currant_scone

I am so sorry for your loss. As a medical student who will be doing my obstetrics rotation in the near future, what can doctors (or others in the healthcare team) do better to be more supportive in a time like this? Sometimes I am scared of saying the wrong thing to a grieving family and end up being avoidant.

Fellow med student here. I’m not sure if I have CFS or not but I can tell you my experience with EBV infectious mononucleosis (there appears to be a correlation between the two). My life hasn’t been the same since I got sick.

Doctor #1 at student health told me it probably wasn’t mono b/c my glands weren’t swollen enough (??) and sent me home with antibiotics. Doctor #2 was also doubtful it was EBV and I had to practically ask her to please order a mono spot test for me because it would give me closure; it was positive. 6 months later, still fatigued as hell and have difficulty functioning I go to student health again, Doc #3 doubted the diagnosis of Doc #2 and ordered a heterophiles antibody test, which confirmed a recent infection...

Why the hesitance to diagnose? Or believe me? Probably because there’s no effective treatment, only supportive care. But even so I was dumbfounded at so discouraged that so few physicians 1) seemed to actually listen or 2) seemed to give a shit.

I used to be the kind of person that would roll my eyes at the idea of CFS... I don’t anymore.