Frustration can't begin to describe what I'm feeling right now. I get to my chemotherapy facility, and a CBC is done, and my blood work comes back normal. After a few minutes, one of the nurses tells me that the doctor wants to visit with me about the new drugs before starting treatment, so I start to gather up my bag to go to an examination room. I see the doctor coming into the treatment area, and he rolls a stool over to my recliner and sits down, and he says I will need a heart scan before starting treatment with one of the new drugs I'll be getting, the Adriamycin. I said, "Fine" and naively asked if they had me set up for the test to take place and then come back for chemo. The doctor said I wouldn't be getting chemo today and that the heart scan (MUGA - Multi Gated Acquisition Scan) would need to be set up at the hospital and once the results were back, I would then be re-scheduled for chemo.
I looked at the doctor in a state of shock and said, "So I won't be getting chemo today?" And he replied that he could give me the chemo without doing the heart scan, but he didn't recommend proceeding that way. I told him I totally understood the safety concerns and wanted to go ahead with the heart scan before chemo, but I told him I was extremely frustrated that he hadn't looked at my chart before today so that the heart scan could have been set up at some point over the past three weeks following my last chemo. I told him I had taken off work and made arrangements for chemo just as I always do on regular chemo days, and that a friend had taken the time to drive me to treatment, and I also told him I had called three times over the past few weeks asking different questions and as recently as yesterday, I asked again if there was anything I needed to do to prepare myself for the two new drugs I would be getting. No one said a thing about getting a heart scan. He could hear the shakiness in my voice as I spoke, and he said, "Can I drive you home?" And then he said he was sorry it had worked out this way and he asked my forgiveness.
I did feel a bit sorry for him because I gave him a tongue-lashing about not reviewing my chart before the day of treatment. Not acceptable in my book. I told him I had been very pleased with everything I had encountered so far at this facility, but that this type of thing should not happen with any patient.
I had researched Adriamycin enough to know that a heart scan should be done prior to its administration, and I told Barry last night that I guessed they were going to use my heart readings from my surgery as the baseline since they hadn't said anything about any additional testing. Serves me right for assuming.
I guess I need to be more of a go-with-the-flow type of person, but I am definitely not there yet. I like some orderliness amidst the chaos of life, and this upset my apple cart. Maybe in the big scheme of things, I will feel better about having my chemo schedule put off for a few weeks, but right now I'm just not feeling it. Cancer has derailed my life for too much already.
(By the way, I told the doctor that of course I would forgive him, but for him not to let things like this happen again. When I talked to Barry after leaving the doctor's office, I told him it seemed ironic that this Muslim doctor was asking his Christian patient for forgiveness.)
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