This story isn’t mine, it’s about a gentleman who I’ve come to know in the last 3 weeks. It is, however, illustrative of the difference between a good medical practice and a bad one.
This gentleman has the radiation appointment immediately before mine every day, and we’ve come to be friends through our chats in the waiting room.
Generally, this is how our morning goes. We both show up and chat until he’s called in to be irradiated. Five minutes later, I’m called. Somewhere between the dressing room and radiation treatment, we usually pass and say “see you tomorrow.” This morning started no differently, but as I was going to radiation, he was standing outside the lab talking to a doctor, and seemed pretty angry. Not ugly or shouting, but you could tell he was unhappy. And after listening to about three sentences of the conversation, I knew why.
All of us in radiation treatment look forward to nothing more than the end of it. We all count down how many treatments we have left, and we know when our last day of treatment is supposed to be.
But not in this gentleman’s case. Apparently, the doctors extended his treatment a few more days, but didn’t tell him until today, when they asked him when he wanted to come in the next Sunday, since they’re closed Thanksgiving.
Why do some of these places think that it’s okay that the patient is the last to know anything? It’s our health, and our lives they’re toying with, and for many of us this is life or death. We need the information to be able to deal with what we’re going through. We have a right to know. Is it that hard to understand we have lives outside of treatment?