A Misdiagnosis Taught Me to Be My Own Medical Advocate

The original diagnosis had come when I was 25 from a doctor in Bhopal who was competent and overworked in the specific combination that produces confident conclusions from incomplete investigation.

I had presented with a set of symptoms that mapped onto a condition he was familiar with treating, and I had accepted his assessment with the trust of someone who has been trained to regard medical authority as reliable.

For two years I managed a condition I did not have, with treatments that addressed a problem that was not my problem, while the condition I actually had was doing what unaddressed conditions do.

At 27, a visit to a specialist in a different city for a second opinion - prompted by the fact that nothing had improved despite full compliance with the treatment - produced an assessment that differed significantly from the first. The correct diagnosis was not dramatic. The condition was manageable.

The two years of incorrect management had extended my experience of it considerably. What I took from the experience was not a general distrust of medicine, which would not have been the correct conclusion.

It was a set of specific practices that I had not previously known I needed: I now ask every doctor what other explanations are possible before accepting the most probable one. I seek a second opinion for any diagnosis that requires a sustained treatment protocol.

I document my symptoms and their patterns independently rather than relying on the verbal account I give in appointments, which is subject to the specific pressures of a fifteen-minute clinical encounter. None of these make me a better diagnostician than my doctors.

They make me a more useful partner in the diagnostic process, which produces better outcomes than the passive receipt of medical authority I had previously been offering.