Yesterday was likely the most astonishing display of someone else’s authoritative power over my being that I had yet experienced.
My surgeon yelled at me. Not pretend yelling, like “you non-wealthy kids and your bad insurance…” but real anger and curse-words kinds of yelling!
Don’t get me wrong, I am really super elated and blessed, and enormously thankful to have had this woman as my doctor, it’s just that I am equally as elated, and blessed and thankful not to have to work with, under, around, or near her. I am grateful that our relationship remains solely in the bounds of patient and physician. As terrifying as she is, I know that when I am under her care my life/well being is THE top priority, and everyone else had better hop too and do exactly as she orders them, with skill and precision.
I had been dreading the last week’s appointments, especially with the whole rigmarole that I have to go through to convince the doctor that I cannot afford her hospital’s MRIs, and that I need to have them done elsewhere. On top of that, I also have to put up with the imaging center that my insurance covers (somewhat covers).
It was supposed to be the best imaging center outside of Mayo, but since I can’t afford great healthcare, the technicians can never find good veins (or any…I’ve even wondered if they are trained to know what a vein looks like), and I get asked to come back repeatedly because they f*&%k up my images…Which is how all the yelling began.
After waiting for far too long, and getting stabbed only twice (things were starting to look up for this imaging center), I couldn’t tell if it was the contrast dye, or my nerves that were making me feel so icky. They say to drink lots of fluid to flush that contrast out, so I did—I hydrated with alcohol. I figure that it covered two needs in one dose! It flushed out the dye, and it has a calming, sleep-inducing effect.
Two days later, the husband picked up the radiology report, and snuck a peek at it before taking it and the CD of images to Mayo. This helped the Thursday appointment greatly, as the good news of “no sign of recurrence” made the two hour wait bearable.
Only, I wasn’t expecting to be screeched at by an enraged deity of health. I don’t know what the imaging center did to the CD, or how they loaded the images, but It wasn’t good (and that isn’t a surprise). It took the Doctor 45 minutes to pull the images off of the CD. It was 45 minutes to her, but it was two hours for us. I became a target for having wasted her time because I am poor, and my insurance company and her hospital don’t belong to the same club, and the imaging place never does a good enough job.
It was strange. She looked up at me as she was yelling and pushing on my belly, and said, “You know I’m not mad at you!…yell, yell, yell…” And just like the beta I am, all I could do was lower my eyes and apologize for something I didn’t have control over…just like a child.
If anything, it makes me feel worse for children. How often do they get treated like that and we don’t even recognize it?
The good part is, that I am lump free, and don’t have to go through this again for another six months! Woohoo!
Not a Lumpy Space Princess,
Pru