Is this a TikTok Diagnosis?
I had a heart attack in 2023.
At 42 years old.
Young, by healthcare standards.
I wasn’t diabetic.
I didn’t have high blood pressure.
I didn’t have high cholesterol.
I didn’t have a family history of heart disease.
There was nothing about my profile that suggested this should happen.
And then it did.
The Speed of It All
I was scared.
Not in a vague, abstract way — in a very real, very immediate way.
In the span of 48 hours, I was:
– told I had a heart attack
– taken to the cath lab
– informed my “widow maker” was 90% blocked
– given my odds for dying, for post operation complications, and for prolonged recovery
– transferred to another hospital
– told I needed a CABG and to decide between a total robotic or traditional surgery
There wasn’t time to learn slowly.
There wasn’t time to research.
There wasn’t time to become the kind of patient who understands what questions to ask.
I was making decisions that would impact the rest of my life with almost no context to anchor them.
The Question
Somewhere in the middle of all of this, one of the surgeons asked me:
“Is your Crohn’s a TikTok diagnosis or do you really have it?”
It caught me off guard.
Not because I didn’t understand where it was coming from, but because of how it landed.
I was already scared and it made me wonder why my surgeon was questioning my medical history.
If he didn’t trust me about that then what else was he questioning.
What’s Underneath That Question
I understand the frustration.
Patients are coming in with information from everywhere:
– social media
– Reddit threads
– AI tools
– podcasts
– things they read at 2am when they couldn’t sleep
Not all of it is accurate.
Not all of it is helpful.
And yes, sometimes it complicates care.
But here’s the part that gets missed:
Patients don’t go searching for answers online first.
They go searching when they leave the room without them.
They go looking when something feels off.
When they’re not getting clarity.
When they’re trying to make sense of something that hasn’t been explained to them.
What That Moment Could Have Been
That same question could have sounded very different.
It could have been:
“Tell me more about your Crohn’s. When were you diagnosed?”
“What has your experience been managing it?”
“What have you been told so far?”
Same goal.
Completely different experience.
One creates distance.
The other builds understanding.
The Reality Patients Are In
Here’s what was true in that moment:
I was a 43-year-old who had just been told I had a heart attack.
I was trying to understand terms I had never heard before.
I was being asked to make fast decisions about surgery.
And like most patients in that situation, I was trying to:
– process information quickly
– advocate for myself
– make the “right” decision without knowing what that fully meant
That’s the context patients are operating in.
Not overconfidence.
Not misinformation as a starting point.
But urgency, uncertainty, and the need to understand.
This Isn’t About Blame
This isn’t about blaming providers.
It’s about recognizing a gap.
Healthcare expects patients to:
– understand complex information
– communicate clearly
– make informed decisions
But no one teaches them how to do that.
So they fill in the gaps the only way they can.
The Opportunity
What I’ve learned, both as a patient and from years inside healthcare, is this:
Curiosity works better than skepticism.
Every time.
Because when a patient feels heard, the conversation gets better.
The information gets clearer.
The care gets more aligned.
The Quiet Truth
Most patients aren’t trying to challenge their doctors.
They’re trying to understand what’s happening to their body.
And when they don’t feel like they can get there in the room, they look for answers somewhere else.
Life, Anyway
I didn’t expect to learn about heart disease this way.
I didn’t expect to learn how quickly you can become a patient without any preparation at all.
But I did.
And it reinforced something I now believe deeply:
We don’t just need better care.
We need better conversations inside of it.
