Hi! This is an odd story. First some background. I am a gynecologic oncologist which means I’m a physician that specializes in gyn cancers (uterine, ovarian, cervical, etc). I make it a policy to try to not give unsolicited medical advice to friends and family. A few years ago my friend in a group text mentioned how her mom randomly started having “periods again” and that “it was wild.” Her mom’s been postmenopausal for a while. I know I mentioned my policy, but she volunteered this information in the group chat and red flags started going off in my head. I just said “yeah it’s wild. But postmenopausal bleeding is never normal, she needs to make sure it’s not cancer”.
My friend just responded with “you doctors always think everything is cancer so you can make money, it’s probably fine” and I responded with “no, I think she should really get it checked out” and she just responded to my comment with the “haha” emoji. I just left it at that as again, I don’t want to push too much unsolicited medical advice to friends and family. Fast forward and my friend wanted to meet me for coffee for “something important”. It turns out she never told her mom to get it evaluated and her mom recently had to go to the ED for pain where they found the cancer is now metastatic and a biopsy confirmed endometrial cancer.
At coffee, she asked me how it could’ve happened, that the news came out of nowhere, and they have no idea why it spread. I asked “what did the biopsy show when you had it evaluated years ago when she started bleeding?” And she responded with “oh we never got it checked out”. So I asked why not and she said “no one ever told us it was abnormal, I thought it’d blow over”. I said that I mentioned she should get it checked out but she denied it. I kept trying to remind her about the text and she kept denying. Eventually I just scrolled through my phone and found the original conversation.
Her face immediately turned red and she started yelling at me how as a professional, I should’ve known better. How I should’ve tried harder to get her to take her mom, how I should’ve contacted her mom directly, etc. a lot of excuses. I gave her grace and just let her rant because she was obviously taking the news of her mom poorly. But then she blasted me in the group chat saying how I’m a terrible physician for missing this, how I don’t care, etc. I just posted the screenshot of the original conversation from years ago in the group chat and left because I felt like it wasn’t productive. My friends are split on this. Half say I did the right thing by gently mentioning it, but ultimately it was their responsibility to get it evaluated. The other half are saying I should’ve essentially forced them to get it checked out. So AITA for just giving them my opinion about the bleeding years ago and not following up?
NTA. You can’t “force” someone else to do anything. You made the most insightful suggestion possible and they chose to ignore it. There was nothing more you could do.
NTA and not your responsibility to force them to get it checked out or follow up on what they did. Some people would find follow-up questions intrusive and inappropriate!
I’m also assuming this friend knows your specialization based on her initial reply. It is possible she is feeling tremendous guilt for not saying anything to her Mom then and wondering what difference earlier diagnosis would have made in the prognosis. It’s a lot easier (emotionally) to lay all the blame on you than to take any accountability.
NTA. This is super sad for her and her mom but they’re both adults, and unfortunately sometimes the things we decide not to do, hurt us in the long run. 😞
NTA. I feel like it’s common sense that if someone with your specialization tells you “hey you should get her checked out”, you should listen to them.
NTA As the saying goes: You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink.
Not sure how you force someone to get a medical check if they are in self denial. I would have thought that what you said was sufficiently worrying and that the situation was ALSO sufficiently worrying that your friend would have acted on it asap.
It wouldn’t have taken a conversation with a medical friend to get me to make an urgent appointment in that scenario. I would have been on the phone to my GP at once!
NTA I would leave that friend alone for a while. They clearly know what their actions have resulted in by not taking your advice seriously. They’re projecting on you because they feel very guilty themselves. This will probably affect the friendship for a while. You can’t force people to make good decisions, OP.
I’m a nurse. Non healthcare providers cannot imagine the millions of questions from friends and family that we get. It’s a hard thing to navigate and you literally cannot accept responsibility for her decision to not act on your excellent advice.
She was also rude, imo, in the initial conversation. Saying you just want money when you are trying to help her FOR FREE is ludicrous and demeans your life’s work.
You’re NTA but I think your friend is borderline. She was an AH in the first conversation and is now throwing shade on you because she never followed up on her mom’s abnormal symptoms.
A sad lesson for her to learn but it’s no way your fault. It’s hers.
NTA
She’s lashing out because it’s her fault that she may not have even forwarded the advice to her mom, but she does not want to feel guilty and needs to shift the blame. Honestly I have no sympathy for people who behave like this and are incapable of accepting they were majorly deeply wrong.
Mom’s to blame too and holds most of the responsibility if not all. Any woman who starts having periods again after menopause should see a doctor because there’s no way that it’s normal. Benign, maybe but not normal.
Mom may not have known to check it out. Women’s relationships with their OBGYNs vary wildly, it’s a medical procession where hardly any woman is looking forward to a visit. The friend, on the other hand, was plainly told to have it checked out and didn’t even tell her mom. It’s a one thing to not know what to do even when you’re supposed to know. It’s a different thing to hear a medical advice and not relay it.
NTA
She not only dismissed your advice, she passively called you a money grubber.
She’s likely just upset at herself for being dismissive and rude, and making it worse by taking it out on others. It shows a lot about her character :/
Technically it would have been very unethical for you to “force” them to seek medical care they were outright denying! (Although it wasn’t the patient denying care, it was her healthy daughter, so another layer of “TIFU”)
I think you know you are definitely NTA here. (And I say this as a former medical professional) You said she should get it evaluated, you are not her physician or her mother’s physician, and yet you gave two statements of warning. It’s normal to want to blame someone and in this case she wants to shoot the messenger. So which is it, you just want to make money thinking everything is Cancer or you aren’t trying hard enough to make money because everything IS Cancer? She can’t have it both ways.
Dump these people who sided with her, life too short for this level of drama.
NTA.
Someone forcing something upon another person “for their own good” is dictatorship unless that person is somehow mentally incapacitated.
Your friend’s mom didn’t seek you out for professional advice. You can’t treat patients you don’t have. You gave unsolicited advice and it was ignored. Your friend’s mom made the choice not to talk to her doctor when her symptoms started, and frankly she had to know that this was a possible consequence of her choice.
If a car mechanic walks down the street where my car is parked, I don’t expect them to inspect my car even if there’s an obvious dent in the bumper.
Regarding your friends, I’d just drop the subject and give space around that subject for people to process. They’ll come to the same conclusion eventually.
NTA. What were you supposed to do? Break into her mom’s house and kidnap her to the doctor’s office? You gave her the information and she chose to sit on it. She’s upset and guilty that she didn’t take action when you initially brought it up and is taking it out on you.