Thank you for this story.

I have a few of my own to tell in a similar vein. Too many. So many doctors so many mistakes, so much politeness, so many docs who remain their sloughs of ignorance because of the social rules governing male doc-female patient hierarchies, so many people dying or being permanently harmed by egos we dare not challenge.

I try to stick with female docs but they also can get stuck in ego-manufactured and law suit fear-inspired mistakes they’ll never admit.

Would be great if the 2020s could be the decade of the patient & devoted to patients teaching docs how to listen and by that the docs learning how NOT to make mistakes by treating patients as cultural stereotypes for the sake of efficiency & keeping control of their practice’s finances.

The motto I’ve adopted for chronic, invisible pain patients like myself:

Every

BODY

Is

DIFFERENT

Leave aside all prejudgment when you meet a new patient. Assume NOTHING…just as you would if you were developing & conducting a research design.

Sometimes the patient knows more than you do--at the very least they know their bodies’ history, & if they’ve been sick for a while they know more than you do about what their problems are. They’ve been researching them a very long time. Your expertise is still respected and desired, but not until you have LISTENED to them instead of imposing your pre-conceived notions upon them.