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[Maximum Spin]

I get that may be the case doc. I do, but when they want to bill me $400 for that portion of it alone, then I'd like the bone doctor to spend a minute pointing out to me what the x-ray from the urgent care means. I want and need his expert opinion. I understand and agree the doctor is smarter than I am. I need him to tell me what those smarts are telling him, because I am a layperson who has no idea, and was doing what a nurse practitioner told me to do. I was following orders from someone smarter than me, and I don't get what the first doctor expected me to do differently, or why he would not listen to like 30 seconds of relevant medical history. 

Also, it is night and day that the first doctor did not seem to care at all and the second one offered me PT and an MRI.
I am wondering if I should take the MRI and I probably will, but it just is a lot.

The first ortho did tell you: the x-ray means nothing and you can't go off that alone, so there's no point in even looking at it - it's non-information. Did he not assess the actual condition of your knee by feeling it?

Based on your story, you don't appear to be having any actual long-term problem, so why do you think you need physical therapy or an MRI? I feel like the second doctor is just milking some extra money out of your anxiety.

[ChairmanPoo]

Maybe a bit. His impression post exploration is that its normal but is offering more to RPL (possibly due to his anxiety). Tbf having someone anxious about something can drive you to be more defensive and make extra tests in case you're missing something. Specially in the case of a second opinion. If someone seeks attention repeatedly for something that is not that serious... I think its not bad practice to consider that there could be something missing from the picture (even if at the end its just anxiety).

Obviously I'm not there and I dont know how bad it is or how either ortho managed the situation. But to me it sounds like ortho #1 at most has a poor bedside (not infrequent in surgeons tbh), that the a&e (doctor? Nurse?) was overly defensive in the report, and that third dr went through the motions of starting from scratch (for various reasons) but that it seems that you basically have a sprain.

[MCreeper]

Tekken 8's requirements. 100 GB fighting, anyone?

[Frumple]

Just think about how pretty it is, though! Presumably. Hopefully.

Be hilarious if they skimped on textures and junk just to burn 50 gigs on jiggle physics or somethin'.

[Robot Parade Leader]

No.

O I am totally hoping it is just a sprain, but I don't want to be stupid and ignore a potential problem til it gets worse. Just being responsible....

For my money, I'm guessing the nurse practitioner in the urgent care was at least partially right (just not about that x-ray as per the second ortho). The first ortho doctor was wrong/didn't care, and the second ortho doctor realized this and fixed the other doctor's mistake.

The first ortho #1 doctor barely touched me at all and basically did not do his job. 10 seconds for total physical contact with my knee.
*This is what I meant when I said he was too cool to do his job (that and him not referencing or showing x-rays, etc.).
*This doctor just did not seem to be gathering information to make a conclusion and he did not ask me the questions the next guy would....
*I have no idea how he came to any conclusion at all or what he based anything off. I have 0 confidence in him and I went somewhere else.
*I know I am not as smart as a doctor, but I feel I was being brushed off.

The second ortho #2 took independent x-rays, explained the urgent care x-ray, spent a full 7 minutes touching my knee and went over every manipulation with his medical student/scribe while saying things like,
*"MCL position A... B... C .... D...," while he moved my leg around and asked my pain on a scale of 1 to 10, "dull, sharp, other?" in each position.
*He explained how he came to his conclusions, what he based it on, and "the diagnostic limits are nobody can be completely sure without MRI but based on what we did today this is what I think."
*He had me fill out paperwork to describe my pain in different parts of my knee while doing certain activities or nothing, range of motion limitations, etc.  meaning he actually wanted information to base his judgement off of and to compare before and after treatments over time.
*This doctor I like, because in about 20 minutes of doing things and maybe 3 to 5 minutes of quizzing his med student/scribes, he told me a lot.

Both of these doctors are charging hundreds of dollars (the second one costs a little more) but only one of them is actually explaining things to me / giving me options.

As for long term problems, this happened a month ago and I can't put weight on my knee without it hurting. No it's not the worst pain ever, but the more I try weight bearing the worse it gets. It hasn't been long enough to be a long term problem. I hope it is just a sprain. Sprain sounds cheap to fix and surgery sounds expensive, but I also don't want to ignore any potential problem and let it get worse.  Just to clarify, the second opinion ortho doctor did not say there was nothing wrong with me, he said the weird x-ray from the urgent care was nothing to worry about/it did not show my leg was misaligned or whatever.

The second ortho #2 has a follow up appointment scheduled soon. It's improved some but not a ton. Here's hoping.

[Maximum Spin]

Ah, okay, yes, the first doctor not doing anything is a different story. At the same time, though, you have to understand that many patients don't want doctors to "give them options", they just want to be told whether there's a problem. So the doctor certainly doesn't sound like a good fit for you, but I wouldn't say it's strictly the wrong way to do business.

Based on the sprain I had last year (almost exactly a year ago, now), I'd say that you sound like you're on basically the same schedule of healing and it turned out fine for me, so hopefully that's a little reassuring, but of course you should do whatever you need to do to feel comfortable about it.

[Il Palazzo]

Huh. Stewart is back with the Daily Show?

[nenjin]

I'm kind of in the same boat.

I got an ingrown hair on my groin early last year from some manscaping. It formed a thing that was quite large and after a couple months I became alarmed. (I never found the hair to pluck out, either.)

I went to my doc thinking I needed him to lance it for me. Instead, he just said use warm compresses and it would "resolve itself."

Well, it didn't. Despite reducing in size and draining, it remained a lump on my groin for the next 9 months.

And guess what, it started swelling again. So I made another doctor's appointment thinking that I needed him to do what he was reluctant to do.

But I started applying warm compresses again more regularly and more aggressively, and it looks like it's drained out better. It's not completely gone, but it's the most gone it's been since it started.

So I get going into the doctor, looking for help and advice, getting "I'm not going to do anything" and getting charged several hundred dollars for the privilege.

I'm going to keep my appointment despite the fact it's being resolved for exactly this reason: I want advice and surety that I don't need antibiotics or something to counter a possible infection or abscess forming. It's so frustrating though to have to wait weeks to see someone, and pay hundreds of dollars, to have them spend less than 10 minutes with you.

So while I'm sure doctors hate "defensive patients" that defensiveness comes directly from the impression that they don't give a shit, and that you're just a product to them.

Huh. Stewart is back with the Daily Show?

Because it's believed this is once again the most important election ever, they're bringing back the big guns. So he'll probably be hosting again for the next year to do election coverage.

[Akura]

Received a letter from my job saying that I had been fired on the 6th, due to long absence because of illness that would have been better excused if my doctor's office had bothered to fill out the damn paperwork I emailed them. Never mind that I've been back at work for the last two weeks.

Of course, I did call my boss to sort it out; it was (mostly) sent in error. I'm not fired.

[TD1]

Lol. Incompetent.

[EuchreJack]

Lol.  Well, so long as they keep sending the checks, keep showing up?

Wait wait, maybe you should see if there are any new employee bonuses or gifts that you might be able to get?

[hector13]

Lol. Incompetent.

I had a similar thing with a major supermarket in the UK about a decade ago. Took some time off for mental health and then got a letter saying I had been sacked. Apparently it was meant to tell me I’d taken enough time off I was being paid the minimum amount they could get away with, but I did get an apology from the head office for it.

Then they sent me the same letter again not long after. It was very silly.

[McTraveller]

Did they take your stapler?   

[Akura]

Dealing with further incompetence, this time from my doctor's office. I set up the appointment over a month ago, they tell me it it's on Friday the 1st, they give me a paper saying the appointment is on the 1st. Because of the procedure being done required wearing some expensive(and surprisingly heavy and restrictive) electronic equipment for 12 hours afterwards, I take off work for the 1st.

I get there, and they tell me that the appointment is actually on Monday the 4th. They don't even do the procedure - just swallowing a camera pill; the equipment is the receiver for the images - on Fridays since nobody's there on Saturdays to turn in the equipment to. Worse, the procedure requires two days of fasting plus a bottle of laxatives in the middle of that. Which I had to do twice because of this.

[EuchreJack]

Dealing with further incompetence, this time from my doctor's office. I set up the appointment over a month ago, they tell me it it's on Friday the 1st, they give me a paper saying the appointment is on the 1st. Because of the procedure being done required wearing some expensive(and surprisingly heavy and restrictive) electronic equipment for 12 hours afterwards, I take off work for the 1st.

I get there, and they tell me that the appointment is actually on Monday the 4th. They don't even do the procedure - just swallowing a camera pill; the equipment is the receiver for the images - on Fridays since nobody's there on Saturdays to turn in the equipment to. Worse, the procedure requires two days of fasting plus a bottle of laxatives in the middle of that. Which I had to do twice because of this.

Yeah, I can't add anything but shrug my shoulders and say "That is the medical profession these days".

I had a similar experience with my allergy testing.  Thankfully not too similar, as that really sucks.

Actually, I think my cockup also had to do with a Friday. Don't let the doctors plan anything on Fridays, as not working those days is one of the few perks that doctors haven't lost due to their utter enslavement to the Hospitals. 
In the US, I think the last actual medical professional running the last hospital retired 10 years ago. They're all MBAs (business school guys) nowadays. And they completely own the doctors.

It is actually quite bad for the medical profession.  They're getting utterly crushed in both Britain and South Korea.

Er, my point is that it is not your doctor's fault, probably. Probably not even the staff in that particular office, as the hospitals that own the doctor's offices are taking away scheduling from the local offices.