Dear Doctors, please learn better manners.

        I have a dear friend (henceforth known as Awesome Pants- yep I'm  gonna drive that pants motif right into the ground.) who recently had some relatively minor surgery.  In the midst of this, some routine blood work was done which came back as abnormal, which her doctors are handling ALL WRONG.   Not medically  mind you, they're good professionals and probably like their careers.  So they are sending AP to the right specialists to rule out all the right bad things. No, they are handling it badly as fellow frigging human beings.  Which brings to me one of my bigger pet peeves. I have a whole menagerie and one wing is dedicated just to the medical profession.  And it's my blog, so I get to pick what we  bitch about.

        So, dear medical profession as a whole, and doctors in particular, stop acting like unthinking jackasses.   We know you're busy. We know you're smart. Guess what? We are smart and busy too. So, stop either OVER explaining or UNDER explaining EVERYTHING.  In AP's case, you are driving a brilliant and very well educated woman nuts. You call her up muttering about abnormal results and tell her to see this or that specialist RIGHT AWAY. Without saying anything else. You're like a wyrd sister trying to freak out MacBeth.  Nothing's creepier or more sinister than a veiled curse.  Just take thirty extra seconds and say,"Hey, things could be a little better so I want to rule out every problem that could be so we'll both sleep better knowing it's not really anything. And if it is serious, we will nip in the bud and be easier on your health and your pocketbook."  Boom. Done. And no one had google anything or feel like their health isn't taken seriously.  And if you put it that way the patient will take it seriously without having those nervous "what did they mean by THAT" conversations with themselves at three in the morning.  I swear, you are all trying to get back at the rest of us for copying off your test in high school biology class.   Yes, we know we all get emotional and weird about our health. We're supposed to. It's called a survival instinct.  That's why emotions evolved in the first place.  So, stop acting as if we are stupid when we are just sick, tired, and/or  emotional because its our FRIGGING health we're talking about here.             

           Oh and on the other end of the spectrum, think before you act as if we are six years old.  Don't ask me if I know "to make sure my daughter is upright before administering a tube feeding". (No, normally I suspend her from ceiling by her ankles like a vampire bat before feeding her. Makes it more sporting.)  Don't ask if I "make sure to wash my hands often." (No, I like a good coronavirus.)   Most especially NEVER EVER ask me "if things were explained to me in words I could understand."  That's a quote from at least six hospitals' exit surveys.  How offensive can you be?  For the record, I speak well in one language, read in two and swear in six.  Ask me that question again and I will teach you new words.