Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
Oct
19
Posted by My OB said WHAT?!?.
“I Have Never Heard Of A Fungal Infection Of The Breast…”
“I have never heard of a fungal infection of the breast. An infection of the breast is called mastitis and is treated with antibiotics.” – Family Practice doctor to nursing mother who suspected her infection was thrush.
There are 28 comments to this post.
first time mommy had this to say,
Oct 19, 2011 @ 10:25 am (Quote)
Oh, so it’s not possible and I’m lying? And in other words, I’m wasting your time? Goodbye.
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Don’t you love it it when you are more knowledgable than your doctor? I had vicious breast thrush when my first was just a few weeks old. I had no idea what it was, and was prescribed an antibiotic ointment (which of course made it 100 times worse). A lactation consultant finally gave me a proper diagnosis a full two weeks of agony later, and I had to print out and bring pages if information to my pediatrician in order to get him to treat my son in tandem with my treatment. Since then, I’ve become a huge fan of APNO. Best stuff ever. OP – I hope you got proper treatment and swift relief! And I hope your doctor learned something.
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I love technology. At this point I would have whipped out my iPhone, googled “thrush,” and e-mailed him this article (the first one to pop up): http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001650/
Hint, doctor: just because you’ve never heard of it (?!) doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.
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BeckyJ Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 11:09 am (Quote)
I don’t understand how on GOD’S GREEN EARTH a DOCTOR doesn’t know what thrush is!
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Robyn Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 11:17 am (Quote)
Almost everyone has heard of thrush. However, I think a lot of people don’t realize it can pass to the nipples. I know I didn’t until I was breastfeeding. A lot of doctors don’t even realize it can pass back and forth between mother and child and will therefore refuse to treat the other if one has the symptoms.
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Wendy Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 3:38 pm (Quote)
Oooooooo, but JoAnna, that means it came from the Big Bad Internet. And everybody in the medical field knows that when patients enter the Big Bad Internet, we access only celebrity gossip sites. We’re too illiterate for those smarty pants journal articles…
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Our great-grandmothers knew about thrush. How can a doctor have totally missed it?
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Kasondra Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 11:58 am (Quote)
My baby and I got thrush while visiting family in another state (I hadn’t brought my GV and had to scour pharmacies to find it!) When I mentioned suspecting thrush my grandmother (a former nurse so obviously the training has just been phased out? lol) knew exactly what I was talking about and knew that I needed GV.
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Jespren had this to say,
Oct 19, 2011 @ 12:22 pm (Quote)
My family practice doc (who was a fabulous doc in general) told me she’d never seen a case of thrush and didn’t know how to diagnosis. She suggested I was just red and sore from being a first-time nurser. I told her the lacation consultant at the hospital had diagnosed it as thrush but couldn’t write me a script so I had to see her (my doc), and that the lacation consultant recommended treatment for baby as well (even with no signs of oral thrush) so we wouldn’t pass it back and forth. My doctor nodded and replied ‘well, she’d know’ and gave me the scripts.
It’s not lack of knowledge that makes bad doctors…it’s refusing to *admit* a lack of knowledge!
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Jane Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 2:21 pm (Quote)
I find often it’s better to go into an office visit with the diagnosis already made and a sense of what medication I want. Very often the doctor will just go along with whatever I’ve said.
Your doctor sounds smart and unafraid to refer to others who know more. And who knows, might even look it up on her own sometime? 
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BeckyJ Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 2:48 pm (Quote)
But a family practice doctor SHOULD know about that. They deal with issues with the whole family. Why wouldn’t breastfeeding problems be part of that?! It just boggles the mind. I don’t get it.
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jenni Reply:
October 20th, 2011 at 11:49 am (Quote)
almost totally OT here… i had to drag my DH to the Dr a few weeks ago after a persistant sore throat flared up pretty bad, and the nurse spent a good ten minutes explaining to us that lots of viral infections were going around, and since he didnt have a fever it could be one of those, and they don’t prescribe antibiotics for those, you just have to go home and get better….. but when the Dr came in she prescribed the toughest antibiotic we could afford because his tonsils were so infected (and not with a virus) that if he actually had the beginning of an abscess on one and if he felt any sicker at all… go straight to the ER.
dude, i have a hard time draggin my whiny DH to the Dr, we wouldnt have gone if he wasnt sick as hell.
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1. Thrush is a yeast, not a fungus. I do not have mushrooms on my boob.
2. Thrush is normally in a child’s mouth and there fore on the outside of the breast, not inside like mastitis is.
3. GO BACK TO MEDICAL SCHOOL. I knew what this was by looking in a Webster’s dictionary. When I was twelve.
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Cara Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 3:11 pm (Quote)
Yeast IS a type of fungus.
http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/thrush
And thrush CAN be found in the ducts, in severe cases.
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This was mine. My son was about 2 months old the day that I awoke with symptoms of thrush. I’d had mastitis twice and thrush twice when nursing my first, so I was quite confident that I knew the difference, and this was definitely thrush (Knives through the chest is accurate, Blue. Each time I’ve had it, it’s been in the milk ducts, not external, and baby has been symptom-free, Kristin and Cara).
I informed the doctor of my nursing status and suspicions and was given the above line. I politely explained the difference, and she said it again (yes, exactly the same words). I cited my previous experiences with the two types of infections. She explained the symptoms of mastitis to me, stating that there would likely be a tender spot, red streaks, and possible fever. When I reminded her that I had none of those symptoms, she gave me the above line AGAIN.
At this point, I was nearly in tears and was a bit less logical. I stammered something about have a drug-free childbirth and preferring that to the pain of thrush (it wasn’t that bad yet, but I didn’t want it to get there…oh the memories!). She told me she was unable to treat me. I asked her to reconsider, as my insurance did not allow me to see my midwives for anything beyond the postpartum appointment (I see this doctor for paps/female health – yes, This Doctor, who does not know about thrush of the breast). She refused. (I did not have a smartphone, so I was unable to attempt to “prove it to her.”
I left. After I calmed down, I called my midwives and begged them to treat me over the phone. They agreed. A week of diflucan and I was thrush-free.
Later, I collected resources on thrush/breast infections/nursing for this doctor and mailed them to the practice, along with a letter notifying her that I would no longer be utilizing her practice.
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Cara Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 7:05 pm (Quote)
I’m so sorry! I too had terrible thrush, and I know what you mean about the knives in the breast. This doctor really needs to get up to date. And good for you for leaving her practice!
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C.Pratt Reply:
October 19th, 2011 at 9:29 pm (Quote)
I’m so sorry you had to deal with this! I had a similar thing happen with some back x-rays; no matter how many times I told them where the injury was, and no matter how hard I begged them to do the x-ray lower they wouldn’t listen. Naturally they didn’t find my twisted vertabrae right where I said it would be (I got other x-rays later at a chiropractor), so they said it was muscular and gave me pills instead. Of course they still charged me for the x-rays and visit, and the pain continued to reoccure until I bit the bullet for more fees and got help from the chiro 
Care providers that don’t listen are all but worthless.
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Lil had this to say,
Oct 19, 2011 @ 11:33 pm (Quote)
My first son had a nasty thrush infection which went undiagnosed for a week or so. I showed my health visitor the white covering the inside of his cheeks, and she said it was dry milk, and that my breast milk must be too thick, so I should drink more water!!! Poor little mite was struggling to feed and eventually I had ‘dried milk’ on my breasts too! (Which only confirmed the HV’s diagnosis of course!). Then the white substance turned up down below, on my son and then my son had threw up blood-mad rush to hospital, and thrush turned out to be the cause (it can apparently eat into the stomach lining, when travelling top to toe like that, which then caused the blood). Unfortunately, the cream I was given didn’t allow breastfeeding whilst applied, I struggled to wash the cream off before each feed, but it interrupted the flow of baby led feeding and when we were investigated by social services (thrush is an STD and therefore they *had* to check after the report of a 3 month old having it!), I switched to night bottles so I could keep the cream on over night (I was still passing the infection back to baby)…I’m sure that led to the breastfeeding ending about 6 weeks after diagnosis.
Years later, another baby got thrush as a newborn on antibiotics and passed in onto my nipples. I told my worries of a similar outcome to my midwife and she was horrified-she told me to use yoghurt on my nipples instead of a chemical cream and if things got bad she’s supply me with a nipple shield-problem solved!
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Kristin Reply:
October 20th, 2011 at 2:05 pm (Quote)
I’m horrified that they considered thrush abnormal in a baby and that it’s considered an STD!!! That’s crazy! And how could milk possibly dry in the inside of a mouth? That’s a terrible diagnosis!. I’m glad with your second it turned out better!
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Well then you’ve clearly not finished your residency/schooling yet! Can you put me in touch with a doctor who has finished learning the basics of their profession, please? This infection isn’t going to go away by itself.
Ugh, though, seriously. I didn’t realize one could get that kind of infection either, and I have HAD those sorts of infections repeatedly for years. My mother, too. She finally brought it up to a doctor who gave her an anti-fungal and now it clears up very easily. I think we both just have some sort of weird tendency to it (or it’s environmental, D: scary thought), but it’s easily treatable and doesn’t involve idiot, untrained doctors’ opinions.
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genniemom Reply:
October 20th, 2011 at 5:39 am genniemom(Quote)
If you’re talking about yeast, some dietary changes could help. Usually it is recommended that you remove refined sugar and flour from your diet. This could help you get less infections in the first place.
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