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A thing that happened
25/7/09 10:10On Tuesday, I got a call from Dr. B's office that he was going to fax over a prescription to me. No prescription came through, and eventually my colleagues informed me that the fax machine was broken. I was on the edge of a nervous breakdown for various reasons and didn't call them back.
On Wednesday I came in to the hospital. "Hey Dr. B.," I said, "Yesterday somebody called from your office that they were faxing over a prescription, but I didn't get it because the office fax was broken."
"My office?" he said. "No, I didn't fax anything over. Didn't happen."
This seemed eminently reasonable because maybe you don't want to send a Percocet prescription to a public fax machine because the wrong person could get it.
When I came out of surgery into the step-down room, Dr. B checked on me briefly and left. The nurse went over my discharge instructions with me. They included notation that I had received painkillers, or a prescription for painkillers. I raised hell about this.
Some two and a half hours later, the nurse finally tracked down somebody who would write me a prescription.
And the moral of the story is, if you find your doctor vaguely creepy and affect-less, it is not a terrible idea to find a new doctor. The research says that people sue doctors for malpractice based on how much they like or dislike the doctor, rather than on anything objective; mistakes can happen to anyone, but if you dislike the guy from the start you're less likely to see a mistake, when it happens, as the kind of thing that could happen to anyone.
And from the first day I saw him, he was almost contemptuous of my efforts to educate myself about what was going on with me.
On Wednesday I came in to the hospital. "Hey Dr. B.," I said, "Yesterday somebody called from your office that they were faxing over a prescription, but I didn't get it because the office fax was broken."
"My office?" he said. "No, I didn't fax anything over. Didn't happen."
This seemed eminently reasonable because maybe you don't want to send a Percocet prescription to a public fax machine because the wrong person could get it.
When I came out of surgery into the step-down room, Dr. B checked on me briefly and left. The nurse went over my discharge instructions with me. They included notation that I had received painkillers, or a prescription for painkillers. I raised hell about this.
Some two and a half hours later, the nurse finally tracked down somebody who would write me a prescription.
And the moral of the story is, if you find your doctor vaguely creepy and affect-less, it is not a terrible idea to find a new doctor. The research says that people sue doctors for malpractice based on how much they like or dislike the doctor, rather than on anything objective; mistakes can happen to anyone, but if you dislike the guy from the start you're less likely to see a mistake, when it happens, as the kind of thing that could happen to anyone.
And from the first day I saw him, he was almost contemptuous of my efforts to educate myself about what was going on with me.