I realized tonight that picking the right doctors for my medical team is a lot like how my guy friends select their fantasy sports teams – and if I hadn’t already used the photo, this would have been the perfect blog post for my hot football player. Oh well.
First, you rely on the experts – The guys watch what the recruiters and coaches are doing to build their pro teams for the coming season, much like we take the referral paperwork or appointment card given to us by either our oncologist or primary care physician and trust that the surgeon they have selected is the best one for our procedure(s).
If that appointment is at least twelve hours from the time you get the surgeon’s info, odds are the next step is Google. Looking at the medical practice’s website, checking the feedback from other patients on assorted sites, checking credentials, read articles by or about the surgeon and forming an opinion.
If there are no big red flags, you go to the appointment – and this, this is where everything can change.
And that is completely okay – It’s your body. Nothing is more important. This is your life. Don’t worry about hurt feelings. Do what is right for you.
In fantasy sports leagues, guys don’t get face time with their picks, but they can watch interviews and gauge integrity, drive, passion and to an extent ethics – for example, if the player is in handcuffs while he’s talking to the reporter, there might be a bit of a problem.
I did my research before my appointment. Dr. Wrong had formerly been a Medical Director for a hospital breast cancer center, had numerous lovely comments about how kind and caring she was on multiple review sites, and solid medical credentials. She seemed to be an excellent choice on paper.
In 3-D reality, well, not so much.
I arrived slightly early for my appointment so that I could complete the New Patient paperwork that the front office staff had been unable to either fax or email to me to do ahead of time. The waiting room was filled to the point of being standing room only. The receptionist said she was sorry, but that everyone had arrived for their 4pm appointments at the same time. All those people had the same appointment time I did. Even allowing for family groups there were a minimum of five people with simultaneous bookings. It was so crowded I had to take the clipboard out into the hallway to sit on the floor and fill out. I waited…and waited… and waited. Around 5pm I was the last remaining patient when I was called to the back. She had seen all those patients in an hour – roughly ten minutes per patient for their pre-surgical consults.
Her consult with me was no different. A very brief overview of the mastectomy focusing mostly on the steps for testing the lymph nodes. The she dropped the bomb that I might have to wait 6-8 weeks until sometime in September for surgery.
Here I am still wrapping my mind around the fact that I have cancer and all that entails, and she is very nonchalantly telling me that because I want reconstruction to plan on at least that long. I asked about doing delayed reconstruction instead, and she said that I wouldn’t be happy with the end results and that I should wait. When I expressed my concern over waiting, this was her response.
“I do this every day. I know its a big deal to you, but I can tell you that cancer isn’t that fast growing. It really won’t make much difference if you have to wait a few weeks or even a couple of months until we can get you scheduled. It just isn’t that big a deal.”
By 5:15pm the surgeon had conveyed all the information she felt was necessary and sent me on my way.
Even giving her the benefit of the doubt for my being the last patient of a possibly long day, her lackadaisical attitude was not one I felt comfortable with. Yes, it is in fact a big deal to me. I have something growing in my chest that has the potential to kill me. Granted it won’t put me in a grave tomorrow, but at some point it could. C-A-N-C-E-R is not something I want to screw around with.
So I did what the fantasy football boys do – I trusted my gut and started looking for someone else to fill that spot in the line up.
Winning The Booby Prize 