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About MD's - my husband is an MD, and he is a good diagnostician. He diagnosed his cousin with pneumonia over the phone, when an emergency room physician and the man's own personal physician missed it, and told him his shortness of breath, increased heart rate and fever was probably caused by something like ephedra in the supplements he was taking! He checked the labels of everything he was taking - no ephedra. And fever? Please. After speaking with him for a few minutes, hubby just said to him, "Hey, you've got pneumonia!". He was shocked at the emergency room physician's lack of diagnosis. Anyway, after starting to take antiobiotics, he rapidly started improving. The next problem came because he had been inactive for a period of time, and his leg started to swell. His own physician said it was nothing, not to worry about it. Well, he ended up in the hospital with a deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and nearly died because a chunk of it went to his lungs. My husband said his standard procedure in such an instance would have been to order an MRI because he would have been immediately suspicious of a DVT given the circumstances of the illness, swelling and period of inactivity.

Given all of the horror stories I've heard from people who have been misdiagnosed, I'm glad that my husband is around to keep an eye on me!

I had a similar problem in my leg when a teen many years ago. I was active in sports and the first doctor suspected trauma to the thigh bone. X-rays were negative, so I was told to ice the leg and go home until it got better. The pain was so severe I couln't sleep for several days. I was finally hospitalized and diagnosed with DVT. Icing the leg actually makes such a condition worse.

When the little girl complained of leg pain, that doesn't match a diagnosis of "Flu".

Your husband is A-Number 1. You should be very proud of him. He is truly practicing medicine as it was meant to be practiced.

Most physicians are good physicians. From the info posted above, I can't tell if her pediatrician is a good guy who missed something he sure shouldn't have, or if he's a lousy doc. He sure didn't use good judgement with her.

Sadly, docs have to see more and more patients in less and less time because medicare is killing them on decreased reimbursements. Things can, just due to the numbers involved, fall through the cracks. You hope it's the little things like the splinter in the finger and not the big stuff.

I admire people like your husband who stay in medicine as tough as it has gotten to make a living. The years he put in to be a doctor, the hours he puts in at the office, the hours on call, the responsibility for lives, the sacrifices you and your family make, are in no way compensated monitarily anymore. Thanks to you both for doing what you do.

I work with a lot of docs (MD's) and I see their frustrations with where medicine is going. It's only going to get worse with socialized medicine. We are so fortunate to have the quality of medical care we have today.

Sorry for the rant. -- E