The Former Traveling Spotlight

The tales of a "30" something gay former stand-up comic living in NYC who is searching for his soul mate or soul...which ever comes first.

Friday, August 11, 2006

Mack the Knife

I'm going to break my own cardinal rule here. I'm going to share something I normally wouldn't do, mainly because it's all that is on my mind. Thus if I purge it here, I can focus on something...Anything else.

One particular fact of the medical field makes me hate doctors. We as patients are only numbers. Doctors have to see so many patients in order to even pay their malpractice insurance that I'm surprised if my doctors even know my name. Add to it that they have to "educate" most of their patients, and their bedside manner begins to suck.

I received the results of my medical tests and it's been confirmed that I need surgery. My doctor is hesitant to perform the surgery himself, as with my prior history and significant scar tissue, this surgery is going to be a much more difficult one. So I was passed off to another surgeon...Like a freaking deck of cards. This new surgeon is a professor of surgery (which I hate) and has experience in post esophogial cancer surgeries, but his specializes in a particular surgery I really hate. Obesity surgeries involving gastric bypass.

So on Tuesday, the day we meet to discuss my procedure and schedule my surgery, I have to go to his private clinic where he will have an extremely heavy caseload of patients. His secretary admitted that he has 60 patients scheduled. I'm calling myself patient number 26 (the age I'm claiming to be right now). I've got so many mixed emotions on this. I hate the fact that I'm going to feel like a bariatric "success story" to any potential patient in his practice. But even more so, I hate that since my case is significantly rare (my age to have had a rare cancer and survived it), every medical student in the city is going to want to see my case.

Since this surgeon is a professor, I already know I'm going to be the newest hot teaching case. I was the last time. My problem with the whole thing? Imagine sitting in a room, wearing only a hospital gown that opens up the back. Your doctor comes into the room followed by 12 medical students. The doctor turns his back to you and begins discussing your health history to the med students as if you were never in the room. Med student number one walks forward and asks the doctor is she can feel your abdomen for rigidity. He tells her yes and she proceeds to push on your stomach without ever asking you. This all happened to me the last time.

That experience has forced me to be a little combative with physicians. No med students, I'm not a teaching case, and trust me...I've read every article about my particular condition published in the last 12 years before I even meet with the doctor. If he talks down to me...I'll make his life hell by having him paged hourly all night while I'm in the hospital.

I will say one more thing...give me a sub-standard doctor with a great bedside manner and I'll choose him over any leading physician that can't remember my wishes anytime.

Patrick - 2:32 PM -

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