Bad Doctor

It's no wonder that some doctors come with a god complex.  The power they can wield is tremendous.  I consider myself to be very involved in my care and rather knowledgeable, but even I am more likely to take a doctor's advice than not, even when that doctor is wrong.  It's natural to assume that whether or not the doctor is the best in their field, he or she has my best interests at heart.

Alas, doctors are human too, and therefore prone to the same sins as the rest of us.  Judgement.  Arrogance.  Lust.  Why those three sins in particular?  Well, let's discuss my top three worst doctors.

I met the first three years ago while I was in the hospital with an unknown infection.  At the time I had a kidney transplant, so when my fever did not abate, I went to the emergency room to make sure that everything was OK. This being a small town, unused to seeing cases of a kidney transplant with recurring FSGS, they admitted me.  The next morning, when the neighborhood nephrologist made his rounds, he came to visit me.  We went over my history, and I explained to him that I had had a transplant four years earlier, and that my disease, FSGS had recurred immediately.  I had recently moved from a larger city to this small town to live with my boyfriend at the time (now husband) and was under the care of a doctor an hour away.

When I mentioned moving in with my boyfriend, his eyes narrowed and the tenor of the conversation changed completely.  He berated me for having moved from the larger town, saying that because I had left the care of my transplant doctor there, I would undoubtedly lose my kidney and never get another.

He then went on to ask my what had caused the FSGS.  Was it cocaine?  Was it crack? Was it heroine? It continued like that, him listing off every drug he could think of until I was in tears, overwhelmed by the fever and the unexpected need to defend myself.

The thing is that when FSGS is caused by drug use, which it sometimes is, it does not recur in the transplanted kidney.  This man made a moral judgement about me and allowed it to affect the way that he treated me.

The second doctor I mentioned is currently in charge of my treatment at my dialysis center.  Actually, he's in charge of every one's treatment, as he is the director of the entire dialysis/transplant program.  While having one of our rapid-fire chats about my health a couple months back, he mentioned that my clearances (the measurement of how well my blood is getting cleaned while on treatment) were very good.  I asked if that meant we could possibly decrease my treatment time by 15 minutes.  He deferred, saying we'd see what it looked like next month.

So the next month rolls around, and I ask again.  Without really looking at anything, he replies, "Well, your clearances are barely above the state minimum."  ...  Say what?!

I knew right away that he was lying to me.  My clearances have always been exceptional, and further more, I have done treatments for 30 minutes less than my current time and been fine.  Better, in fact, because I recovered faster after those treatments and was able to get more out of my day, rather than simply lying comatose afterward.

I called the state and asked what their minimum was.  65.  I asked the charge nurse what my clearance had been.  85.  I knew right away why he'd lied to me.  He made the assumption that I did not know what I was talking about, and said what he did to shut me up, not expecting that I would look in to it and not take him at his word.  It's usually a safe assumption, given that he is a doctor and does know more than his patients, but that does not mean that he can simply blow them off.  Had he told me that yes, my clearances are good, but that he just did not want to decrease my time, I would have been alright with that.  I would not have complained or felt betrayed by my physician.

Most recently, I met the worst doctor of my long experience in health care.  I had heard stories about this particular surgeon long before I met him.  Firstly from a nurse who worked in the recovery room at this hospital.  When I mentioned to her that I needed to see a vascular surgeon, she told me that there were two at this hospital and that one was great, and the other one should be avoided at all costs.  Then from a dialysis nurse:  If you have the option to go to anyone other than this particular surgeon, do it.  From a doctor on staff:  Do not let that man touch your dialysis access with a ten foot pole.  Don't even let him look at it.  Go somewhere else.

Alas, I need to get on the transplant list, and he is a member of the team that must evaluate me.  I had never planned to actually get the transplant here, merely to get on the list so that when I move into the vicinity of a better hospital, I will have accrued some points and be closer to getting a kidney.  For that reason, I felt no fear when I saw him because this would only have been a minor consultation, not an actual situation where he was trusted with my care.

During the interview, he asked about my history with FSGS

Dr. Handsy McHanderson proceeded to touch my breasts.  I was so confused that I didn't say anything, using that moment to think: "Wait a second, does he have a reason to be doing that?  No, he doesn't have a reason to be doing that, and even if he did, he's not touching me in a medical way, he's just testing to see if they are bouncy."

He moved on to my abdomen while I lay there staring holes into the ceiling and trying to puzzle out whether or not this was really happening.  Then he bypassed my abdomen and went straight to the pelvic region.  Not quite down to my girlie parts, but way past where he needed to be.

I wish I had said something then, but it was so confusing and unexpected that I just got out of there as fast as I could and put it away to think about later.  The next day I called the hospital and complained and am now on a mission to get him fired.  He's clearly not trustworthy as a doctor, and now I find that he's not trustworthy as a man either.  Perhaps it's time he retired.

As patients, I think that our quality of care is much better if we feel that the people taking care of us are on our side.  We don't need studies or research to tell us this, it's common sense.