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From: wiebe@ut-ngp.UUCP (Anne Hill Wiebe)
Newsgroups: net.med,net.consumers
Subject: Re: My opinion of Chiropractors.
Message-ID: <3080@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 19-Mar-86 14:34:39 EST
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Posted: Wed Mar 19 14:34:39 1986
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Marge's story about her son with inoperable cancer is really terrible.
That chiropractor ought to be liable for a malpractice suit.  But I
have to add that not only chiropractors are guilty in this way.

My best friend the first year of graduate school, Beverly, was also my
office mate and classmate.  In October, she started to have a strange 
weight gain centered in her abdomen, as if she were pregnant, as well 
as being very tired.  She went to our Student Health Center, which is 
touted as being a general medical 24-hour facility which can treat 
anything.  Their doctors kept testing her for pregnancy; when the 
test came up negative, they told her nothing was wrong.  Since she was
medically knowledgeable, she specifically requested certain tests; they
performed some, with no result, and refused to perform others.
Finally, in March, she went back home to Connecticut over spring break
and went to her own doctor.  This was three days after her last
examination from the Student Health Center.  Her own doctor tested her
bulging abdomen and discovered it to be full of fluid; when he took a
needle biopsy, it was cancerous.  She had surgery three days later; it
was advanced ovarian cancer, which had produced thirty pounds of fluid
in her abdomen.  The cancer had also metastasized; there were a lot of
little tumors all over the abdominal cavity.

Well, Beverly died a year later after a long fight.  I did promise her
to tell her story and spread bad publicity about the Student Health
Center.  Moral, I think:  don't trust ANY doctor or practitioner if you
aren't getting better; get another opinion SOON.

I just wish it could bring Beverly back.  Students with limited money
often feel they must trust their health to these student health
centers.  Student health centers tend to trivialize major illness,
because they mostly see basically healthy people; they tend to see
larger complaints as inflated.

Anne Hill Wiebe
Center for Space Research, University of Texas at Austin
(wiebe@ngp.UTEXAS.EDU, or !ihnp4!ut-ngp!wiebe, or
!allegra!ut-ngp!wiebe)