this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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Went to the dentist for the first time in 9 years a couple months back as I couldn't get an NHS slot after moving house. Luckily came back with a clean bill of mouth health because I've become ultra-vigilant on not over consuming sugary foods outside of meal time and cutting out sugary drinks. (Not so) Luckily I've also cut out soft drinks because I developed kidney stones after consuming too much sugar-free sodas as my go to drink, so the lack of acidic drinks has also probably helped.
It's an absolute joke and poor dental health has such huge potential impacts both on your mental health but also I think gum ill health can also lead to serious health risks like heart disease, as one major physical health problem downstream of the mouth. All this adds up to increased use of NHS services in the actually, guaranteed free parts - like emergency dentistry and primary care doctors.
Everything in the UK is about saving a penny now, even if it costs a pound later. Like they're cancelling 140K operations to save money, never mind the knock-on effects from that. After my stroke they gave me a shitty physiotherapy session every few months so I never recovered, and now I'm disabled for life which costs the NHS more and if I win my claim they'll have to start paying me disability again instead of fixing me while there was time so I could become a functioning member of society again.
Do they have any inkling what caused your stroke, eg undiagnosed high blood pressure, hereditary risk factors, etc?
It was a side effect of my cancer treatment. And what really pisses me off is that I wasn't warned about any of the side effects. I had two options for treatment, radioactive iodine, which they admitted had side effects, or "over treatment" with thyroxine, which means taking a higher than necessary dose of thyroxine for life, to supress any remaining cancer cells and stop it from spreading again. They said this option didn't have any side effects, so i chose that. Well it turns out it does have many side effects including strokes, heart problems, development of food intolerances, temperature regulation issues, skin problems, mental health issues, exhaustion and brain fog and many other things, all of which I have developed. It can also apparently cause other cancers, that's the only side effect I haven't had yet. And of course with all the health problems it's caused it has also condemned me to a life of poverty and loneliness as I can no longer work or have a social life.
😳 It's extremely frustrating that therapies, treatments, medications can have five pages of fine-print side effects, and doctors seldom seem aware of, let alone consider, when treating patients or getting consent (informed consent seems so passé), or contraindications, with or without other medications someone may be taking. Thank you for abiding my nosiness, I know people who are high risk for stroke, with poorly managed risks, usually because of costs. Cancer is also prevalent in my area, presumably because of a lack of waste, chemical, and industrial regulation; one of them is really struggling with treatment side effects, which does include taking a daily medication. I will be inquiring about the name of that in short order.
It's infuriating that I've ended up on so many meds I can hardly manage them, and it's all because of side effects. The cancer meds caused me to have a stroke so now I am prescribed two stroke meds. It also caused food intolerances so i can eat very few foods without getting sick, so I've developed deficiencies and been prescribed vitamin injections and pills. One of these vitamins (folic acid) gives me terrible UTIs so I need antibiotics and bladder meds. These also have side effects. These issues have wrecked my skin so now I have eczema (so bad I've been hospitalised multiple times when it gets terribly infected), dermatitis and infected foot ulcers. It's caused chronic migraines so now I take migraine meds which have side effects, and many others.
And with the folic acid, it took seeing multiple doctors before they accepted that the folic acid was causing my UTIs. A simple google search would have shown them that folic acid is known to cause UTIs and other bladder issues but most doctors are too arrogant to even check something they haven't heard before and just dismissed me. And the latest bladder med they prescribed, in the side effects it lists UTIs, bleeding in urine and bladder pain as side effects! I've been begging to see a urologist for ages but they just keep fobbing me off with pills.
I understand! I'm getting frustrated, following your nightmare journey. And yes, doctors are extremely arrogant. Add that on top of whatever constraints imposed on them (time management, restricted formulary from which prescription is permitted, etc) by the system, and I can imagine wanting to throttle someone!
But you said something that made me wonder... Often FNPs or even LPNs are more knowledgeable than MDs, and I wonder if for primary care management, that's a workable possibility for you? I'm sorry if it's another useless idea, I am unfamiliar with your healthcare system, other than what I've read online.
A lot of the time, if I actually manage to get an appointment, it's not even with a GP but a nurse, or now they even have paramedics and other similar people doing appointments at the surgery. These have been even worse than the GP. The nurses always say they don't understand blood test results and have to ask a GP and get back to me, and usually no-one gets back to me and I have to chase them up. When my folate deficiency symptoms started and we had no idea what was causing it, I was first given an appointment with a nurse who said she would ask the GP what to do and get back to me. She never did. Months passed as I waited, always expecting a call and my symptoms got much worse, in the end I kept trying to get an appointment with a GP and eventually got one and they said "Oh it looks like the nurse just forgot to follow it up."
One time I went with a UTI and was given an appointment with a paramedic. He was extremely unprofessional, made inappropriate sexual remarks, didn't know which part of the body was affected by a UTI and refused to give me antibiotics so my situation deteriorated. I actually ended up making a complaint about him but nothing came of it.
It's just utterly impossible to get any adequate treatment at all.
😲
I have a hypothesis, but without a detailed whistleblower report, it's just a hypothesis.
I'm sorry you're going through this. What a wicked system.
What's the hypothesis?
Rushing people through to meet NHS cuts and probably quotas on time and limits on resources.