:D

in Canada health care pays you

you need Dr. House

is it lupus ?

Wow, wouldn't it have been great if your government had pushed harder for universal healthcare?

maybe you should live in canada!

Scenario: "What is this bump? I should go get urgent care to look at it since I don't want to wait at the ER." "I don't feel confident about that Dr's diagnosis. I'm going to go ahead and go to the ER." Then the ER Dr would have given him a referral to the expert, as they always do:

or a swollen lymphnoid, which is most likeyl the case if it's tender to touch and is off to the under side of your jaw. :D

"lymphnoid" made me chuckle. Any doctor should be able to diagnose lymphadenopathy or an abscess. My guess based on the location would be a branchial cleft cyst if it's been that hard to diagnose. Sorry about all the big words.

Chaos- it certainly could be mono, but that should be easily caught by any doctor worth his salt. It's also easily ruled in or out by a monospot test. Ayame- glad to help. It doesn't sound like gout- that usually presents as podagra, which is a painful inflammation of the hallux.

39 maybe I read this wrong but I hope ur not trying to become a nurse focusing on the knowledge u gain from fml.

I was just about to Suggest it might be a cyst. OP, have you gotten an ultrasound done? They might be able to determine what it is that way.

Yea, duh; dem words polysyllabic....

More like a boil lol

no a cyst

yupp Canada too :D being. very accident prone, I'm very grateful for it.

The NHS is great for me as in this year alone I have broken 6 different bones.

no not sad at all, the healthcare system in the states is brutal. I really feel for you guys down there. It blows my mind that doctors can turn people away. this is why I love Canada. any hospital, in any province I'm in, I can go and seek medical attention(witch for me is great as I tend to break bones and need stitches quite frequently lol) if at all possible I suggest moving to Canada, France, or anywhere with universal healthcare.

Yea, it is sad that you hate your own country. Especially if it's because you disagree with US healthcare and you do have a lot of health problems. Why would you want to wait weeks for to get an MRI or to see a specialist, or to receive surgery? Socialized healthcare is great for people who live healthy lives with the occasional accident but from chronic conditions, and especially unstable chronic conditions, healthcare in Canada/UK/Japan really isn't as great as it sounds. Under socialized healthcare, you might not pay anything, but you're also deprived of your ability to immediately get a second opinion and immediately receive diagnostic procedures. Despite what people say from personal experience, wait time in socialized healthcare, as an average, are long. Even the ER (in Canada), which in the US is mostly filled with people without insurance, on average, is a 2 hour longer wait than in the US (data from the Commonwealth Fund)--I find it hard to believe Canada has that many emergencies to clog up it's ER. Maybe the emergency rooms in Canada are inefficient or maybe people unable to see their doctors go to the ER. If your health problems are something like you're a hypochondriac or get the flu a lot, then yes, you would hate the US healthcare system, but if it's something like cancer, or chronic pneumonia, or something that requires a rapid-response system, then socialized healthcare isn't going to help you out. If you're middle to slightly lower class and don't want to pay, go to a clinic and beyond that, if you have a chronic condition, talk to whoever is giving you treatment. (Most) Doctors aren't doing what they do for money and most wouldn't be averse to helping their patients with way to make payments easier. Sorry if this is long and you disagree, it just gets old seeing people base their opinions off information from a biased source when they've never looked at the statistics. I prefer to base myself on what Bill O'Reilly tells me.

The British/Canadian etc. model has free social healthcare, which is just as effective as private. But if you're really so behind privatised medicine, there's private healthcare here as well. But to reiterate, socail healthcare is just as good.

As I have said before, countries with social healthcare usually have a private option too.

47: Some of us in the US would be thrilled to wait for healthcare. Know why? It means WE'RE GETTING HEALTHCARE. For a very real group of Americans, that just can't happen under the current system. At least, not without sacrificing other frivolous things, like, y'know, the ability to buy food. I personally think the current system is borderline criminal. I agree with oc on this one. There's a middle ground, and the US needs to find it fast. I don't see Obamacare as a solution to the problem, but it's a step in the right direction. I just hope we don't wind up taking two steps back when it doesn't fix our issues, and that Americans don't give up on the idea altogether.

Agreed completely

You got that right. ;)

I agree with you, SOMA, that this sounds pretty typical. Doctors aren't all-knowing, and anything out of the mainstream takes time to diagnose. Unfortunately, /my/ first thought after reading this FML was "Only $300? This OP's in for a rude awakening." That's not much compared to what it's likey to become, even if the whole $300 was for co-pays. I hope this OP can afford to be persistent.

Ahh nothing like doctors making $$$ off of people's sickness.

87: The MDs aren't the problem, IMO. I have no issue with doctors being paid well for their work; they go through a lot to get where they are, and spend an assload on the way there. It's the insurance and drug industries I have a big problem with. 

What's that about free healthcare? It's sure fun living in any country that's not the US.

Solution: marry a Canadian. Go Canada, eh

Well, they recommended him to the specialist I'm guessing, and a specialist will be bias to his area of expertise if the symptoms match, but may not necessarily be the correct diagnosis.

true the specialist is a more professional source.

That can take months, if your insurance is even good enough to get an appointment.

it's worth the time and money to find out what's wrong, dumbass

*you're *you *want to

benign*

Holy shit! Oc's naziing now?! My mind is officially boggled.

Why not beneight? Or benseven?