Woman records OR conversation

I've been in surgical suites. Most times they are very calm and professional. Sometimes there will be music playing like you see on TV. Once in a while there will be some chatter or the docs will BS a bit, particularly while there is a break in the action... say an x-ray needs to be taken, which means that the picture is shot and then developed and brought back and hung. Might be faster now if they are full digital and not using film. This might take 3-5 minutes. I've heard some that were pretty adolescent, but never anything Bill Cosbyish. Most times things are pretty straight ahead with a bit of side talk, depending on what is being done and who is in room. Keep in mind that there are surgeries that are pretty straightforward and that they've done a hundred times and they are kinda on autopilot through those, so they might be a bit chatty. Still, it's not a place for grab-ass, and usually they work off a checklist to prevent something from being forgotten.

As to the nurses, "Who was your surgeon? Oh, he's good" is pretty universal - but you have to observe and listen when they reply. There's "Oh, he's good" with a bit of side eye and an edge to the tone, or there's "Oh, he's really good!" and you can kinda tell they mean it. They're not going to mutter "Oh, you poor bastard" if he's low on the approval list. And yes, there are guys who have a higher rate of complications and unsuccessful procedures and the base surgical team knows that and talks about it within the group.

As to surgeons, there is a high percentage of them who are arrogant bastards with a smartest guy in the room complex. Often they are indeed the smartest, or close to it. That's not as bad as the God Complex, which is a very real thing, particularly with cardiologists and brain surgeons. Some of them are just plain assholes, because they are the biggest frog in the pond and they damn well know it. I've seen a cardiologist doing a heart cath throw a catheter across the room and dog cuss his nurse in the middle of a procedure. "Goddam it, I said I wanted a 5 french guide catheter. This is a fucking six, what the fuck kind of idiot can't read the damn number on a package?". This with a conscious patient on the table - he'd had some liquid valium or something for happy juice, but he is able to look up at the video monitor the surgeon is using and watch the catheter go through his heart valve. I can't imagine what the guy was thinking. He might or might not have remembered it, depending on how much Versed he got. It tends to be an amnesiac. Doc can easily give the anesthesiologist a significant look or suggest some if he was concerned about that.

I'm not sure I trust the woman's account, but that doesn't mean that the doctors were not caught being jackasses.

 

I wish I was surprised that most all my fellow white folk posting on this thread think that the woman is in the wrong here. But I'm not.

She's had 100 painful attacks in a day and she's being unreasonable thinking that it's not right that she's supposed to wait 3 months for a remedy? And instead she's supposed to start the process from scratch and find another surgeon, presumably at another hospital, yet still covered by her insurance? And even though she waited days to listen to the tape, she's setting up the doc? Despite the fact she only listened to it after she had to go back to the hospital to deal with the allergic reaction his negligence caused?

The magical world some of you live in must be a pleasant place.

 

TV, a hiatal hernia is where the diaphragm ruptures a bit and the top of the stomach slides up through the opening. It's like a balloon attached to the bottom the esophagus, and that balloon has been pinched. Normally, if someone has a lot of distress from one, it is chest pain that mimics a heart attack. If you've had one for a while, the stomach gets irritated as in GERD. Essentially, you get really bad heartburn. If it gets neglected long enough or you have a rarer sort of hiatal hernia you might get bleeding, but that's rare. I have no clue what she means when she says she had "abdominal attacks", and particularly so when she says she had a hundred of them in a day.

I don't know enough about the particulars of her case, if any imaging had been done, etc. to have anything approaching an informed opinion, and I'm not a physician in any case. She sounds like she's overstating things a bit but I wasn't there. I can see a doctor who hears "hiatal hernia" thinking she might be overstating her degree of distress and not listening as well as he should have. No way to know.

As to "white folk", it really does not matter to me if she's white or black. Patients may or may not know what they're talking about. What they perceive may not be anywhere close to what's happening. When you ask "What's your pain level, from one to ten?", one person's four is another's nine.

Personally, if I don't like my doctor, what he says, the vibe he's giving off I'm on the phone looking for better treatment. If I have a level of pain that calls for immediate treatment and he's talking three months? KThxBye. I really don't have an opinion regarding if it was a set up. I just wouldn't be dicking around with it if I was in that sort of distress, I'd be looking for faster treatment that was still covered by my insurance.