Doctor Patient Confrontation
Being honest with your doctor is scary
What is Your Rupture by Andy Warhol 6x on heart background
I’ve always admired my Mom. She’s a tough cookie who never has any problem telling people like it is. My Mom doesn’t shrug away from possible confrontation and she’s always upfront about how’s she feeling. And she does it all with grace.
I especially admire her because she has no qualms about telling her doctor like it is. Yes, her doctor. You know that pseudo-authority figure that we often lie to so they don’t judge us for our habits. I mean, we also sometimes lie to doctors based on the fact that if they knew the truth they might not give us all the care options available to us1. Hell, there are lots of reasons we could, will and do lie to our doctors.
I know for me as a black womxn the care I’ve gotten from doctors has been dismal at times. Even Serena Williams wasn’t believed by her doctor during her first pregnancy and she’s not only a huge celebrity but also a millionaire with access to the best healthcare this simulation has to offer. We all know healthcare, like every other system, is flawed and corrupt.
Finding a good doctor is daunting so we often just settle on the first doctor we see and accept their behavior even if it’s at the risk of not getting the care you really need. And I may have been dramatic up top and perhaps we aren’t all outright lying to our doctor but can you really say you’re completely honest with your doctor? Advocating for yourself in this particular space is tricky because you’re vulnerable and you’ve been told to trust a doctor… no questions asked.
Luckily, for most of my life, I had my blonde-haired, blue-eyed, one haircut away from the “Can I speak to a manager”-bob Mother with me at all my appointments so I never had to fret about getting my needs met. She would advocate on my behalf. This made the first time I ever had to advocate for myself at the doctor high stakes (mentally). I remember the first time like it was yesterday but it was really 2015. I ended up in the ER after projectile vomiting mac and cheese in the shower. I was doubled over, could barely stand and I had a protrusion in my stomach the size of a baseball. I was in excruciating pain.
I sat in the ER for what felt like hours, when I finally got a room and the doctor came to see me he had the audacity to suggest that maybe the protrusion in my stomach was just a fat deposit and that my pain wasn’t really that bad.
I 👏🏾 WAS 👏🏾 PISSED 👏🏾
I could hear my Mom’s voice ringing in my ear and I couldn’t take it, I had to say something. So I did. I let the doctor know this “fat deposit” wasn’t always there and that my pain was very real and completely unmanageable. He was shook that I had talked back to him but it was enough to compel him to give me medication for pain and set up a follow-up with a specialist. 2 weeks later I was diagnosed with Crohn’s disease.
Which would’ve gone completely untreated if I hadn’t said a word and accepted his poor diagnosis and genuine lack of concern.
From that point on I vowed to always be honest with my doctors. I’m honest about my habits (good and bad), my symptoms and my feelings. That was until I met my latest psychiatrist. And with her, I guess you could say I’ve backpedaled a bit.
My latest psych is the one who finally got my diagnosis right and put me on a medication plan that’s stuck the longest. Our first meeting was great, I felt heard and seen. For the first time, I had the answers that I had been longing for. There was suddenly a container for all the feelings and behaviors I thought were unexplainable. But it was the 2nd or 3rd meeting that got me fucked up.
The conversation of weed came up. I’m a long-time weed smoker and I believe the plant, when used with intentionality does more good than it does bad. My psych is of the opposite camp. I would almost say she’s of the Reefer Madness camp. She even used the words “it’ll fry your brain”. She is staunchly anti-marijuana. I was taken aback, to say the least.
So if you think finding a new primary care physician is hard, try finding a new psychiatrist. I find the psych harder cause you have to not only rehash your complete mental health history you also have to retake all those damn evaluations. I found myself sitting with two options: find another psych or downplay some of my weed use to continue to get the care I needed.
I decided on the latter.
Let me be clear, she didn’t tell me to quit, she just encourages it heavily. (She clapped with glee when I was on my tolerance break last year). And to be fair, through some of my own work on my relationship with weed, I’m starting to see the benefits of doing it less. I flirt with the idea of quitting it cold turkey. And maybe one day I will write about how revelatory my tolerance break was. But the point is, I’m back in that unbalanced doctor-patient relationship.
I’m hyping myself to break free from it in the near future. Because the truth is, I can’t stay in a relationship like this, not if I want to be the healthiest version of myself. It’s time to reset the balance.
So how am I gonna find balance in this currently unbalanced relationship? Three things really:
I’m reminding myself that I’m the one paying her. Simple. I know I often forget that this is a transaction. Cold but true. I’m paying you and I want to receive care that I have a say in. There’s truly no point in blindly following a doctor's guidance without knowing the why behind it. Dig for the truth and ask for the research cause you deserve to know.
I’m going to be honest even if it means losing her as a doctor. Yes, finding a new doctor is hard but staying with one who makes you feel bad is worse2. The truth is a doctor can either help you get what you need or you’re gonna try to do it without them. Oftentimes, the threat of doing it sans doctor support is enough to put a fire under their ass to help.
I’m leaning on the support of my community. Getting an outsider's perspective makes me feel less alone and more informed. I always get rich insight when I run things by my people. Asking them what they like about their doctor can help you identify what you need in a healthcare provider.
Advocating for your needs is no easy mountain to climb. It takes practice, patience and persistence. It’s a goal worth pursuing though. I vote we all take a page from my Mom’s book and be unflinchingly honest with our doctors. Make them squirm a little bit, remind them this is a two-way relationship, and get the healthcare you deserve!
See every healthcare solution being “lose weight”
See every toxic relationship
