In All Fairness - Doctors Are Human Too

Each time I’ve told the story of my diagnosis, from the day I mentioned my breast pain to my family doctor to the day I went to my gynecologist, I feel kind of bad for my family doctor.

Having recently returned to work, everyone was kind and welcomed me back, telling me how great I look (I still have hair…for now) and how great it is to have me back.

One particular co-worker who happens to also be a patient of my family doctor, Dr. T, asked me, “Aren’t you so mad at Dr. T?”

I thought about it.

I realized that in the telling of my story, I’m putting him in a bad light. I mean, I usually say something like, “Back in late June, I was at my family doctor’s office and mentioned the pain in my left breast. He felt around a bit, through my shirt and bra, declared he didn’t feel anything, said that I’d had a clear mammogram in April and told me we’d just have to see if the pain went away on its own.”

That sounds bad. That sounds almost negligent.

But it’s also not fair to Dr. T.

When my co-worker asked me if I was mad at him, I realized that no, I’m not mad at him.

See, I was there that day to talk about pain in my stupid left foot. I mentioned the pain in my breast (again left side…hmmmm?) almost as an afterthought, just before he walked out of the room.

When I went back to my gynecologist a few weeks later, I was there specifically for the pain in my left breast. It was not an afterthought, it was not a, “Hey, by the way, while I’m here…” moment.

My gynecologist, Dr. W, took me more seriously than Dr. W because I was taking myself more seriously this time. And let’s be honest, gynecologists do tend to understand women’s health/bodies better than your average general practitioners.

And heck, my stupid tumor was so deep that the radiologist who came in to insert the wire that would guide my surgeon in removing the tumor couldn’t even find it at first. I told him he had to push really hard to see it. Dr. W has very large, strong hands and had to push really hard to feel ‘thickening’. Even he never actually felt the tumor. He just didn’t like the feeling of the thickening which is why he sent me for the ultrasound the very next day.

I really can’t blame Dr. T for not feeling that thickening several weeks before Dr. W did, especially when he was trying to feel it through several layers of fabric.

We all do the best we can, even doctors.

I was VERY lucky. I was persistent (because my pain was persistent and wouldn’t be ignored) and I followed my instinct when it was screaming at me that something was wrong. I went from Dr. T to Dr. W not because I thought Dr. T was incompetent, but because I thought Dr. W might have more experience with this sort of thing and in the end, I was right.

And again, I was so, so lucky that we found the cancer so early that it’s still stage 1 and hasn’t moved beyond that one very deep and yet very painful self-contained tumor.

I’ve had such amazing medical care in the wake of my diagnosis that I can’t find it in myself to be angry at one doctor who was probably very busy, might have been distracted and who’d been kind of blindsided by the mention of pain when I wasn’t even there to discuss that particular pain.