Ultrasound

Dr. Perlo,

I went for the ultrasound that you and I had spoken of this morning and the results were not satisfactory.

I was greeted by the ultrasound tech who, in a very upbeat way, told me that this might not be the correct test to see if anything was wrong. I told her that I had prostate cancer and I was interested in any info that I might get. With that she had me take off my shirt and lie down and I told her that there was another instance of a small mass under my right arm and that you and I had talked about having that looked at too.

She looked at my back, didn't really find anything except a fat deposit, and then told me that the ultrasound would look differently if it was a cancer tumor. Then she said that she couldn't really tell if anything was wrong.

After doing this, I asked about the right and she said that this was not on the authorization sheet and that she had to go talk to the radiologist. After a couple of minutes, she came back into the room saying that the radiologist said that what I needed was an MRI, not an ultrasound. The radiologist (who seems not to have a name) did not deign to tell me these things his or herself, but sent the tech to deliver the news.

This was the end of the appointment, even though checking my right side (which I told the tech was much better defined) would have taken approximately 2 minutes.  Knowing better than to kill the messenger, I put on my shirt and I left.

The attitude here seems to be that I as a patient was a) stupid (as in I didn't know my own body) and/or b) wasting Harvard University's precious resources by pressing an investigation of a diffuse and hard to define condition. Or maybe it's you who are stupid and wasting the University's resources. Either way, I still have these two spots on my ribs that are sore to the touch and I know nothing more than I did before even after taking the time and effort to go through two appointments with University Health Services. This does not make me happy.

Dr Perlo, if you look through my medical records you will see that over the years I have not been a chronic complainer. In fact, the last time that I saw Dr. Poaster she noted that she only saw me once a year for my annual physical over the eight years that she was my primary care physician and she found this strange. The fact is, as someone who had an unhealthy childhood, I don't like doctors much and, given my druthers, I tend stay away from them. And as someone who has been doing martial arts for almost 40 years, I also know my body pretty well and if something seems like it may be wrong, it may actually be wrong.

As for wasting University resources, I would bet my considerable health insurance premium that given my interaction with UHS you folks have actually made money off of me over the past 10 years, even with the prostate cancer.

People in the medical profession talk a good game about prevention these days, but it seems that if someone shows up with something that doesn't scream "I'm deathly ill" then we don't seem to be worthy of time and attention of the system.  So I guess that the definition of prevention means all those things that I'm supposed to do so that I don't bother the nice people in the medical system and not getting help from you folks catching things early. Not my definition, but then it is obviously not my system.

So, what do we do now?  As my primary care physician, you are my gate and advocate in the system. Got any suggestions?

MTS

Comments

[gmoke]

Difficult patients live longer. Keep on being difficult.