<p>Sometimes I just can’t help but wonder how someone intelligent enough to be a doctor can utter such stupid comments … so here are a couple to start us off:</p>
<p>“I just don’t understand why young women go on the pill and compromise their health when they aren’t married.” This was directed toward me during a physical with a new endocrinologist (hypothyroid evaluation) … I was 23, and I had already stated that I was getting married the next month (not that it should have mattered, anyway).</p>
<p>“I always do episiotomies. It’s a good idea to take an extra stitch or two. The husbands appreciate it.” This was an ob’s response to my question about whether or not he performs episiotomies as a matter of routine.</p>
<p>“I would have just taken out the ovary. It’s not like you need it any more.” My mom was at a new gyn (she had just moved), and the doctor was commenting on the surgery she had had that removed an ovarian cyst & saved her ovary.</p>
<p>“I won’t do a reconstruction on you. Your breasts are not large enough for me to do one.” My mom was interviewing plastic surgeons before a single-sided mastectomy. She wanted that side reconstructed. She found a ps who understood her desire to have her small-but-nevertheless-a-breast reconstructed, and he did a wonderful job.</p>
<p>BTW, we never returned to any of these doctors for a second visit!</p>
<p>I used to be a nurse, so I’ve heard a few. But one that was directed at me: My 2 boys were born in PA, and we moved to GA when the second one was 11 days old. At my 6 week postpartum appt. with a brand new OB, he said, “You have two Yankee boys. Now you need a Southern girl for something different.” I told him I already had “something different.” (Maybe I’m unusual, but six weeks post-partum is not when I begin thinking about having another child.)</p>
<p>4 years later we did have our “southern girl.” (With a different OB!) She is very much like S1. S2 remains the “something different.”</p>
<p>nurse in the nursery after my son was born: “he has red hair, he will always be bad tempered”
Then there was the eye dr who was teaching an intern and commenting on and on in front of my 5 year old daughter and I about her eye “defect” which is in reality a congential condition which affects the appearance of the eye only. Often people who have known her for months don’t even notice it. I gave him an earful and changed eye doctors.
Last one, I was having stitches on my chin. The doctor and nurses standing over me were discussing a pizza they had eaten that “smelled like armpits” Nice.</p>
<p>After I sliced my finger to the bone breaking into my car at age 16 and went to the base dispensary (a clinic on an AF base), the doc said to the nurse “do you think it (the finger) will have to come off?” with a response of “yeah - probably”. I was pretty sure but maybe not 100% sure they were joking. Luckily, I managed to still keep the finger (attached).</p>
<p>I had just given birth to my 2nd D who weighed in at over 9 lbs. </p>
<p>My pediatrician’s comment: Wow! 9 lbs. I bet your third’ll be over 11 and a half.</p>
<p>(Note: New baby was less than an hour old–and the last thing I wanted to contemplate was birthing and even bigger baby.)</p>
<p>BTW, the pediatrician is now a pathologist… wonder if it had anything to do with his “people skills”?
And for the record, he was a really good (knowledgable) doctor–just not a real people person.</p>
<p>Another: D2–then aged 2 1/2-- was being seen by a pediatric neurologist. At the end of his exam, He crowed: I know exactly what’s going on with with your D–it’s either epilepsy or a brain tumor!</p>
<p>(It turned out to be neither…thank all the spirits!)</p>
<p>Based on one lab test, my mother’s doctor turned to me, and told me that my mother was a very sick woman. He diagnosed her with lupus. PS- she is doing just fine 32 years after that diagnosis. No other doctor has since diagnosed her with lupus.</p>
<p>My son’s first pediatrician- My mother was babysitting for our 6 week old son. He seemed to have trouble breathing so she called us (we were attending a wedding). We rushed home, and he was clearly ill. We called our pediatrician and our baby was crying in the backround. This clown told us that our son sounded just fine. It was a weekend evening and he did not want to be bothered. I told him that I was going to the ER if he did not examine my son. He knew that the ER would call him in anyway, so he got off his rear and met us in the office. He told us that he was very sick and sent us home to make a pup tent and to get the vaporizor under it. We were up all night with him. In the morning he called us and asked how he was doing (7 hours later). He was in the same condition. That is when he told us to go the hospital. We believe that he did not want to bother having our son admitted during the evening. We switched doctors the day he was released from the hospital.</p>
<p>Southern OB/GYN at my very first exam/pap smear, when I was 17: Oh, did that hurt? Well, I’m sorry dear but that’s good. And it always will, if you stay a lady.</p>
<p>I was visiting a new dermatologist (due to insurance) for a routine visit to have my many moles checked. She did a scraping on a few that needed to be looked into further. I have a history of pre cancerous moles, so this was not unusually. The next week this dermo calls my husband who also is a physician and tells him I have cancer and have 6 months to live! She did not have the written pathology report back yet, but had heard it was cancer. Well, when the report can back what it said was it need to be check into by a better labs as the report was not clear cut. </p>
<p>I had young children at home and it took 3 weeks to get the specimen sent to two of the best labs in the country. We were a wreck waiting, but were please to find I did not have cancer. I did have a weird mole; it was actually one mole on top of the other which is why the scraping was hard to read. </p>
<p>I have not seen this doctor since and I am sure she wonders why we don’t speak to her. First of all, she had no business calling my husband, especially during the wok day to say his wife was dying. That call should have been made to me as I was the patient. I understand she thought of my husband as a colleague, but he didn’t need to receive that call. Also, she had not even read the pathology report; had she waited she would have know it was inconclusive and might have approached us differently. </p>
<p>Of course, I was diagnosed with breast cancer a few years later so our trial run with the non existent skin cancer helped us keep out emotions in check!</p>
<p>A doctor told me that the reason my mother could not hold down anything she tried to eat or drink was “because her daughters aren’t there to feed her.” When we got a new doctor, he quickly determined that she actually had an intestinal blockage. The first doctor amazingly combined his complete incompetence in diagnosing my mom with making my sister and me feel guilty for not being able to be at the hospital constantly (due to distance and need to care for our young children) into one totally untrue comment.</p>
<p>When I was pregnant with my son, I was 32 years old and financially secure. The doctor told me he was offended by a young woman having so many kids.</p>
<p>I fired him the next year after sitting for 2 1/2 hours waiting for an appointment. A woman 40 years older and 100 pounds heavier than I with the same first name had been called in on my spot because this doctor was very casual and everyone was on a first name basis. No one noticed when I went in with her chart that I had “gained” 100 pounds in 6 months.</p>
<p>The male OB/GYN I went to for my second pregnancy, told me he didn’t believe in epidurals or any kind of drugs, “because it really doesn’t hurt that much.”</p>
<p>When I was (finally) pregnant with my second, the doctor who had just been my gyn up till then took several minutes during my first pre-natal visit to tell me why I shouldn’t smoke cigarettes, smoke marijuana, or snort cocaine. Well, OK, I thought; it’s reasonable to tell me this; he should tell this to all of his patients.</p>
<p>Then, at my second visit, he did the whole thing again. I was reeeeeeealy offended. I hardly look like a druggie.</p>
<p>But what really ticked me off was his condescending way of telling me that, because he practiced in a group of four, and I would see all four of the docs at one point or another, that I “shouldn’t try to play one doctor against another. If one of us tells you something, don’t try to shop for a better opinion by asking another. What one of says, goes.”</p>
<p>Ooooooooookay . . . </p>
<p>That was annoying. But what really ****ed me off was when I saw Doctor Number Two for the first time, and she obviously had no information or understanding of my unique medical conditions.</p>
<p>It was shortly thereafter that they lost the blood they drew for my baseline thyroid test. (I’m hypothyroid.) So . . . enough was enough; I had no confidence in them at all. I left.</p>
<p>I was 18 and at the university health service. The neurologist looked at my feet and said,
“You may a bit of webbing here. Do you have brain damage?”
I responded, “I’m sure I’d be the last to know!”</p>
<p>When I was 18 and in college, I went to a new dentist near my college. He told me that I needed all new fillings because my fillings were all old and falling apart. I called my parents to tell them the bad news. They laughed and laughed and told me to get a second opinion. There was nothing wrong with my fillings. Guess I must have had young and naive written all over my face (and fillings).</p>