I’ve been struggling with the bedside manner of doctors and their assistants for the last few days. I’m not sure if that class isn’t required in medical school (you know the class, your patients are humans, they have feelings and you might want to remove your foot from your mouth BEFORE you speak and make everything worse) but I know there are a whole bunch of people who obviously flunked it.
I have a shiny new ENT. I needed the ENT because without his approval that I don’t have Staph any longer and that it wasn’t MRSA and I’m good before I could get the Orencia infusion I was scheduled for last Tuesday. I went. I listened. I answered all the questions honestly (I think that was my first mistake). Dr looked me over and promptly told me that my face is deformed and that makes it defective.
Really?
They taught you that in medical school. Tell your patients that they are deformed? My new theme song is Hunchback’s Outcast. Actually… it pretty much was before that… I’ve come to embrace my freakdom and realize that sometimes being an outcast is a really good thing. It means I UNDERSTAND… but I digress (go figure).
So… one doctor told me I was deformed and defective. Fail
Called my Rheumy office THREE TIMES to make sure they got the ENT’s report so I could get in to get my infusion just one week late (Like the Rheumy promised when I left without it LAST week). The PA finally actually CHECKED the fax machine… Friday… oh wow, it’s here. Sorry… grrrrr… well, you won’t be worked in this coming Tuesday, we are already double booked, and next week doesn’t look too promising either and we already cancelled your next two appointments because you didn’t get your last infusion on time. Sorry. I will talk to the doctor and find out when we will be able to get around to working you back into the rotation.
It would maybe have come off better if she had SOUNDED like she gave two shits about me getting back in or the fact that the antibiotics the ENT gave me kicked me into the mother of all flairs.
The “gee, sucks to be you” tone sent me into a good thirty minutes of crying in the car (sitting in the parking lot of the boob squisher’s where I made the call to the Rheumy. I know they have to double book the lady who does infusions. I knew I was taking my chances of getting in anyway. But the “I really don’t give a shit” tone just sent me over the edge. It wasn’t MY fault I didn’t get my infusion. I was there, I was healed from the Staph, I was more than willing to get my infusion. YOU people sent me away. I did what I was told. I’m DOING what I was told. Curb the bitchy attitude and learn that you are the PA not the principle at a Catholic School reprimanding me for being a bad person.
Okay, I understand that I frequently take things badly and that I react to the way things are said. BUT I know that I’m not the only one. AND I know that you CAN learn how your words sound. I know that these people have a LOT of education. I just wish that people skills were a little higher on the list of must have classes even if your dossier does say that you can part the red sea and turn water into whine (yeah… whine, not wine… bite me… it’s my homonym!).
A Figment Of Fitness 