For What It's Worth

My relationship with doctors has always been one where I've treated them as the ultimate authorities. I never questioned a word a doctor has said.

One thing that the experiences of the past year have taught me though...is to question everything a doctor says.

My prior approach was indeed naive. Doctors are human. They are like the rest of us. And the profession is like any other profession or field...there are great ones, there are good ones, and there are some that are well...not so hot.

Like anything else in life, there is good and there is bad. Like shopping for tomatoes at the grocery store, you should pick through the bunch and pick out the best ones.

I've seen a lot of doctors through this past year. I think I've seen more doctors this past year than I have in the rest of the combined years of my life. Some of these doctors have been incredible, absolutely amazing, geniuses. Some I've politely parted ways with too. All in all, I've experienced much more good than bad. But I certainly no longer just accept doctors as ultimate authorities. If I feel one isn't performing in my best interest, I move on. I have, unfortunately, met with a small few who probably should not be doctors at all.

My lesson has been to be proactive as a patient. It is something you'll hear cancer survivors repeat again and again and again. Though cancer has become all to common, there is still a great chance as a cancer patient that the doctor you are meeting with has had no experience with your condition before you walked through the door.

We now take nothing for granted. You would hope that doctors are communicating with one another about your case, that reports and films are getting to where they need to get for complete analysis, that offices are communicating with insurance companies to work out proper payments - barely ever happens. We make all the calls. We make sure that everything gets to where they need to get. We make sure that the insurance company and the doctors are in sync.

For just one example - it took us seven months of phone calls to have one large medical bill taken care of, all because a doctor's office and an insurance office wouldn't pick up the phone and talk to one another. We had to facilitate all the communications, frustratingly over months.

It can be kind of a sad, and certainly a frustrating, environment. You want to focus on health and getting better. The last thing you want to have to deal with is wrestling with beauracracy and chasing paper trails. I do believe that we have the best healthcare system in the world. But we can't rest on our laurels. There's always room for improvement in everything. And we do have room to improve, and we should continiue to strive for it.

But, as I've said, life is full of good and bad. And for all the frustrating times, there has been very special times as well. I do have some doctors who have shown such caring and such compassion. They are truly heroes, and I am so thankful for their generous involvement in my health.

I think for the most part that the special times come from inside the person who is offering care. And I think a lot of times the frustrations come from the "machine," which is the cold-hearted, money-making, industry that tends to put you as the patient on an assembly line, assigning you a number rather than a face and a name.

For what it's worth...take charge of your own health!