As I return to writing about the deep work I was going through as I struggled to understand my past, it’s easy to question if anything is getting any better. If I had any doubt of progress, though, a recent incident in a doctor’s office showed that I am growing in self-caring and empowerment.
That most “inappropriate” appointment
The medications I take can have an adverse effect on my metabolism. That can work against me for healthy blood sugar levels and weight management. I have been following a diet and exercise regimen that is helping, but I wanted to see a specialist in this area to see if he felt my progress was on track.
At the office, we waited a long time, but eventually, we were called in and taken to a small examination room, where the nurse took my vitals and the usual other things they do before the doctor arrives. She was pleasant, finished up her work, and said that the doctor would be with us shortly. We waited a fair bit longer, but finally, there was a knock on the door, and the doctor strode in. He was followed by a young woman.
Right from the start, the energy seemed off. He quickly introduced himself and started to brush past me. Trying to observe the usual “niceties” when meeting a new caregiver, I reached out my hand to shake his, and introduced myself. He seemed distracted, almost put off by this. I handed him the clipboard of forms his nurse asked me to fill out, but he tossed it on the counter without even so much as a glance.
He started to begin the appointment, then caught himself. Waving his hand at the woman with him, he rattled off her name and said she was an “observer,” but gave no explanation as to why she was there. He just asked if it was okay with me.
I found it odd. In seventy years of doctor appointments, and over thirty-five of those as a medical professional, I’d never had a doctor behave like he was.
For one thing, I knew it was customary for him to provide some amount of explanation for the person, such as she’s a medical student, or a college student, or whatever. But he gave nothing. I didn’t care, but was put off by his attitude, which seemed to imply my consent would of course be given, and he was doing me a favor asking.
He stared at me, then at my husband who was with me, and with a surly attitude, asked, “Who’s this guy? And is it okay for him to be here?” It was not a polite or professional request, but almost an irritated one.
I was irritated at how he referred to my husband, and was a bit confounded by his attitude. But tried to give him the benefit of the doubt. I introduced my husband and noted that, of course, it was fine and I wanted him there. At this point, I felt somewhat on the defensive, but assumed I was reading it all wrong.
“Loaded for bear”
He stared at me, asked me why I was there, but when I tried to explain, he cut me off and dove right into his agenda. He fired comments and questions with an aggressive tone, then again stared at me for several seconds. This was unlike any doctor-patient interchange I’d ever seen or experienced. Was he trying to make some kind of point? At first it seemed like it, but if there was a point, it never became clear. He just kept going and going.
My stress level was rising, but I took a deep breath and trusted that his approach, while unconventional, would come around to some sort of useful point or evaluation. But he just kept hammering away with a lecture about total calories and not listening to anything I said about what I was eating. And he still disregarded all the information I’d given him on the forms.
I noted my husband’s facial expression. He, too, seemed surprised by the doctor’s attitude as well, and later my husband told me that he found the doctor’s aggressiveness and underlying tone of anger shocking. My husband noted that he didn’t want to butt in and take away my agency to handle things. But he could also see how triggered I was getting and that the doctor was totally oblivious to the effect he was having on me.
Meanwhile, the doctor proceeded to continue with his tirade about how calories were all that mattered. He talked about some researcher on this who didn’t get the recognition he deserved, and how that researcher was bitter. And then the doctor declared that he, too, was bitter.
That stopped me in my tracks as it was a totally inappropriate comment to make to a patient. It might be true, and he might be entitled to his professional frustration. But it had nothing to do with this visit. And it was starting to come clear to me that whatever was operating in this appointment had very little to do with me. He came into this appointment clearly upset “and loaded for bear,” and I was the target.
It was also clear he didn’t seem to want to hear about me, or that I eat a low-carbohydrate diet. He just further demeaned me by going on another tirade about the amount of body fat people carry, no one values his input, and then launched into a further demeaning and confusing example involving crowded restaurants.
Are we done?
I’ve dealt with all kinds of doctors but never one that showed me so little respect, or even interest in hearing how I was doing. In the past I would have just endured it all then left the appointment. But it was finally coming clear that he was never going to get around to a coherent point. That’s when something in me snapped.
I clearly heard my inner voice suddenly jolting me out of my passivity with the thought, Why are you sitting here any longer? He is not respecting you. You don’t deserve this, and you don’t need to stay here another minute. Take charge!
That’s when I heard myself interrupt him and say, “Okay, So, lower calories. Are we done here?”
He stopped for a second, seemingly confused that I spoke, but then went back to spewing his bile around the room. Again, I cut him off, this time louder.
“Okay, so I have to just lower my calories. Now, we’re done, right?”
His expression finally showed he might be getting the point that he had crossed a line and I wasn’t having it. He backtracked slightly, but even then didn’t seem able to acknowledge what he’d done. He would say “I apologize, but…” and go down some other path that he felt was important to use as a bludgeon. Once he even pointed at the woman (who was silent this whole time, but had been fidgeting as she stood by the door) and said something along the lines that all this (his tirade) was a “performance for her”.
The tenor of the room did change slightly, so I tried to share that the reason I used the medications that affected my metabolism was to help with trauma. And I also shared that writing my memoir was therefore very stressful.
But he still wasn’t fully understanding. When I offered what I thought was reassurance that I was doing adequate self-care by working with a trauma therapist, he just brushed past that. Instead, he launched into a story about his “shrink” father who made his family’s life miserable, and how despite his father going through some kind of therapy that involved lying on a couch and exploring his actions, it only made his mother’s life worse.
I was speechless. First, I couldn’t believe a medical professional with years of experience was referring to another fellow health professional, a VALUED one, as a “shrink,” a term I despise. And his sharing his own obvious issues with his father and their family was highly inappropriate. It seemed he could have used some time with a therapist himself.
Before I could recover from my shock, my husband stepped in. He told me later that he could see the doctor was totally not “getting it” in terms of how serious my trauma issues were. And my husband was upset with how the doctor was treating me. So he said:
“She lives with a huge amount of stress… intense, lifelong, stress…every…single…day. It is decades of unending stress and abuse that my wife carries every day that she strives to heal from. The current stress about writing her memoir? It’s nothing compared to the misery going back to her infancy.”
His words triggered my decision to just lay it all out on the table. I sometimes don’t bring up my abuse background if I don’t think it is relevant. But at this point, I’d had enough.
“I lived through twenty-eight years of sexual, physical, and emotional abuse. I endured thousands of sexual assaults. Somehow I got out of that house, then I had to rebuild me from scratch. I have managed to thrive in life despite it. And so, at this point in life, I DON’T TAKE ANY SH-T FROM ANYBODY. So are we done?”
He just stared with his mouth open. The woman in the room looked deeply uncomfortable. And I think the lightbulb was finally starting to go off over the doctor’s head that he might have vastly mishandled this whole appointment. Even so, he still couldn’t stop himself, even if his tone was more measured and occasionally even conciliatory.
We ended the appointment, and he escorted us back to the door to the waiting room, saying several times that he would like to work with me and to come back in a few months.
Standing up to the bully
We both walked out of the building, reeling. I turned to my husband and said, “What the hell just happened in there?!”
It was clear to us both that whatever happened, nothing in that appointment had anything to do with me. He walked in there with a chip on his shoulder about something, and unloaded on me.
It took both of us the rest of the day to decompress, to try to make sense of what happened, and to recenter as best we could. My husband was so upset he had to write a “letter to never send” to the doctor, venting all his anger at how the doctor treated me. For once, I was actually glad to just focus on my memoir writing.
My husband later said he was so angry at the doctor and felt he showed me no empathy. He was obviously only interested in venting his professional bitterness.
But what I appreciated most was my husband’s other observation: “I was so proud of you in that moment that you stood up for yourself. Because for one of a very few times in your life, you stood up to a bully. And he was a bully.”
Right now, after taking time to think it all through, I am writing a letter to him privately. This is especially so after I read the “appointment notes” on the portal, notes that bore no resemblance to what took place in that office that day.
It won’t be a rant, but I will not let his totally unprofessional behavior go unaddressed. I will make it clear how out of line I felt he was, that his appointment notes were “fiction,” and pose a question about what his goal in medicine is if he is that bitter. Most importantly, he should never treat another patient like that again. If something was wrong that day, he should have cancelled my appointment. But there was no excuse for that behavior, and I will say so.
Will I ever return to this doctor? Probably not. But if I do, it will only be because I decide he has expertise that will benefit me. And ONLY on the condition that there will NEVER be a repeat of that visit’s performance. Because if there is, I am out the door for good.
So how do I know I have more work to do?
Yes, as I write, I can feel emotions shift in me. Some things relax and recede into the background. But there are other emotions that continue, unabated.
Grief, sorrow at abandonment, ache at not being loved, and…that biggest of ones still – rage. Both the rage of the child who carried that harm so long. And the adult outrage at what was done to me…what was TAKEN from me. I am angry that things were done TO me, not BY me, yet I pay the bill he left behind. There are huge costs, and I am rightfully furious. I’ll talk soon about those, and what it triggers even as I try to “let it go.”
But suffice to say right now that the anger still festers and surfaces in “proxy battles” – impatience when driving, feistiness to fight anyone who mistreats another, whatever. Each one of those “inept” drivers is really my father’s ghost.
And there is that part of me that still wants that one-on-one confrontation with my father or his ghost, adult to adult. That part that still wants “my pound of flesh” from him, even as I know it can’t happen…and it’s not the answer. In the moments I most want to lean on the horn, yell, and generally be an a–hole, the other thought that runs through my mind is the reminder: You cannot be an a–hole if you’re supposed to be a sage.
I know these emotions are normal to have, and they must run their course, helped by my therapist and writing this book. By embracing them with compassion and acceptance instead of shoving them away, I can eventually transform them, just like the changes already happening with some of my previous pain.
So yes, there is still a lot of work to do. There always will be. But time and effort do bring more and more healing. So as I write, I learn. Change. Grow. Heal…
So now back to my therapy work, and those “evolving” nightmares…
Note:
I am seeking financial support to complete my memoir, work with an editor, and make a visit to my home state for fact-checking. Your help would mean the world to me as I take this step toward healing and giving voice to my journey.
Please like, comment, and share this post to help spread the word. The link for my fundraiser is on GoFundMe. Thank you for your support.
Soul Mosaic 
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