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Of Heroes, Trust, Discord, Arrogance, and Karma – Part II
Last week I shared with you two stories of my physician heroes, why they are my heroes, their relationship to my work in patient empowerment and patient advocacy, and why you, too, should emulate their actions; their professionalism, their behavior, and the actions they each took to buck a dysfunctional system. It’s all good, and true to karma, what went around came around – today good comes back to them. They both have stellar reputations within the community and among other physicians worldwide. Well-respected. Well-deserved reputations. Which takes us to today, and the karma that has come around to one of the doctors who did not behave well. I mentioned last week the very arrogant oncologist who led my misdiagnosis odyssey. His arrogance was apparent in so many ways. When one of the lab reports referenced an additional missing lab report, not only had he not realized it wasn’t present, but then (after I figured out, and alerted him that it was missing), he told me he was sure it would make no difference anyway. (It did.) When I insisted on a second opinion before starting chemo, he yelled at me – I had no time to waste! I needed to start chemo immediately! (I didn’t.) When I asked if there wasn’t some other form of treatment that might be effective, he admonished me for second-guessing him – how dare I! That I needed to stop looking on the internet for cures! (OK – he might have been right about that one, but I sure as heck didn’t believe that at the time, and it’s a d*mn good thing I kept looking!) Once it was proven that he was wrong (as in – I didn’t die !), rather than simply own up to his mistakes or apologize, he instead wrote a three-page letter to me explaining how he had taken all the right steps in my case. Excuses and more excuses. Never mind that (had I not sought a second opinion) I would have gone through chemo for no reason. Never mind that, once I survived chemo, I would have…