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When doctors dehumanize their patients they are actually dehumanizing themselves.

After a year of horribly misery, which included a toxic chemotherapy regime to kill my advanced, aggressive breast cancer, a year of herceptin treatment post-double mastectomy (at which point they discovered I actually had two different cancers in the same breast), my first doctor finished his treatment of me in the following way.

I had my last herceptin treatment and met with him inside the ‘little room.’  He concluded his exam, left the room while I dressed, and waited for me in the hallway.  He was standing there not to encourage me, not to congratulate me for completing a grueling year of cancer treatment, but to tell me the following.

“By the way,” he said.  “I wouldn’t bother having breast reconstruction if I were you.  You won’t live long enough to enjoy it.  Besides, we’d just have to cut them off again, anyway.”

His words and his attitude would have been enough to throw even the most emotionally healthy person into a tailspin.  For me, with an 18-year history of extreme abuse from birth, his words destroyed my confidence in him, in the treatment I had experienced, in myself, and in my hopes for a full recovery.

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It took the combined love, support and assistance of all my family members and friends to turn me around enough to search for another doctor.  A year ago I chose one, and yesterday I had my LAST encounter with that one.

To a large extent because of the multitude of forced confinements in my childhood, it is all I can do to stand being put into a small exam room with a closed door.  After sitting for half an hour in a frigid examination room yesterday with my little paper waist length ‘shirt’ on waiting for my doctor, he finally entered the door, walked directly to me and grabbed my hand in a handshake.  Looking me straight in the eye he gave an Oscar-quality performance of care and concern for my well being.

Which lasted the ten seconds it took him to withdraw his hand, perch himself on his backless swivel stool, open my case file and ask me, “How long has it been since you had a mammogram?”  Not giving me time to answer his question, he added, “You didn’t have chemotherapy, did you?”

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Mammogram?  I haven’t had breasts for a year and a half.  Chemotherapy?  It nearly killed me itself.  Care and concern for my well being?  I think not!

By the time I returned home after that appointment yesterday I felt as icky as if I had been violated.  Because I had been.  There is no excuse for doctors to treat patients this way.  Absolutely NONE.

With a 30-second scan of my chart before that doctor entered the exam room to see me yesterday he could have at least informed himself enough about MY case to have treated me as the human being that man has sworn to assist.

Any of us who have suffered severe maltreatment during the very early developmental years of our childhoods are at extremely high risk for developing adult onset serious diseases – cancer included.  Severe child abuse is a terrorizing experience.  Having cancer is a terrorizing experience.  Having doctors treat me as if I am less than a speck of dirt is – to me – a traumatic reenactment of terrorizing experiences.

Most thankfully there is nothing discernable about me today to indicate the presence of cancer in my body.  For some reason nobody has explained to me, even with the presence of advanced cancer in my breast – even with two cancers in my breast – there was absolutely no ‘cancer marker’ sign whatsoever in my blood that indicated the presence of either one of them from the start.  ‘Stealth cancers’, I call them.

This second doctor told me six months ago that I will know if and when the cancer is back, not a doctor.  OK.  Then I cut myself free of them.  At the same time I would warn anyone, especially those with severe child abuse histories, to be aware and use extreme caution in the presence of doctors!  They are not necessarily human.

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