On social media, health-related misinformation pops up as relentlessly as furry heads in a game of whack-a-mole. In recent years, posts have claimed that ginger can be “10,000 (times) more effective(opens in a new tab)” at killing cancer than chemotherapy, that fluoridated water provides “no benefits, only risks(opens in a new tab),” and that the measles vaccine is “more dangerous(opens in a new tab) than becoming infected with measles.”
A national survey released in January by Abacus Data and the Canadian Medical Association (CMA)(opens in a new tab) found that false health claims can have a direct impact on patient care. Encountering health misinformation led 35 per cent of respondents to delay seeking appropriate medical care and 29 per cent to avoid effective treatments.
Must have been misinformation that got this poor kid recently.
Paxton Clarke, 13, sits upright in his bed as he yawns repeatedly and softly explains that he doesn't remember an entire week of August.
While memories such as squeaking chairs come back to him in fragments, his mother, Jennifer Weatherbie, recalls every painful moment of how he dipped in and out of consciousness and nearly died.
She's now seeking an apology from Nova Scotia Health and the Colchester East Hants Health Centre after Paxton was sent home by two doctors in Truro, only to end up in emergency brain surgery at the IWK Health Centre in Halifax.
"For them to basically tell us to leave with a child that can't even walk or say more than a couple of words and is hallucinating … that's not normal, in my opinion," said Weatherbie.
Paxton had been feeling poorly in July and the situation gradually worsened. On Aug. 6, she took him to a crowded emergency department at the Colchester East Hants Health Centre in Truro, but left after two hours when people around her said they had already been there for nine hours or more.
The following day, Aug. 7, she took him to a walk-in clinic where a doctor diagnosed the teen with cluster migraines.
Things escalated on Aug. 9. Paxton was unconscious and needed to be transported by ambulance to the emergency department in Truro. After seven hours, he was once again diagnosed with cluster migraines and told to rest at home.
As it turned out, Paxton had a strain of bacteria called streptococcus anginosus that developed into an infection and spread to his brain, according to Weatherbie. She said as soon as the IWK team saw her son's MRI scans on Aug. 12, they immediately jumped into action.
"The doctors were standing there waiting for me and they were like, 'It's surgery or death,'" she said.
Damn that misinformation really fucked this kid up huh.
Just like when I was poisoned with refrigerant and all these retards kept saying I was fine lmao.
The comments in the local subreddit are pretty good, surprised the thread didn't get deleted.
I had a spinal stroke in one of the emergency rooms here in the HRM and was told “it was all in my head” because I was “stressed”. It wasn’t until they got frustrated with my inability to walk that they sent me to a different hospital via ambulance. The first hospital did 0 scans.
horrifying! And you know if it's happened to you, it's also happening to others too.
No fucking shit, I said this back in 2018. God DAMN. I am literally waiting to die because im tired of spending years just to get pricked a hundred times and treated like a hypochondriac.
But in my case its definitely the misinformation killing me, definitely not the lack of doctors or proper medical care. Yea totally not that.
Who the FUCK is dumb enough to fall for this?
a) Health/hale/hal - "whole"...one cannot claim whole without putting self at dis-ease.
b) Wanting to hold onto tempts one to ignore needing to let go.
c) Few tempt many to consent to suggested...which implies a claim aka a supplied demand.