Unless you are either female, a minority, young, or have chronic pain in which case any mention of pain you have, no matter how extreme, is considered a drug seeking attempt.
The ER will diagnose people based on their race, sex, gender, and age before they’ll diagnose you based on your symptoms. It doesn’t matter how much you are suffering, how much pain you are in, or how close you are to killing yourself because you can’t take it anymore. ER doctors have no empathy unless you fit a certain demographic.
If an old farmer says “it hurts a bit” then they’re about to die and need an ER
Ah yes. Many years ago before I was born, the guy who my was married to came home and complained about a bit of a painfull back. My mom made him drive to the hospital where he told them what hat happend. They told him to stand completely still and put a neck brace on him and made him sit in a wheelchair where he passed out. When he woke up half his body (left side I think) wa paralyzed.
It turns out he had fall off the roof of a barn and landed flat on his back on the fully extended ladder, breaking his back, and passed out and had lost his memory until he saw his work wan, with his name on it. He had then driven himself back home, before my mom insisted that he needed to go to the hospital, “just to have him checked out”.
He still suffers daily from it, but he somehow managed to get full functionally of his body back, but never was able to work full time in trade work.
Long story short, Go. To. The. Hospital!
Yeah I’ve lived this…
Years ago I had a rash under my arm that wouldn’t go away, at first I thought it was just because I had swapped deodorant or I switched back, then I assumed it was now just aggravated because I was spraying stuff on a rash so stopped and was putting cream on it, after about 3-4 weeks it had spread around to my back and the wife saw it when I hopped out of the shower one night and told me to go to the doctor’s. I was like yeah guess I should, another week passed and she asked me to meet her at the shops after work, I arrive and she had booked me a doctor’s appointment… As soon as I took my shirt off the doctor gasped and said I had to go to ER immediately, I stupidly went home and had a shower first then went to ER, handed them the letter from the Dr and skipped the whole queue, triage nurse is slipping a cannula in and putting me on penicillin while I’m still being checked in… ended up in hospital for 5 weeks with a severe case of cellulitis so bad they brought the medical students passed me every morning…
Thing is I felt fine the whole time, no pain at all, didn’t feel sick and the whole time they’re telling me it’s life threatening…
Funny… I’ve been going through a health issue I have been seeing doctors for, but just like you, I basically feel fine. The only time I don’t is within a few minutes of getting up in the morning, I dry heave. But once that’s over, I’m fine. Except when it comes to food. I don’t want to be around food. I don’t want to smell it. I don’t want it in my mouth. I don’t want to chew or swallow it. My doctor described it as being like anorexia except with a physical cause. As a last ditch resort before going to the Mayo Clinic, I got my gallbladder removed after a surgeon saw the results of a scan and gave it a 50/50 chance of working. It may just be working, because I haven’t wanted to eat yet, but I’ve stopped heaving.
So yeah, I’d say 90+% of the time, I feel just fine. No nausea, no pain, no dizziness, nothing. I just can’t stand food. It sucks, because I like to eat and I’ve lost a ton of weight and living on Ensure and Gatorade is a really boring diet, but other than now that I’m recovering from the surgery, I haven’t felt sick at all and I haven’t since this started (a year in total, this bout of not eating since August).
