Hurray, today I struck a blow for patients everywhere! Listen, I have wonderful friends in or associated with the medical profession. Thank goodness for my friends and their spouses who have advised me in this process. But we have all been jerked around by doctors who we feel don’t care about us and today I told that doctor all about it. I think it was a revelation to him.

I went in to see my gynecologist today for my annual exam. If you have been following my saga, you know this is the guy who had his office manager call me with the results of my biopsy. I never heard from him again. So, I wanted to ask him about this. No that’s not right, I wanted to tell him I believe this was incredibly disrespectful.

He came in to the exam and asked what I wanted to talk about. Well there I was sitting in a paper gown, not exactly my power suit. I told him I would rather talk after the exam, as I was in a less than comfortable position at that point. So, after the exam, I dressed and he came back in.

I started by asking him why he was not the one to tell me what some would consider to be the worse medical news a woman can get. His response was that he referred me to a radiologist who was to give me that news and answer questions. He did not want to confuse the issue. I had a hard time convincing him that just calling and telling me that yes, I have cancer but that is not a death sentence and I will be ok would not be interfering with another doctor’s care. I was not looking for all the answers as to what my care would be, just some reassurance and compassion from my referring doctor.

We went back and forth for quite a while about this. It is the standard protocol in his practice to act as he did and I was not questioning that he acted according to what his standards dictated, instead I asked him to think about whether that was the best way to treat the majority of people. Would it not be better to err on the side of compassion and caring. What patient is going to object to a doctor calling to make sure they did not have any questions or concerns.

Miracles of miracles! I got an apology out of him and the admission that he would at least think about changing his approach. I don’t really think he will, but maybe for 5 minutes he understood that a patient needs to hear reassurance at that dark hour of bad news.

As I left, he said he would call me if the pap smear came back with any irregularities. Apparently not, I responded.