Oddly enough I have a story like that. 1982, Girlfriend has persistent pain in her right side abdomen. She goes to doctor, he says, basically, it’s nothing. Don’t recall what he may have prescribed. I didn’t know any of this. She called me the next morning still in pain, told me the story . I couldn’t believe my ears. I hung up and headed into Brooklyn. Picked her up and took her to Miamonidies hospital. The looked her over and told me they wanted to transfer her to Coney Island…but she was too far gone!
It’s hard to believe that some of these doctors don’t have a dead list a mile long.
I left out that it was her appendix.
Kudos to you for taking your girlfriend to the hospital. When you wrote she was “too far gone,” I hope that meant only too far gone to transfer to another hospital. That is, I hope the first hospital was able to save her.
These stories are so common. In fact, I was misdiagnosed myself two years ago with a non-life-threatening condition. Then, a few months ago, I went to a different doctor, who was shocked by the first doctor’s diagnosis and immediately diagnosed me correctly. It turns out, it was life-threatening. In fact, I just finished treatments.
OTOH, I knew a woman who was diagnosed with a life-threatening condition. She underwent treatments that caused serious side effects. Later, the doctors told her they made a mistake - she never had that condition.