That Time My Doctor Fired Me as a Patient

By Crystal Lindell

When I first developed chronic pain back in 2013, I had so little experience with our healthcare system that I genuinely thought that all my doctors would do everything possible to help me, like the doctor that Hugh Laurie played on the TV series House. 

The pain I developed came on suddenly and intensely. 

It wrapped around my right ribs like a rusty barbed wire, and I had no idea how to manage it, much less live with it. I just woke up with it one day when I was 29 years old, and it never went away. 

I initially went to the emergency room, where they told me that it was likely an ulcer. But after trying to treat that and still being in horrific pain weeks later, I went to a primary care doctor recommended by a friend. 

The doctor worked for a university hospital near Chicago and, at the time, I still thought that a good doctor would be able to figure out what was going on and be able to successfully treat it. After all, the pain was in such a specific place. Surely there was something they could do? 

But after weeks of multiple rounds of tests and imaging revealed no answers, that doctor started prescribing gabapentin and basically threw up his hands in defeat. 

The only problem was, while he could ignore my pain, I could not. It haunted me. 

The pain was slowly eating away at my life and my will to live. I had a desperate need to find help so that I could survive. 

The pain would keep me up for days on end, and I would sometimes get a friend to drive me to this doctor’s office first thing in the morning, desperate to see him and hoping he would help me. He would usually just increase my gabapentin prescription and send me on my way.  

It didn’t work. So, I kept calling and insisting on more appointments, naively assuming he would help me. 

After a few months of this, he gave me “the talk.” He said there was nothing else he could do for me and that he would no longer be seeing me. 

I was too shocked to even react. How could he give up when the pain was still persisting? How was I supposed to live like this?

He didn’t offer to refer me to anyone else. He just abandoned me. 

One thing you learn quickly as a chronically ill patient is that doctors hold all the power. If one decides to fire you as a patient, you don’t have much recourse. It doesn’t matter if you still need their help – they won’t be giving it to you. 

I’m sure the fact that I kept insisting on appointments annoyed him. But while he was facing annoyance, I was facing agony and desperation. I didn’t know what else to do. I needed his help, even after he stopped giving it. 

Out of necessity, I decided to uproot my life and move back in with my family, so that I could scale back how much I was working and focus on trying to figure out what was going on with my body. 

I eventually connected to a new doctor at a different university hospital and, thankfully, he did not give up on me. In fact, he was able to get me onto an opioid-based treatment plan that I still use today. He was able to give me back my will to live, and I still see him for my pain now.

My pain was eventually diagnosed as intercostal neuralgia, likely linked to my other eventual diagnosis, Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome. I still suffer from the pain today, but it’s much better managed. 

If you scroll through any online chronic illness group, you’ll find that a lot of other patients have also been fired by their doctors. 

I’m not sure what the solution is. After all, if a doctor doesn’t want to treat you anymore, it’s probably in your best interest to stop seeing them – they just hold way too much power over your body. 

But unfortunately, as it stands, they are able to leave you out in the cold with no alternatives for medical care. And if you’re suffering from a serious health issue, finding a new doctor can feel overwhelming and near impossible. 

Doctors should be required to refer your case to someone else if they want to fire you as a patient. They should have to help make sure that you’re still receiving healthcare, even if your condition is not acutely life threatening. 

I still wish the real world was filled with doctors who were as tenacious as Dr. House, but since it’s not, patients need more well-enforced rights. 

While doctors have the luxury of deciding which patients they will treat, patients are stuck living with the body that still needs treatment.. 

If we as patients aren’t allowed to give up on our health, doctors shouldn’t be allowed to give up on us.