Dr. Evil
When I go to an accountant, I trust that he will know how to do my taxes. When my computer is broken, I feel no anxiety over leaving it with the geeky-in-a-cute-way computer tech guy at the store. And most importantly, when I was waiting in the ER to have surgery on a "suspicious" ruptured cyst, I knew that the man who they got out of bed to perform my surgery was qualified and proficient.
For most people, surgery is quite the planned event. There is going around town to find a good surgeon, meeting with him, having pre-op blood work and a consultation. I did not have the opportunity to even find out what the hell was going on inside me, let alone hand-pick the man who was going to fix it. That night, I discovered the classic ER equation: intense pain + intense painkillers = Just show me where to sign to get rid of whatever is causing this. I didn't even realize I was going to have surgery, I found out that bit of information after I woke up.
I guess I was a naive patient. I had always been unusually healthy, and 12 years of Catholic schooling had taught me nothing about my body and how it was supposed to function. I was so embarrassed that something was wrong in my "female region" that I didn't even call my mom or anyone to meet me at the hospital, eliminating the need for me to make life-and-death decisions while doped up on morphine.
I guess I was a naive patient. I had always been unusually healthy, and 12 years of Catholic schooling had taught me nothing about my body and how it was supposed to function. I was so embarrassed that something was wrong in my "female region" that I didn't even call my mom or anyone to meet me at the hospital, eliminating the need for me to make life-and-death decisions while doped up on morphine.
The hospital paged two people with the letters "OB/GYN" after their name and whoever answered their pager first is who I got. The doctor who answered was a bad, bad man. While the nurse was putting cute slipper socks on to keep my feet warm, this man was on his way to the hospital to change my life forever.
The actual events after that are not extremely relevant. Suffice to say this man was not qualified to do a debulking surgery or administer chemotherapy, and that directly caused the nightmarish non-stop year of treatment that ensued. Luckily by sheer coincidence, I saw another doctor a few months into treatment who spotted the problems right away.
The actual events after that are not extremely relevant. Suffice to say this man was not qualified to do a debulking surgery or administer chemotherapy, and that directly caused the nightmarish non-stop year of treatment that ensued. Luckily by sheer coincidence, I saw another doctor a few months into treatment who spotted the problems right away.
My ER surgeon lost his medical license in a matter unrelated to me, and this fact was relayed to me via the gynecology grapevine. When I heard, I was deeply embarrassed to admit that I had seen him for over three months, that I never suspected a thing, that I quite literally trusted this quack with my life.
I feel compelled to tell this story even though it is a source of great humiliation to me. I can't tell you what the moral of the story is, I can't even tell you my point in telling it. I certainly haven't been able to make sense of it yet. So maybe I will feel I need to tell it again and again until someday, it makes sense. But until then, the only useful thing that I can glean from this experience is to always get a second opinion.
I feel compelled to tell this story even though it is a source of great humiliation to me. I can't tell you what the moral of the story is, I can't even tell you my point in telling it. I certainly haven't been able to make sense of it yet. So maybe I will feel I need to tell it again and again until someday, it makes sense. But until then, the only useful thing that I can glean from this experience is to always get a second opinion.
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