When you return to the UK after years away, you have this idea of the NHS lodged in your head. It’s like a warm, comforting memory of a cup of tea on a rainy day. Clean facilities, doctors who speak the Queen’s English, a system that, for all its faults, has your back. It’s a lovely, patriotic, rose-tinted load of bollocks. But, we’ve all had a bad GP experience in the UK.
The reality, especially when you turn up with a chronic, weird, and messy disease like HS, is often less “angels in uniform” and more “a chaotic, soul-crushing game of bureaucratic roulette.” I’ve had my fair share of nightmare appointments, but I’ve come to realise most bad GPs fall into a few familiar categories. Let’s meet the cast.
A Field Guide to Clueless Doctors
The Dismissive One
This is the GP who has your diagnosis before you’ve even sat down. They’ll listen with a sort of pained patience, their fingers hovering over the prescription pad, before offering a gem like, “Have you tried a different soap?” They treat your years of suffering like a minor inconvenience in their busy schedule, something to be solved and gotten rid of in under four minutes.
The Walking Fossil
This doctor’s knowledge of dermatology seems to have peaked sometime around 1982. They still refer to abscesses as “boils” and look at you with genuine confusion when you mention “sinus tracts.” Their solution for everything is a two-week course of the same bog-standard antibiotics that haven’t worked for the last fifteen years, delivered with the unshakeable confidence of a man who still thinks Dire Straits is the height of musical innovation.
The “H-What?” Moment: My Date with Dr. Google
But the one moment that every single person with HS knows is coming, the one that perfectly sums up the hilarious, soul-crushing reality of this disease, is your first encounter with a new doctor. It’s a scene I’ve lived through more times than I can count—in fact, it happened just last month. When you have a condition like Hidradenitis Suppurativa, which the British Skin Foundation itself describes as ‘a chronic, recurrent, inflammatory skin disease,’ you expect your doctor to have at least heard of it.
You sit there, you take a deep breath, and you finally say the words: “I have Hidradenitis Suppurativa.”
Then you wait. And you’re met with… nothing. A blank stare. A slight, confused tilt of the head. And then, the inevitable question that makes your heart sink: “H-what?”
What follows is a now-familiar, silent ritual. The swivel of the monitor in your direction. The clatter of a keyboard as the person who is supposed to be the medical expert slowly types “H-I-D-R-A…” into the search bar. You then get to sit there, in all your glory, while your doctor gets a crash course in your life’s torment from the same NHS webpage you read eight years ago. It’s the most perfect, darkly comic moment, a crystal-clear sign that you’re on your own with this one.
It’s Funny Until It’s Not: The Real Cost of Being Ignored
We can laugh about it because, honestly, if we don’t, we’d cry. But there’s a serious point here. This isn’t just a funny anecdote; it’s a symptom of a systemic failure. When doctors don’t know, don’t listen, or don’t have the time to care, real people suffer.
It means years wasted on useless treatments. It means our conditions get progressively worse while we’re being fobbed off. And most damagingly, it erodes our trust in the very people we’re supposed to turn to for help. It makes you feel like you’re the problem—a nuisance, a timewaster.
We deserve better. We deserve to be listened to, to be taken seriously, and to be treated by people who don’t need to search for the bloody basics on the internet in front of us.
This can’t just be my experience. What’s the most ridiculous or frustrating thing a doctor has ever said to you about your HS? Share your story in the comments. There’s strength (and a bit of a laugh) in solidarity.