Heart-to-Heart: Fat Doctor

While I’ve been featuring patients’ perspectives in the Dear Doctor series, today I’d also like to share what it’s like to be on the doctor’s side. Fat Doctor recently saw a patient with heart failure and it wasn’t easy convincing her to accept the medical treatment she needed.

I drew stat labs, got an EKG and went back into her room. “You have heart failure,” I said, “your EKG is scary, the blood tests I ordered to look for a heart attack came back abnormal, and your kidneys are in trouble. You need to be in the hospital for a few days.”

“I (gasp) don’t (gasp) have a heart (gasp) problem,” she said. “I’ll come back (gasp) tonight but (gasp) I have to (gasp) go home now,” she continued. For the following 25 minutes, her husband and I tried every known argument to try to get her to stay. He pleaded. I drew pictures. We both talked about the possibility that she could die. She refused to be admitted. She left, gasping her way out of the clinic as her husband pushed her in a wheelchair.

Fat Doctor’s vivid description shows that good doctors really do care and pay attention to their patients. Communication goes both ways.

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