Stand Up For Yourself – It’s Your Body

If something doesn’t seem right, it’s not your right to stand up for yourself, it’s your responsibility. Your health is something that you need to take control of and long-gone are the days that “Doctor knows best.”

Doctors are human, they make mistakes. Nurses and other healthcare professionals do too. The problem is, in many professions mistakes don’t affect lives quite as directly as they do if someone in health care does.

Someone I know through the Internet brought this home the other day and the message is frightening. Although to err is human, when a doctor refuses to even consider that he or she may have made an error, treating you as a worry wart, that’s gone into another zone completely.

This writer was diagnosed with breast cancer recently. After the shock of the diagnosis, she went ahead with a double mastectomy. She reported that she felt pretty good afterwards and was looking forward to moving on with what she had to do next. No-one could have imaged what happened next.

She went to her doctor to get her drains from the surgery removed and she felt a familiar lump. Her doctor waved her concerns aside and was almost patronizing when he finally agreed to let her go for an ultrasound. The ultrasound showed a lump. Further investigation followed.

When she had her biopsy for her original cancer diagnosis, the tumor had been tagged so it could be noticeable as *the* tumor and not another one. When they checked for the tag – imagine their shock when they found the tumor that she was to have removed, was still there.

So, not only was the doctor disbelieving of his patients, who should know her body better than anyone, he was willing to brush off her concerns. Thank goodness she pushed. I don’t know if I would have.

She has to have more surgery next week. You can read about her journey in her blog, Pink Is Not My Color.

I know we don’t like to be pains, to seem mistrustful. But when it comes to *your* body, you need to stand up for yourself. Doctors aren’t out to make deliberate mistakes but mistakes do happen. The problem is only compounded once if people feel that they can’t possibly make an error. Take care of yourself. No-one else will when it comes right down to it.

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Image: Morguefile.com