New Day, New Doctor, New Hope

You have heard the saying “It takes a village.” This holds true for cancer patients; it takes a huge team of doctors to treat a person with cancer. It is an often confusing process for the patient; one doctor prescribes a medication and then sends you to a different physician for a drug to counteract the side-effects of the first one. One doctor has an opinion and the next has a different view point. Medicine is not as black and white as one would think, there are too many variables. I consider myself a very informed patient; 20+ years in the pharmaceutical industry taught me how to research, read, and understand studies. I have also had a lot of training on effective communication with physicians. These skills come in handy as a patient.

From the beginning I wasn’t connecting with the oncologist that I was originally referred to following my first diagnosis of breast cancer. She was defensive and condescending during our interactions. Was it because I came to all of our appointments with my black leather notebook filled with my own research and lots of questions for her? Or was it that she had other things on her mind, like her own fiscal health? Either way, I stayed five years and three diagnoses too long.

Have you ever thought to yourself I don’t think this is the right doctor for me? If you have, you were probably right. There is a large continuum of skill and competency in any industry, even those that practice medicine. What? That’s right, I said it, there are some terrible doctors practicing medicine. I saw this first hand over the two decades that I was in “the business”; most doctors were good, some were mediocre, and a few were down right bad.

I should have followed my gut; I should have switched oncologists a long time ago. Why didn’t I? For the same reasons as most; we are indoctrinated to believe that doctors are the all-knowing, ultra-educated, experts on health and medicine. That’s all fine and dandy, after all, they do possess a lot of education and training, but that doesn’t guarantee that they will be good doctors or click with every one of their patients.

Just in case you have never received permission to challenge your doctors or seek a new one if the one you are seeing isn’t working for you, let me be the first to offer you that permission. If it doesn’t sound right, feel right, or the person makes you feel uncomfortable in anyway, request your records and get the hell out. Find a doctor that works for you, not just for their own bottom line. Medicine is commerce and one should have their eyes wide open on this knowledge, and never forget the patient is the customer. I have seen the same scenario play out over and over again in doctor’s offices; the doctor is kind, calm, and happy, so is their staff. Then they move into a new building, take on a huge mortgage and they become anxious, rushed, and snarky, and so does their staff. Doctor’s in private practice work hard to cover their overhead and Medicare and the insurance companies pay less and less each year for services rendered. Couple that with a patient who has a disease and wants compassion, time with their doctor, answers to their questions, a plan to get healthy or stave off disease, and it can be like water and oil.

So what do you do? You get personal references from friends, family, acquaintances, or on-line (healthgrades.com is an on-line service where you can gain valuable information and reviews on doctors). Listen to your gut, and make a move if necessary. People stay longer than they want to with their hair dressers and their doctors because they don’t want to make anyone feel uneasy. When I lost my hair from chemotherapy; I thought to myself that was the perfect time for me to switch hair stylists. I loved the stylist that I had been going to forever, but I thought he was charging me way too much and sometimes he seemed distracted and I left his chair with a bad pixie cut, however, it took me being bald to make a change.

So on my last uncomfortable visit to my oncologist, I said enough is enough. I requested my records and got the hell out. I asked my breast friends who they saw and a particular doctor’s name kept coming up. With a little help from a dear friend who happens to be a physician, I was able to get an immediate appointment with this oncologist that I was courting. Right off the bat I liked him. He said the one thing I had been longing to hear, “It’s hard to believe this right now Trina, because you have been in the thick of this disease for so long, but soon you will have all of this behind you, you will be cured, reconstructed and you will go on to live a long and healthy life just like the rest of us.” Hope. He gave me hope. Hope that I would be whole and healthy. Hope that I didn’t have to feel uncomfortable with any part of my health care village.Hope that I had found the right doctor for me. This hope was worth any uneasy feelings that came with a break-up.