, or move to remove the bindings myself. Turns out you need blood to do stuff like that. I was completely paralyzed.

The doctors were like “wow this is the worst POTS I’ve ever seen! Usually when people say they have POTS it turns out they don’t, but man… hey let’s show Larry” and they leave the room to go find Larry and show them the interesting POTS patient. I could barely see on the monitor my heart rate was 180bpm and my blood pressure was 80/40mmol, which is very bad. I eventually lost consciousness completely. As I passed out I accepted that I was going to die right there on the stupid table because nobody noticed the problem.

I didn’t die (obviously). I came to when I was horizontal on the table again and they were unstrapping me. No idea how long I was out for, but fuck that. Nobody told me it would be that bad. “A bit uncomfortable” my ass.

After all that, I got my diagnosis for severe POTS after 10 years of confusing symptoms. Now I have some medicine that helps it not be so severe, so I guess it was worth it in the end?

Treatment for the nerve damage in my left arm which involved a lot of getting shocked. Getting shocked to see the specific damage and then dry needling which is acupuncture plus electricity.

Sucks hard, dude.