A surprise visit to the hospital is rarely fun. The sterile environment, unfamiliar faces, and the underlying concern for your well-being usually put a mountain of worries on your shoulders.

However, in the case of Reddit user NatureAggressive1804, it was the medical professional who was supposed to help that made the situation way more difficult than it needed to be.

Talking to the subreddit ‘Petty Revenge,’ the woman explained that when her husband took her to the ER after she couldn’t stop choking, an egotistical know-it-all repeatedly brushed her aside, and it took her hours to finally find someone that could put him in his place.

This woman couldn’t stop choking, so her husband took her to the ER

But the doctor she got didn’t seem interested in helping her

We managed to get in touch with NatureAggressive1804, and she was kind enough to have a little chat with us about what happened that day.

Initially, the patient didn’t think much of the doctors’ confrontation after her visit. “It did seem like something more was going on between them, but I didn’t care. I didn’t feel like I was ‘choking’ anymore, and my throat wasn’t hurting badly.”

But now, she said she “shared the story on Reddit because I had seen a few posts from others on here and other social media about how doctors gaslight patients because we don’t necessarily know the correct language to always use [when] something is wrong,” she told Bored Panda. “This wasn’t the first incident I’d dealt with like this, just a different medical issue.”

The Redditor said it was obvious from the get-go that the doctor wasn’t in the mood. “The first impression, from what I remember, was just typical dismissal. [He] didn’t listen, didn’t want to deal with me. I spent my whole life having this issue happen and had always been told the feeling of my throat closing was because it was anxiety. Never once thought there was another medical condition that caused this or could lead to serious medical issues like a ruptured esophagus. So I figured he saw anxiety in the records and wrote it off.”

NatureAggressive1804 thinks she probably would not have received the help she needed if she hadn’t actively looked for it.

“I only knew to advocate and get a patient advocate because I had previously dealt with a more serious medical issue and knew what they were because they introduced themselves to me,” the Redditor recalled.

As her story went viral, the woman provided more details in its comment section

Lately, there’s been an increase in patients with the same condition as the author of the post

Eosinophilic esophagitis (EoE) is a chronic allergic/immune condition of the esophagus with symptoms that vary with age.

For example, infants and toddlers may refuse to eat or may not grow properly, and school-age children also often have a decreased appetite, as well as recurring abdominal pain, and trouble swallowing or vomiting, while teenagers and adults can have the same symptoms, but in many cases, just like the author of the Reddit post, have difficulty swallowing dry or dense, solid foods.

The difficulty swallowing occurs because the esophagus is inflamed and narrows to the point where food can’t go through and gets stuck.

Food firmly stuck in the esophagus is called a “food impaction,” and as we learned from this story, can become a medical emergency if it doesn’t pass into the stomach or is not vomited up relatively quickly.

Allergists and gastroenterologists have been seeing increasingly more patients with EoE. This is due to an increased incidence of the condition and greater physician awareness. It is considered to be a chronic condition that can be treated but is not outgrown.

Despite stories like this one, doctors are the most trusted professionals in the U.S. and across the world

A 2021 Ipsos poll found that doctors are the world’s most trusted professionals.

Across 28 countries where Ipsos asked the public how much they trust workers from different sectors, an average of 64% rated doctors as trustworthy, ahead of scientists (61%) and teachers (55%).

(In contrast, politicians were rated as trustworthy by only 10%, cabinet officials by 14%, and advertising executives by 15% on average globally.)

In the United States, doctors also came in as the most trusted group (rated as trustworthy by 69%), followed by members of the armed forces (64%), scientists (62%), teachers (57%), and the police (53%).

We’ll leave it to you to decide whether or not these figures are enough.

People have had plenty of strong reactions to the woman’s ordeal

Some even shared their own similar experiences