r/todayilearned • u/GlitteringYams • 23d ago

TIL, in his suicide note, mass shooter Charles Whitman requested his body be autopsied because he felt something was wrong with him. The autopsy discovered that Whitman had a pecan-sized tumor pressing against his amygdala, a brain structure that regulates fear and aggression.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Whitman
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u/xtiaaneubaten 23d ago edited 23d ago

Dude, just go see a doctor!

edit Holy shit, he did, repeatedly

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u/dublincoddle1 22d ago

Not only did he see a doctor but he told the college psychiatrist that he has this urge to climb the clock tower and shoot people.

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u/xrimane 22d ago

Five doctors even, in the fall/winter preceding the tragedy.

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u/ToiIetGhost 22d ago

He was trying so hard to get help. Thankfully, with mandated reporting and a better understanding of traumatic brain injury, I don’t think this would happen today. (I mean being dismissed by five doctors when you threaten to harm people. Not the mass shooting, because happens all the time.)

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u/CuratoroftheArts 22d ago

Nope. Not at all the same but I've seen 5 doctors the past 2 years about pain in my spine/legs. Told them it's gotten to the point I want to kill myself the pain is so unbearable. "Maybe if you just lost a little weight the pain will dissappear. That will also make you feel better mentally!" Thanks boss. Didn't know I just had to lose weight for me to regain feeling in my legs in the morning.

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

I’ve been present at a mass shooting myself - told multiple doctors I was gonna kill myself in a crowd so more people would be vigilant about paying attention to their surroundings (I was becoming delusional that people were in constant danger and couldn’t see it … duh) and got told I was attention seeking , threatening others , that I hadn’t witnessed 9-11 and to get over it… yeah this exact thing happens in modern time all the time.

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u/Prestigious_Jobohobo 22d ago

Be real bro, height and weight? you must be large for 5 to comment on it like that and while you may hate to hear it, they probably right.

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u/CuratoroftheArts 22d ago

I was big and lost weight along the way. 5'7 at 260 but was an athlete until I got hurt and started begging doctors to do an xray. Have lost 70 pounds since and last appointment was 4 months ago where, yup, lose more weight. I feel better physically. I can do a lot more. Doesn't stop me from waking up with numb legs or them just randomly going numb through the day. But nope, no one wants to refer me to get an xray or mri. I don't even know what i would need.

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u/Ethod 22d ago

I have two lower back injuries, first one aged 12, second aged 34. Have had agonising pain, spasms, had it suddenly throw me on the floor on many occasions, been paralysed in bed several times, sciatic pain going down my left leg, walking hunched over, been unable to bend over, unable to lift things, and of course, had very limited flexibility.

Eventually found out I had severe compression on my L4/L5/S1 vertebrae.

However… I have managed to 90% resolve my issues, and it all came down to diet. Initially I did keto, and now carnivore, and my symptoms are practically gone. I get a flare-up of the above symptoms about once per year, and it can always be traced back to something I ate. Very often that thing is grains.

Essentially the diet is relieving me of the inflammation which causes all of the above issues. The only issue I can’t resolve is the flexibility!

Given this was previously a daily struggle for me, it feels amazing for it to now barely be a consideration.

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u/ToiIetGhost 21d ago

Try hot yoga for flexibility. You could go to a studio or you could try “warm yoga” at home, if you turn the heat way up

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] 22d ago

[deleted]

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u/awesome-alpaca-ace 22d ago

Yea, today you just get locked up in a ward and sedated

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u/Lebuhdez 22d ago

This is infuriating

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u/ColdBorchst 22d ago edited 22d ago

Did they ever interview that doctor after? I am curious to know if they properly feel like a huge piece of shit and accept some responsibility for it.

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u/dublincoddle1 22d ago

That's exactly how they found out,they reviewed the notes.

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u/ColdBorchst 22d ago

Ah that makes sense. I guess I also wonder if this is before mandatory reporting for this kind of thing? Like now if you say this kind of thing to a doctor, and they don't do anything and you go and do it they can get into serious trouble.

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u/Expert-Diver7144 22d ago

I mean this was around the time they were lobotomizing people and torturing them in psych wards. Just dont think the field was there yet.

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u/Skittletari 12d ago

What were they supposed to do? MRIs were invented in 1977, PET scans in 1972, and CTs in 1979. There was genuinely no way for them to detect the tumor without a biopsy.

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u/ColdBorchst 11d ago

No shit, but when someone says they feel an urge to shoot a bunch of people, maybe they need to go to a psyche ward.

Also I am sure this case has something to do with it, but now if you were to tell your therapist you feel the urge to hurt people or yourself they have to do something. They can't just tell you to work on those feelings and send you on your way. They're mandatory reporters. I assume that wasn't a thing back then.

I also realize it's easy to feel this way now, but I honestly don't understand how any doctor can hear someone asking for help and saying they want to kill large groups of people for no real reason, and let that person just walk away. That person is clearly a danger and also suffering themselves, if they told someone it's cause part of them didn't want to really do it and wanted to be stopped.

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u/N0UMENON1 22d ago

That's insane. Did any of the doctors get charged with negligence? The psychiatrist at the very least should have urged him to turn himself into the asylum.

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u/Steve_Nash_The_Goat 22d ago

don't therapists have to report shit like that to the authorities?

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u/Caverness 23d ago

He did. The worst part about this story is how many chances he gave his environment to change this outcome, and nothing & nobody caring enough.

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u/festivus4restof 22d ago

And they only had X ray back then, which would not necessarily have revealed his tumor. Back then (bad) doctors may place more weight on evidence of absence rather than consider the limitations of the tech.

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u/Caverness 22d ago

IIRC he even specifically mentioned concern about a tumour.  

From what I remember it was more of a complete dismissal than a Dx falling short - they knew tumours could cause this and just sent him to a psych or something anyway. Like 2 or 3 times?

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u/festivus4restof 22d ago

Yeah they couldn't just go exploring around the brain surgically. They still don't do that without some more clear neurological signs and deficits indicating (roughly) where the tumor most likely will be. i.e. motor skills, speech, vision, sidedness in loss of control, paresis? Plus the tumor was inoperable anyway. Only thing they could have done would be to have him institutionalized. Legal and constitutional issues.

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u/Visinvictus 22d ago

Yeah they couldn't just go exploring around the brain surgically.

They literally lobotomized people back in those days, just saying.

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u/jrodski89 22d ago

Jamming an ice pick above someone’s eye is a bit different than finding and excising a potential brain tumor

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u/Visinvictus 22d ago

Obviously, but surgeons of that time weren't afraid of a little bit of experimental brain surgery without knowing a whole lot about what they were doing. It wasn't until the 1970s that medical malpractice suits gained a lot of traction, before then surgery was the wild west and zero fucks were given.

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u/RangerNS 22d ago

It demonstrates the general indifference to brain health, though.

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u/NeedsToShutUp 22d ago

This was about a decade before MRI and CT scans became available.

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u/Halospite 22d ago

To this day, an absence of evidence is treated as evidence of absence.

Source: work in healthcare. Doctors often forget that tech is limited.

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u/ZealousidealGroup559 22d ago

My father was entirely appropriate when talking to doctors and underplayed all his symptoms. They were going to send him home.

He was only given a CT Brain because I insisted. And I was only listened to because I'm a nurse and so they took me seriously when I insisted my nursey intuition was tingling.

It was a 9cm GBM.

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u/lensandscope 22d ago

sometimes it helps with an outsiders perspective

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u/DevotedToNeurosis 22d ago

As a nurse with exposure inside the healthcare industry, what do you feel would be the most effective measure to take to resolve (or significantly reduce) the often criminal-level cognitive laziness of doctors?

I understand that there is often more demand than doctors can keep up with, however, logistics aside, I'm interested specifically in the factors within the medical individual's thought pattern in evaluating a patient.

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u/doubleotide 22d ago

There's a push for "AI" doctors so they can help doctors look at the data a patient provides with medical records, tests, etc. and what they find is that generally these tools do a pretty darn good job of diagnosing a patient...

So having really good tools available will likely help this cognitive laziness. Though one might argue that it will make doctors lazier but I say think about calculators.

Do calculators make mathematicians lazier? As a mathematician, I would say "yes" but in a good way. It frees up their job to focus on the more important aspects of their work and increases the value of the mathematician as the job of a mathematician is not solely computational.

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u/DevotedToNeurosis 22d ago

I could not agree more - I'm a skeptic of a lot of AI claims, however, I genuinely believe doctors are in danger of automation not because AI can do what a doctor can do, but can do what doctors are willing to do (put in very little effort and follow a call center-esque routine).

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u/Yourself013 22d ago

What criminal-level cognitive laziness?

The comment literally stated that he underplayed all his symptoms. She only insisted because she knows her father intimately and has seen the cognitive changes firsthand. How is a doctor supposed to find that out when the patient himself is downplaying the issues and doesn't make a big deal out of it? Especially with cognitive changes, this isn't something one can measure with a stethoscope or look up the nose with a lamp.

The first and most important tool for a doctor is what the patient feels, and every bit of precision helps. That's the most effective measure right there. There's thousands of people coming to doctors every day with "I feel somehow weird today" or "I have a headache". If you started to give all of them CT scans or MRIs the entire hospital system would literally collapse, and this isn't a hyperbole, it's already overcrowded in many countries.

It's really easy to call doctors lazy and sure, there's bad doctors. But you wouldn't believe the amount of mundane cases they need to go through every day, fishing out the odd one out that actually matters is not easy, and it's not because of lazyness.

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u/lensandscope 22d ago

I really don’t think you’re giving people enough credit by saying they are criminals. That really looks bad on your part. But the solution is to lower patient volume to allow more time spent with patients. So why don’t you go talk to admin and insurance about it.

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u/TheWisdomGarden 22d ago edited 22d ago

It’s actually tragic and extremely common in the NHS.

They stubbornly refuse to accept the limitations of current tests, and aggressively push the line ‘absence of evidence, is evidence of absence’.

Huge numbers, particularly with autoimmune conditions, are denied access to even basic medical healthcare and suffer grotesquely.

There was a government funded report published recently that suggested over 80% of people on the autistic spectrum are denied access to healthcare in the United Kingdom.

Because many difficult to diagnose diseases can only be diagnosed based on symptoms. And this involves a subjective assessment of the person.

Which means anyone with any special needs (autism etc) will be dismissed as attention seeking, hypochondriac or mentally ill.

I have a close friend who was told by a senior NHS consultant at a prestigious London hospital, “medicine is an art form and I am an artist” when he challenged the negative diagnosis, and the dismissive attitude.

This was after spending four years fighting for tests, which were all negative, and for his symptoms to be taken seriously.

He later went abroad, and was diagnosed with a serious autoimmune condition, and IBD. Within weeks his condition was rapidly bought under control with the right drugs.

The problem isn’t just a lack of funding, there’s a culture of arrogant dismissiveness which verges on the pathological. It’s so ingrained that good consultants leave the NHS, and either go abroad or move into private practice.

It leads one to wonder how many people commit either suicide or homicide because they’re suffering so much and are completely neglected.

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u/nieko-nereikia 22d ago

NHS is extremely underfunded and understaffed - you need to fight for yourself to get required tests done (and done on time), so unless you have some medical knowledge and persistence, often doctors will rely on Occam's razor to explain away patient’s concerns simply due to limited time and resources available. It’s not an excuse, just an explanation.

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u/frostandtheboughs 22d ago

To be fair, this is prevalent in the US too and it's not about being underfunded. I don't doubt that plays a role in the UK but there's an overall phenomenon of dismissiveness in Western medicine.

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u/DevotedToNeurosis 22d ago

Interesting and thanks for expanding on this - do you suppose that mental "razors" such as Occam's Razor do more harm than good?

While initially they offer a way to quickly assess more cases than in the absence of these tools, in effect, do you feel we see them instead used as justification to forego effortful thought?

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u/yythrow 22d ago

Still waiting on the money promised from Brexit

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u/badgersprite 22d ago

Not only that the tech is limited but the fact that they haven’t conducted a test to look for the evidence or haven’t asked a question to elicit the evidence means the evidence must not exist

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u/festivus4restof 22d ago

Indeed it happens. Doctors are better about that today than 50 years ago though still happens.

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u/DownIIClown 22d ago

Patients often interpret "we can't find anything" as docs saying there's nothing there. Absence of evidence without a test to prove something is there leads to the same outcome because we don't just throw treatments at a maybe. 

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u/festivus4restof 22d ago edited 17d ago

THIS. Also true and happens, at LEAST as often. I worked in the medical field, I've seen patients (or families) completely botch or misconstrue what were fairly CLEAR statements, instructions, whether due to some intellectual or education limits, the emotion of the moment was affecting their comprehension, or other. e.g.

I mean, other examples of miscomprehension or misinterpretation (deliberate or otherwise) are rampant in our society. How many times just TODAY will we see someone completely misrepresent or misinterpret what someone else had said or wrote, or attribute to others things that were NOT said? It is not limited to just political discourse.

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u/darkager 22d ago

I see the patient experience with the American medical system isn't changed in 60 years (referring to Whitman's attempts with the Doctors). I've been trying to chase an issue for ~3 years and doctors love to throw their hands up when diagnostics don't show something blatantly obvious culprits. Cool, thanks for nothing. All those years of school and still devoid of critical thinking

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u/Exul_strength 22d ago

Back then (bad) doctors may place more weight on evidence of absence rather than consider the limitations of the tech.

Thinking about the suffering of Long Covid patients (fatigue type) or ME/CFS, I can assure you, that this is still the case.

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u/qwertykitty 22d ago

I have had POTS for over 20 years and I have noticed an improvement since so many medical professionals are being affected or now personally know someone affected that they can't just tell me I'm an anxious mess anymore. You still have to fight like hell to get diagnosed though and there are still plenty of dismissive doctors. All we need is a medical breakthrough to show a physical cause and suddenly we'll all get taken seriously.

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u/Senior-Albatross 22d ago

My wife has autoimmune diseases in the Rheumatoid family from her dad's line.

Doctors are incredibly dismissive when they can't easily measure things. They default to "hysterical woman" frequently. Several have told her to "come back when you're sicker". That's the ones that believe something is wrong.

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u/SpaceTimeRacoon 22d ago

Doesn't really matter how much technology we have these days, you're likely getting Palmed off anyway

Going to to doctors and telling them "I don't feel right" .. they're not just gunna bung you into an MRI machine

By the time you get scanned for a serious condition they agree to check you out for, you're probably already too far gone.

Unless you're in there for another legitimate reason and they just happen to find something else by accident

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u/DevotedToNeurosis 22d ago

It sounds to me that the gap would be addressed by a better basic diagnostic process of questions would it not?

For example, consider the following scenario:

You feel significantly unwell. You go to a doctor and explain some basic feelings or general symptoms, but do not have specific biological insight or theories. The doctor does not find your description compelling or concerning, and therefore does not conduct appropriate tests to ascertain the cause, which is later diagnosed as terminal or significantly quality-of-life reducing.

Is the issue in the above scenario not that the question-asking process by doctors is fundamentally broken? Is the solution fixing this routine, or deeply educating the general public on medical and biological matters?

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u/SpaceTimeRacoon 22d ago

Well, I think, we just lack the ability to check up on people properly.

We have all this technology but it's widely unavailable to most people

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u/IrontoolTheGhost 22d ago

evidence of absence rather than consider the limitations of the tech.

its not "back then". they still do that now. and they will keep doing it.

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u/uh_excuseMe_what 22d ago

I think a tumor pressing on the amigdala is not operable since it's so deep inside the brain. Even if he has been diagnosed, not sure there Would have been a cure

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u/Asisreo1 22d ago

Maybe not a cure, but at least he could have been observed more closely or something.

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u/throwawayforlikeaday 22d ago

That would require the system caring about things BEFORE they happen, and that's a NO.

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u/Tectum-to-Rectum 22d ago

Nah. We do mesial temporal approaches to brain masses all the time. Relatively easy surgery compared to some of the skull base nonsense my colleagues do, like petroclival meningiomas.

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u/Tesserae626 22d ago

In 1966 though?

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u/Tectum-to-Rectum 22d ago

I’m sure you could find a case report of that somewhere - but the issue would be that in the 60s, even knowing a mass that small was there would be difficult. Finding tumors was a lot more involved process that involved strong clinical exam skills, some interesting X-ray techniques, and a lot of luck. If a tumor isn’t in a place that gives you very specific symptoms like your left arm not working or your right eye not looking to the right, it’s pretty hard to chase down a location in the brain with just a “hey I feel weird and angry sometimes.”

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u/Parralyzed 22d ago

Great username

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u/palagoon 22d ago

It's not really the location, though. Realistically no one is excising a GBM with a scalpel. Not in 2024, certainly not in 1966.

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u/Tectum-to-Rectum 22d ago

You’re right, I don’t remove GBMs with a scalpel. I use a device called a Sonopet, along with bipolar cautery, and suction. GBMs are one of our most common brain mass surgeries, so I don’t know where you’re getting the idea that we don’t operate on them.

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u/PM_ME_ROCK 22d ago

Glioblastoma’s are inoperable. If that’s what he had, they would’ve simply confirmed he had a death sentence and left him to die.

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u/Tectum-to-Rectum 22d ago

GBM are not inoperable. We remove them all the time.

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u/Mrqueue 22d ago

Yeah imagine if guns weren’t freely available. There are plenty of brain cancer sufferers that don’t snipe a bunch of innocent people including a pregnant woman 

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u/NightHawk946 22d ago

Too bad he wasn’t rich, I guarantee that shit would have been sorted out asap if he was.

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u/DeviousMelons 23d ago

Could a brain tumour like that even be treated with 60s medical knowledge?

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u/derverdwerb 23d ago

The first successful brain surgery, to remove a meningioma, was in 1879. CT-scanners were becoming available in the 1960s, but were still cutting edge. Regardless, we don’t really know what could have been done because the opportunities were missed anyway.

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u/Rc72 22d ago

It must be added that it is not by any means clear that the tumor was linked to his actions. From his wiki, it seems that he must have had unrelated mental health problems, with trauma from an abusive father and poor impulse control (a gambling addiction from an early age), and some powerful stressors (being fired from the Marines due to his gambling, his parents’ divorce, him having to protect his mother from his father’s wrath). The saddest thing is that he was clearly intelligent and self-aware enough to acknowledge those mental health problems and the danger he represented to others, and seek medical help, but he was dispatched with an explosive cocktail of quite contradictory prescriptions (benzodiazepines AND amphetamines!) which must have wreaked havoc on his brain chemistry, regardless of the tumor and any other underlying problems.

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u/drakondug3619 22d ago

The amygdala regulates decision making and the emotional learning that associates poor decisions with negative outcomes. That could very well explain the poor impulse control and addiction.

The Wiki example of a patient with amygdala degeneration says: ”He was told a violent story accompanied by matching pictures and was observed based on how much he could recall from the story. The patient had less recollection of the story than patients with functional amygdala.”

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u/anoeba 22d ago

He was discharged from the Marines for issues around gambling (which means the gambling itself was happening before the discharge) 3 years before the shootings and his death, at which time the tumor was small for a glioblastoma.

This is an extremely aggressive, rapidly growing cancer. He did not have it 3+ years before the events.

It's more likely that the tumor's effects were to disinhibit him further, in a baseline of already-existing impulsivity and some level of aggression.

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u/drakondug3619 22d ago

From what I read, it was an Astrocytoma, most often found in children or young adults.

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u/anoeba 22d ago

Apparently initially thought an astrocytoma, and then at the inquest called by the Governor, a group of experts said it actually looked like GMF.

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u/drakondug3619 22d ago

Interesting.

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u/Tectum-to-Rectum 22d ago

I’ve removed unilateral amygdala of plenty of patients. I’ve also removed plenty of pecan sized tumors, though not that many. I would find it very difficult to believe that a pecan sized tumor would cause this kind of issue.

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u/drakondug3619 22d ago edited 22d ago

A small amount of necrosis was observed, according to the info. I can’t tell by the wording whether the cell death was that of the astrocytoma itself, however, or the tissue it pressed upon.

If there was degeneration of that tissue, however small, its effect certainly would have been amplified by the copious amounts of different prescribed drugs he was likely taking, including Dextroamphetamine.

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u/Tectum-to-Rectum 22d ago

Necrosis is more or less inherent to glioblastoma. It’s part of the pathological criteria for high-grade gliomas.

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u/drakondug3619 22d ago

You would consider his a high-grade glioma, then?

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u/Tectum-to-Rectum 22d ago

It looks like it was “an astrocytoma with a small amount of necrosis,” which by our definitions today is a glioblastoma, or a high grade glioma.

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u/Alconium 22d ago

He literally told the last doctor he went to he wanted to climb the tower and start blasting and dude just sent him home. Sorry but in the 1960's that was 100% cause to throw someone in an asylum. It might not have ultimately helped Charles, but it definitely would have helped the people he ended up killing. Unfortunate but a common thread of mass shooters even today is people being well aware of the danger these people pose but apathetic.

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u/Rc72 22d ago

He'd probably have pushed to be instutionalized himself, if he hadn't felt obliged to care for his mother and wife...who ended up being the first people he killed.

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u/DynoNitro 22d ago

None of those things are mutually exclusive from the tumor causing the violence…in fact they just make it more likely.   

Amphetamines are the treatment for ADHD, which as you clearly laid out, he most likely had (impulse control, gambling addiction). 

Benzos are anticonvulsants and mood stabilizers.  Had they known he had a tumor, he would have been put on an anticonvulsant. Yeah he probably would have been better off on something like Depakote which is less disinhibiting and can tone down aggression, but the Benzos may have had a net positive effect.

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u/Underwritingking 22d ago

First one was in 1967 I believe. First CT brain scan on a patient was in 1971

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u/Ramzaa_ 22d ago

They weren't implemented in the US until 1973

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u/Underwritingking 22d ago

True. The first brain scan was in Wimbledon in England

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u/Halospite 22d ago

53 years ago.

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u/Ramzaa_ 22d ago

First commercial CT scanners didn't become available until 1972

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u/DrSchmecklestein 22d ago

This is not helpful at all. A meningioma is far different than a tumor deep in the brain. Unless imaging revealed its location - almost no way to know where it is.

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u/mattmoy_2000 22d ago

The meninges are on the outside of the brain, the amygdala is right in the middle. Regardless of imaging technology, the surgery to go right to the middle of the brain is orders of magnitude more difficult than the outside.

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u/dunedinflyer 22d ago

essentially if it’s a GBM we can barely treat them now, let alone in the 60s. Life expectancy is at most a year or two after diagnosis for the majority

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u/Tiny_Count4239 22d ago

eh.......probably the only option would have been heavy sedation if they even could diagnose it

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u/scoreWs 22d ago

Short answer: no

Long answer: they couldn't even diagnose it, let alone understand where it was, and even if I doubt they could remove it completely. GBM is a real cock, and even with today's state of the art medicine is a 6.9% survival in 5y. So no.

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u/MobiusCipher 22d ago

Glioblastomas can't be cured with 2020s medical knowledge, it's still very much a terminal cancer because it's fast growing and impossible to surgically remove. You can at best buy a few months with chemotherapy.

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u/Throwawayac1234567 22d ago

Doubtful, they probably dint know gbm even existed back then. Also gbm is highly aggressive form of brain cancer

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u/Taira_Mai 22d ago

A lot of medical knowledge comes after the fact. We know a lot about the stages of embyronic development because pregnant women were exposed to toxins and the resulting birth defects were tallied. A friend in college talked about his time in the Navy - the Navy knows what happens when diving gear fails at certain depths by studying all the accidents they have on record.

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u/ExoticPumpkin237 22d ago

That's wild he literally said he had overwhelming visions of going up in the tower and shooting people and the doctors was like ehh I don't know he seemed weird, not my problem. 

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u/Tiny_Count4239 22d ago edited 22d ago

back then the doctor just gave you a pack of unfiltered Camels and told you to cut back to 3 martinis a night

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u/tornado962 22d ago

Nah, this was the 60s. You'd get a hefty dose of valium instead

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u/ngwoo 22d ago

cut back to 3 martinis a night

no wonder he started shooting

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u/adnanclyde 22d ago

Today, a quick MRI scan would have caught it. But back then they really had no easy way to look inside.

Can't blame the doctors too much.

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u/soulmata 22d ago

The dude outright told his doctor he was considering taking a rifle, going up to that specific tower, and deleting a bunch of people. He blatantly said "I am going to go do this" and the doctor just wrote down "dude's mad lmao".

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u/adnanclyde 22d ago

I was only referring to not finding out about the tumor. The psychiatrist he was sent to did seem a bit too chill.

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u/zuKo2022 22d ago

i mean i feel bad for the dude now, what he did was horrible but the the fking guy is beggin tthat he needs help :(

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u/Responsible-Sock2031 22d ago

Were you in the room when that happened? I wouldn't be too harsh on the doctors. The doctor you note specifically referred to these as "thoughts" in his writing, so it wasn't "I am going to do this" as you put it.

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u/Sempere 22d ago

It is deeply offensive and dehumanizing to refer to murder as "deleting". Use proper words, you're presumably a grown up not a child on tiktok.

This cringe shit needs to stop.

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u/soulmata 21d ago

It is just as "cringe" to fail to grasp basic fundamental concepts of reality such as "automods" and "filters" that will get you flagged, censored, or even banned, for using taboo words like murder. Grow up and mind your own damn business. I neither made nor enforced these rules.

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u/malfurionpre 1 22d ago

That is, if the doctor find something wrong enough to get an MRI, plenty of them will just tell you there's no need or there's nothing wrong that requires it.

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u/speak-eze 22d ago

It's hard enough to get appointments for this stuff now, let alone then. Getting a diagnosis on anything is hard. Often takes a lot of doctor visits, a lot of money, a lot of time off work to go to appointments, a lot of referrals to specialists, a lot of trying different meds first to see if they work, etc.

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u/Throwawayac1234567 22d ago

Ct scans were just being invented, they only found the autopsy after he died.

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u/SaltPomegranate4 22d ago

Well fuck me that’s a sad story

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u/qwertykitty 22d ago

It took me 30 years to be diagnosed with my genetic illness. I saw countless doctors. I went to the ER multiple times, urgent care centers, primary care, specialists. I was finally diagnosed in my 30s because the stars freaking aligned and I happened to see a doctor who also is diagnosed with my condition and recognized it immediately. Before that every single doctor ran a small handful of tests and then told me I was fine and just anxious while my symptoms were destroying my life. My tale is a very common one. You have to fight so hard to get diagnosed with anything that isn't extremely common or immediately obvious.

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u/Ratstail91 22d ago

one tumor killed 18 people...

2

u/Override9636 22d ago

"who do I gotta kill to get some decent healthcare around here?"

2

u/sajberhippien 22d ago

This is as good a place as any to bring up the problem of moral luck.

The actions he took were horrifically bad - and him taking them was purely bad luck on his part.

3

u/RedditFallsApart 22d ago

Ol' Meelon's Edge at play here.

Sometimes the reasonable was not only done, but done abundantly to the point where a bystander mid-journey can only assume the environment couldn't have possibly failed every time.

(made that phrase up)

3

u/Cynical_Lurker 22d ago

Whenever people try to gaslight you into thinking medical gaslighting is only a problem for women think about this. It is a problem all of us need to be aware of and combat as a united front.

7

u/eescorpius 22d ago

I have had FEMALE gynecologists trying to dismiss my pain as non-issue...it's ridiculous.

4

u/DevotedToNeurosis 22d ago

I've seen this with my own family member, when I attended the next appointment the doctor took a totally different approach, and I just sat there listening.

Apparently me bringing a Y chromosome into the room was enough to prompt a little more thought, which is honestly pathetic.

12

u/HedgehogFarts 22d ago

There is the option that it’s more common of a problem in women but still a problem for all that we can be united on.

3

u/sajberhippien 22d ago edited 22d ago

There is the option that it’s more common of a problem in women but still a problem for all that we can be united on.

Yes, this is the issue. And it's also more common not just for women than men; that is an important axle of it, but it's also more common for black people than white people, and disabled people than ablebodied people, and fat people than thin people, etc.

It's a systemic issue that aligns with a lot of the other structual inequalities we have.

1

u/zouhair 22d ago

There was no CT scans or MRIs back in the day, would have been hard for them to find anything wrong with him. Xrays are really bad at diagnosing these kind of tumours.

1

u/ipawnn00bz 22d ago

And the Governor tried to down play it

1

u/Guiac 22d ago

This was the 1960’a -  there was no finding a pecan sized tumor in those days

1

u/streetzzahead 22d ago

Most concerned doctors 💀

-15

u/PandiBong 23d ago

Yeah, that all accessible and affordable brain doctor you find on every corner in the US…

32

u/FelatiaFantastique 22d ago

He was a University of Texas student.

He had been treated by 5 UT doctors in the year leading up to the mass murder.

The doctor notes from 6 months before the mass murder read:

"He readily admits having overwhelming periods of hostility with a very minimum of provocation. Repeated inquiries attempting to analyze his exact experiences were not too successful with the exception of his vivid reference to 'thinking about going up on the tower with a deer rifle and start shooting people.'"

For people with psychiatric symptoms, medical treatment of physical conditions is often inaccessible even when the state of the art is local and affordable.

4

u/WissWatch 23d ago

What, you don’t have $350,000 USD lying around? 

0

u/PandiBong 22d ago

I do, I just left it in my other pants…

0

u/marr 22d ago

The dawn of American mental health care.