I'm absolutely not trying to belittle your experience -- it sounds horrible, and it is something I have met, and that my spouse has met. She was crying after she had met a doctor that examined her, because the doctor had made fun of her, in no uncertain words implying her symptoms were fictitious.
My point was more generally about how doctors are a lot like the car mechanics of people. So when none of the usual things show up as wrong, they just assume your electronics are shot (for humans, "you're crazy") and move on.
She had legit signs of heart disease. Got told repeatedly it was diet. Went out to work and, hard core as she was, powered through a heart attack.
Damage was terminal. She lived a few more years.
Hard core again, she got tired of being zapped back to life, asked them to turn it off. I had to intervene and force it.
She lived another blissful month.
Through the whole thing, it was, "woman, you know nothing" right and left. I basically became full time patient advocate, and wish I was in that role earlier.
>I'm absolutely not trying to belittle your experience
I understand, I didn't think that you were. I agree with the point you made that maybe doctors who are trying to work might be impeded by a patient who disagrees. But I think that is a much smaller problem since the doctor can quickly be vindicated when the treatment he or she advises works, or the disagreeing patient leaves.
My point was more generally about how doctors are a lot like the car mechanics of people. So when none of the usual things show up as wrong, they just assume your electronics are shot (for humans, "you're crazy") and move on.