An unhealthy assessment

Tang Center's misdiagnosed patients

By Kerry Eskenas
From the March 2005 Print Edition

Feel sick? Have a weird rash? Congratulations, you’re having triplets. This absurd diagnosis is not all that different from what a number of students were told by doctors at UC Berkeley’s Tang Center, the site of University Health Services (UHS).

Besides giving out free condoms and lubrication, the Tang Center has doctors, psychologists, and medical specialists whose mission is “to minimize the impact of illness, emotional distress and injury on studies and work,” according to the UHS Web site. However, for some students, the Tang Center merely added to their ailments.

Gianna Segretti, a senior at Cal, has had a series of problems with this medical facility. In her freshman year, she was diagnosed with the flu at the Tang Center. The flu normally takes five to ten days to run its course, but Segretti’s “flu” lasted for three months. Despite this, UHS doctors continued to assure her upon her many return visits to the Tang Center that she had nothing more than the flu virus.

Upon returning home for the summer, she went to see her family practitioner. Almost immediately, this doctor recognized the symptoms of mononucleosis, and test results confirmed the doctor’s suspicions. “Tang charged me so much money in bogus tests and unneeded prescriptions for antibiotics which ended up causing many other medical problems for me,” Segretti said.

A more recent issue that Segretti has had with the Tang Center occurred after she was diagnosed with asthma. Needing an inhaler to treat this condition, she went to the Tang Center to get a prescription. However, the inhaler that she was prescribed caused her to vomit and to cough up blood. Without a doubt, there was something wrong. However, upon telling a UHS nurse practitioner about her reaction to the inhaler, she was informed that she still had to continue using it.

“I may not be a doctor, but if the inhaler makes me cough up blood and vomit, how is that a good thing?” Segretti said in response to this advice. Are there not other medications available for asthma? It is a pretty common ailment in our society; surely there must be some other form of treatment that is less harmful to my well-being.”

Although the Tang Center failed to recognize Segretti’s mononucleosis, they did manage to recognize mononucleosis in freshman Robin Simmons. After a successful diagnosis, however, the Tang Center failed to give Simmons a way to treat his condition. eMedicine Health advises those with mononucleosis to take Tylenol or Advil to relieve pain and control fever, and WebMDHealth suggests that corticosteroid medications can be used to “decrease the overall length and severity of illness from infectious mono,” but when Simmons visited the Tang Center, he did not receive any such advice.

“I was instructed to sleep and drink some water, patted on the back and sent along my merry way,” he said. “I received the same instructions when I tore muscle straight through my arm and into my chest. I felt like I was receiving the same advice for all ailments, rather, I was not receiving any treatments or techniques, simply a reminder to do two things that I already do on a regular basis.”

Some students are so annoyed with their experiences at the Tang Center that they have joined a group on thefacebook.com denouncing the facility. One of the creators of the group is Gail Reese, a student who doesn’t accuse certain UHS doctors of having committed malpractice, but still comments that she and her roommate “are just frustrated by the general bureaucracy of the Tang Center and the resulting inefficiency, hence the club.”

Among the members of this group, frustrations concerning the Tang Center include that HIV testing is no longer offered at the facility. Instead, students must go to the Berkeley Free Clinic or Planned Parenthood to get this medical test. Some members have incorrectly been informed that they were pregnant, and others have been wrongly diagnosed with an STD.

The Tang Center is currently looking to increase its budget. From March 8th through 10th, students can vote online through Bear Facts to increase funding for the center or to force it to continue at its current budget level. In effect, students are voting on whether or not to raise their own fees. According to the Daily Californian, this measure can only pass if 20 percent of students vote, with a simple majority of these votes being in favor of the increase. If it passes, all students would be forced to pay an extra $43 each semester.

According to the UHS Web site, this measure is necessary because budget cuts have increased wait times for appointments and shortened the Tang Center’s hours of operation. These particular difficulties are the ones that the Tang Center has chosen to address, despite the fact that there are students such as Segretti who have gone so far as to file complaints at the Tang Center for quite different grievances.

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