I was told was told my stomach ulcer was psychological, how about you?

[Kay00]

In response to this article in the guardian, what conditions have you been told by a doctor or medical professional with psychosomatic or psychological?

For fun-ish 🙃

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/oct/13/women-autoimmune-conditions-psychological-misdiagnosis-cambridge-study

I was 'lucky' the blood i vomited regularly convinced them i needed an endoscopy.
In fact my fear meant they had to persuade me to go through with it.
I had multiple ulcers.

My back, however, that's another story. I have chronic back problems because I was told I couldn't be in pain and I was just anxious.

Going first. A few years ago I had horrendous pain in my stomach. It was so bad that I could barely stand up. I coped with it for maybe 24 hours before seeing a doctor it was a female doctor. She was quite young and she looked doubtful of my pain, she also looked up on her system that I previously had some anxiety and so said that it was probably all in my head. I told her "This pain is incredible and very real". She sent me home with nothing. I went to see an alternative doctor about a week or later (still in horrendous pain, unable to stand fully or eat) and he diagnosed me with a stomach ulcer. It's fun being a woman 🙃

Just to say liquorice dgl has helped me a lot with heartburn.
However stomach ulcers require proper treatment.

My late MIL used to get chest pains - this was about 40yrs ago. Was dismissed over and over again and told it was all in her head. Then she collapsed and she needed an urgent quadruple heart bypass as her arteries were blocked. Her GP just didn't take her seriously.

Oh yes, a fair few, acute and chronic. My hearing problems, a back injury, a kidney infection, and pneumonia. What happened I think was that I was diagnosed with depression when I was just legitimately really pissed off with a terrible thing happening to me, and then ever since have struggled to get medical care. It's one of the reasons I'm a bit skeptical of the apparent massive rise in mental illness. I don't think you can get out the door of a GP without collecting some spurious mental illness these days.

I just don't go to the doctor any more. There's no point. Not been this decade.

I wasn’t as ill as I thought I was. 🤔🤨

a week before I was hospitalised with pneumonia.

Mine is endometriosis, from 14-46 a huge variety of “professionals “ one even referred me to mental health, bunch of twats, so I found my own surgeon at 46 years old and paid 7k + to have my made up endometriosis removed from pretty much every organ, I’m one of the many where it doesn’t show on scans so therefore it’s all in my head.

it’s hard to see someone’s pain, but it shouldn’t be hard to have empathy and a curiosity when you’ve spent 6+ years of your life training to help people in pain, it’s literally your job.

Vomiting blood sounds horrific! Glad you got treated in the end.

Hope you did for your back pain too.

Similarly, I have struggled with kidney pain my entire life always had it put down to UTIs and my screaming pain was always attributed to me being over dramatic. Turns out I have a type of kidney disease which was only picked up on when I was pregnant.

Wow! 😲

This is horrendous. It's clearly a two tier system

“At worst you have a grumbling appendix” after three A&E visits in agony to then spike a fever of 41 and find out I was close to death with sepsis. Nothing to do with my appendix.

That's terrifying. And what the fuck is a "grumbling appendix"!?

Rectal bleeding that turned out to be advanced bowel cancer.

Because I described it was dripping out, the doctor said I must be getting it confused with my period…

I was told I had reflux and anxiety about being pregnant. It was double pleurisy.

What the actual fuck!! I hope you complained!

A whole raft of things over the years tbh (my health is not great) from endometriosis which was severe enough to require a hysterectomy at 30, to life-threateningly severe vitamin B12 deficiency which permanently damaged my heart. I do have some history of anxiety and depression - which funnily enough 99% resolved when finally treated for the B12 deficiency - so everything was written off as MH issues.

B12d wasn’t diagnosed til I had a baby with congenital B12 deficiency because of it! A very poorly baby with multiple conditions who nearly died because they spent the first 4 weeks (prior to a very serious admission) telling me that my claims there was something wrong with them were total nonsense, and repeatedly trying to diagnose me with PND which I did not have, because I kept taking baby to medical professionals with real concerns.

I was told a dangerous tropical infection I had was anxiety. When I was eventually admitted after two weeks, the treatment caused a liver injury - after discharge I went yellow and felt like my skin was crawling and vomiting non stop. Went back to A&E They looked at my bloody notes in A&E and told me I had anxiety from the infection I’d just had 🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️🤦🏻‍♀️

I'm so sorry to hear this. I hope your baby is ok now xx

I wasnt in active labour as I was talking normally, and not showing signs of pain.

Gave birth, alone, 7 mins later.

Wish I did but I was young at the time so was just internally upset and offended.

I was also told my symptoms are IBS, stomach bug, etc etc but that’s understandable, but that doctor still angers me when I think of her.

Thank you! Baby is now secondary school age and has their challenges, attends a special school but is mostly healthy, is nearly always happy and is bright, talented and wonderful ❤️ thanks only to my own persistence or they would not even be here.

At least sometimes people learn - I walked up to the desk on the labour ward told the midwife I was about to give birth and she looked at me and said “only one person has ever told me that calmly they were about to give birth and I didn’t believe them. That was a mistake, so I believe you”. Born less than 5 mins later.

A paramedic told an A&E Doctor that I had agoraphobia.
I have never had agoraphobia, I have type two brittle asthma.

Severe upper right stomach pain radiating round my back. Surgeon said it was constipation, showed me my CT scan and said there's nothing here causing the level of pain you are saying. 24 hours later back in A&E with jaundice and a blocked bile duct. Apparently the very inflamed gallbladder on the CT scan didn't concern the surgeon originally 🤔

I went to my gp in May with a small persistent pain in my abdomen, right side. He said probably IBS, to drink more water, cut out junk, spices and alcohol. (I don't drink and dislike spicy food)

The pain grew progressively worse, I went back every two weeks, asking for help. He grew increasingly exasperated, and finally told me at the end of September that I was a woman of a certain age seeking attention, and that exercise and a hobby would be the best thing. At no point was I offered a scan.

I was 35 and he was a flabby ill mannered nerd. If I was going to seek attention, it certainly wouldn't have been from him.

By that point the pain was constant and I was eating paracetamol like sweeties. I decided to move GP practice.

At 3am Oct 13th I woke up in more pain than I can describe. Not thinking straight I got in my car (bad idea) and drove 30 miles to hospital. Got through the doors of a&e and passed out in triage. Came to on a ward.

The a&e guys were lovely, so kind. Such a relief. By then I had sores all up my back and a high fever. They did an ultrasound, found a dermoid the size of a grapefruit on my right ovary that had twisted. Three hours in surgery to remove ovary, fallopian tube & dermoid, and "clean me up". Seven days in women's surgical, six weeks off work. Hip to hip scar.

They also kindly moved my car from the ambulance bay where I'd abandoned it, to a car park, and worked out who I was.

Someone must have rung my gp and told him to come and apologise because he turned up by my bed on day 3. He couldn't bring himself to say sorry, managed "Oh, so there was something wrong with you after all" and disappeared. If I'd been able to sit up, I'd have punched him. Arrogant fuckwit. Thankfully he is no longer practising.

I have only had female GPs since, and they are far better. They listen, are competent, not too busy admiring their own genius.

As you can tell, I'm still cross. 😁