Not feeling your best, you go to the doctor. You don’t know what’s wrong, but you know that something is, and you trust your doctor to figure it out. That’s what they have always done in the past.
They’re not sure when they talk to you, and so they run some tests. Maybe they do bloodwork. You get the lab results back. Nothing looks like it’s wrong. They tell you that you have a clean bill of health. Maybe they suggest it’s all in your head.
You can’t shake the feeling, though. You still think something is wrong. You worry that it’s very wrong — maybe you have cancer or some other potentially fatal disease. Should you trust your gut?
Maybe. You could be right. Experts note that this problem does arise for patients, often because they have a vague feeling, or they don’t really know why they feel off. There is nothing wrong in the tests. They could still be getting signals from their bodies telling them that they have a disease or some other issue.
We often make the mistake of thinking of medical science like a computer: Run the tests, see what they say and trust the results. It’s not always that simple. Tests can be wrong. Doctors can miss things. They can fail to diagnose a disease that they should have caught. If you ignore that gut feeling, are things just getting worse for you?
After something like this, you may feel like your doctor made mistakes and offered substandard care. If so, you need to know what legal options you have.