In she walked, the radiologist who had muffed the initial diagnosis. How well I remember her cheerful, reassuring face and her perky, definitive voice: "I have absolutely nothing but good news for you!" The hospital must have deliberately kept her off my treatment team, and I certainly had not expected to see her, nor she me. But there I was with the suspicion of a cracked rib, and she was the radiologist on call.
She entered, smiled, and did a double take. "Oh, we got started off wrong. I want to say that I would absolutely understand if you would like a different doctor." She looked straight into my eyes with that German earnestness that I trust, and I decided to give the gal a second chance, on the hope that she'd now read my scans extra-carefully and have learned something since she let my breast cancer go undiagnosed for an extra two months (could I have avoided so much chemo? So much radiation?) But I also let her interpret the scans because I didn't want to sit around that waiting room for another three hours. I'd already waited nearly that long. The kids needed dinner.
"Thank goodness the cancer got discovered!" was all I said. She agreed, fervidly. "Just read the scans really carefully, OK?" I added.
Her interpretation was characteristic for its positive note: "I see no evidence of metastases!" she chirped, smiling.
This gave me a chill. She did make an interesting remark or two about how my pronounced scoliosis likely made my ribs shake around more when I fell, which is probably why I continue to have this stabbing pain with every false move. She saw "no evidence of fractures," either, but my eyes must have gotten round at that point, because she added, "But I would like to look at this a second time, and show it to colleagues." She was reassuring me that she would not be the sole judge of my scans.
"I watch a lot of Grey's Anatomy now," I confessed. "Show it to the chief. Or to Derek Shepherd. Or Cristina Yang."
She smiled.
I added, "Wave it at X!" (I named the radiologist who had found the malignancy she missed, and who "preferred not to talk about" Dr. Perky's failure to diagnose.
She laughed. I sure do hope she shows it to that guy, and I think, given German earnestness, she may well do so. If she were a character on Grey's Anatomy who would she be? Hmmmm, maybe Dr. April Kepner, the one whose moment of distraction during a chaotic emergency room scene leads to a patient's death. (A patient she is examining says, "Look!" and Dr. Kepner swirls to see a fireman's axe embedded in the chest of someone being rushed into surgery--then forgets to examine her own patient's throat.) Dr. Kepner became extra-careful after that incident (and even more perky). Let's hope for at least the extra-careful from my doc. Along with the extra-ability to interpret scans.
P.S.Well, she was at least as good as her word. She must have showed the scans to Dr. X, the one who found my tumor when she had not.
He also found my fracture when she had not: "the fifth rib!"
Yes, my own hunch was right. I really had broken something. Your body doesn't hurt so much over a sprain.
That's two strikes, Dr. Lovely Bedside Manner. Not going for a third.
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