This doctor's personal choices

[xoxoxoBruce]

Originally Posted by orthodoc

One of the hardest aspects of this journey was being treated like shit by a female surgeon ~snip~ then being treated like a small child by my oncologist.

I curious why this happens, is it because there are two types of patients?

The Duh ~ They look at the doctor slack jawed and say OK to anything and everything.

Questioner ~ They want to know, and have probably read everything online about, what they were tested for, including the quacks. They'll ask why these things didn't come up in the doc's recommendations. So the doctor pulls a TW hoping they'll shut up and let him get on with his/her day.

[footfootfoot]

Shit, Ortho. I didn't realize you had a female surgeon, I would have warned you off that choice. There is an inherent conflict of interest there. Male surgeons will want to do the best job on you, for all the right and wrong reasons. Women are in an eternal state of competition.

Painted with my cynical broad* brush



*see what I did there?

[orthodoc]

From Wikipedia: An N of 1 trial is a clinical trial in which a single patient is the entire trial, a single case study. A trial in which random allocation can be used to determine the order in which an experimental and a control intervention are given to a patient is an N of 1 randomized controlled trial. The order of experimental and control interventions can also be fixed by the researcher.

This type of study has enabled practitioners to achieve experimental progress without the overwhelming work of designing a group comparison study. It can be very effective in confirming causality. This can be achieved in many ways. One of the most common procedures is the ABA withdrawal experimental design, where the patient problem is measured before a treatment is introduced (baseline) and then measured again during the treatment and finally when the treatment has terminated. If the problem vanished during the treatment it can be established that the treatment was effective.

I did my first degree at McMaster, where Gord Guyatt was King of evidence-based medicine. He later renounced all connection with the concept, but nevertheless the usefulness of the 'N of 1' study remains.

[orthodoc]

Originally Posted by footfootfoot

Shit, Ortho. I didn't realize you had a female surgeon, I would have warned you off that choice. There is an inherent conflict of interest there. Male surgeons will want to do the best job on you, for all the right and wrong reasons. Women are in an eternal state of competition.

Painted with my cynical broad* brush



*see what I did there?

Hahaha foot3 ... laughing but you're so right, unfortunately.

I learned some time ago not to go to a female hairdresser. Somehow I thought women would have each others' backs when it came to breast cancer surgery. Silly me.

Women, for the most part, seem to enjoy engaging in perpetual competition. I know my surgeon was pissed at me for questioning her and for asking about alternative procedures. I didn't have anything firmly in mind, just wanted to know about all the options and her opinions of them, but she took offense and just got up and walked out of the room. It was one of those really bad moments ... and then a meek older woman came in a moment later and offered me a handmade small pillow to cushion my chest/surgical area post-mast, and a card with her phone number. She was a volunteer with the ACS.

I'd been completely professional and all about the research until the moment the surgeon got up and walked out. When the volunteer came in and offered me the pillow she'd made, I burst into tears.

[Griff]

We had a training Friday and I got to see the woman on woman violence up close and personal. Some of our classrooms are truly broken because women compete for power over one another. Its completely opposite of the common view of cooperative women.