Funny visits to the Doctors

True stories:

My wife and I were visiting my step-daughter in Santa Barbara, CA when I came down with a UTI (urinary tract infection) which would seem to hit me every one or two years or so. Step-daughter was familiar with a local urgent care center, so the three of us went to the clinic together. My wife and her daughter stayed in the waiting area and a female doctor (or physician's assistant) examined me and took some samples for the lab (which would take a couple of days for the results to return). So at the conclusion of the exam, I was prescribed one or two antibiotics used commonly to treat venereal disease. I made it very clear to the doctor I had only one partner (wife) and, in fact, she was present in the waiting room (if there was any question about her "fidelity"). The clinician insisted on not changing the RX to something more appropriate to my "everyday" UTI, while explaining that if the results of the lab tests came back negative, my RX would be switched.
I did not understand at the time (and never will) why she wanted to prescribe the wrong medication. Anyway, I later received a call and was told to pickup a different antibiotic. Crazy *****, that was an embarrassing and humiliating appointment.

My Dad is 35 years my senior and his personal physician was a kind of elder care physician in Monterey, CA. One week I was visiting Dad and was feeling ill, so he suggested I seek treatment from his own doctor (which I had seen on one or two previous occasions). This doctor has the custom of always ordering a shitload of lab tests no matter what the medical issue or symptoms. I forget now where my discomfort lied, but anyway, at the conclusion of the exam he recommended an HIV exam. I explained to him the both my wife and I had such exam prior to the marriage ceremony, we both had such exam since then for federal job offers, and I had a third prior to acceptance for a life insurance policy. He comes back with the statement that he remembered me having told him I had led a promiscuous lifestyle. I told him I never told that to anyone, let alone him, because that was a boldface lie. To make a long story short, I refused his suggestion of the HIV test and I refused to ever consult with him after that.
Now as a side note, I was renting an apartment in Tijuana, Mexico while attending San Diego State University as a Spanish major student either during this time or prior to it. Now sometimes I wonder if Dad somehow lost his mind and believed his goody-two shoes eldest son was visiting brothels in Mexico and called this doctor on my way over there (about a one-hour drive) and told him I was a sex addict?

Last but not least, while renting in Tijuana as a student (as explained above), I went to the emergency room of a private Catholic Hospital on Easter Sunday after having felt ill for a number of days previous. Without doing any lab tests or taking any x-rays, the female physician on duty diagnosed pneumonia after having listened to my lungs with her stethoscope. I was given meds and sent home and told to return with lab results the following week.
I don't remember the number/type of lab tests that were ordered, but in among the rest was an HIV test. Don't remember if that was discussed or not exam day, but the only person how I could possibly have caught such a disease (HIV) was my spouse who was healthy as a horse. Anyway, I was on my way to recovery from the pneumonia when I returned for the follow-up appointment. That's when I was told I was HIV positive, which did not make any sense at all (I had had some recent dental appointments in Tijuana and I had a blood transfusion way back in 1979 after a collision). Well, I did notice that the lab report had some "white-out" on the box showing the HIV result. The doctor ordered a second HIV screening which came back negative. Those two weeks of waiting probably aged me ten years. i assume it was someone in the chain of command that was playing a sick joke by changing the results of the first screening on the fly.

This stuff happened about twenty years ago, when many of us were still paranoid about catching the "unmentionable" virus before any viable treatments were commonly available.