I am a breast cancer survivor and author of “Don’t Wait – Our Full-Time RV Journey Through Breast Cancer”. I felt compelled to write a series of blog posts about the breast cancer journey from the patient’s perspective. Over the next few posts I’ll be tackling topics I feel are important to the breast cancer patient. From the breast surgeon, to well-meaning friends and family, to a day in the life of a breast cancer survivor (me), I want to shed light on the reality of breast cancer. Just because I’ve recovered from surgery, that doesn’t mean I’m done. First up is this letter to the breast surgeon.
This letter to the surgeon isn’t based on my experience, because I was truly blessed to have an amazing surgeon and team. No, this letter is in response to so many who have not been so blessed. A good doctor/patient relationship is so important and so is empathy.
Dear Breast Surgeon,
Please try to remember that I am scared. I’ve just gone through my regular mammogram and received the call to do the follow-up. After the follow-up, the radiologist wanted to do an ultrasound.
The nurse navigator said that based on the ultrasound, I needed to come back for a biopsy and to meet with you, the breast surgeon.
My family and I are scared. We know nothing about breast cancer, the type, all the different acronyms that come with it, the kind of surgery that I need to choose—none of it. All we know is that I’ll be having a biopsy after our visit.
You are the person with all the answers to questions we don’t even know to ask yet. You are also the person I am supposed to trust with my life if I require surgery.
At this stage, I need you to be caring and compassionate. I haven’t even met you yet, but that is what I need you to be as I sit on the exam table waiting for you to do a very personal exam to see if you can feel the small tumor that the radiologist saw on my imaging.
What I want is for you to treat me like a person and not a number. I’m sure you’ve had many patients, and we are all different. But I can tell you this, we all want you to show us empathy—because we are all scared.
This may seem like an everyday occurrence to you, doctor. But it’s not for us— your patients. We are terrified that the biopsy results will come back positive for some type of cancer that we don’t yet understand.
Then, when this does indeed happen, we are told not to google anything. So we don’t. We have our list of questions ready when you call to tell us the results. Because, for some of us, we find out the results on our patient portal before you call us.
What we expect from you is that you will take the time, either by phone or during our surgical consult, to answer them. Please remember—we are terrified. You are the person who can calm our fears, answer our questions, and explain our options in terms we can understand.
Most of all—respect our treatment options and decisions. If we choose to have a bilateral mastectomy with aesthetic flat closure even if we have only one small tumor, respect our decision.
And here’s why. By now, I would hope that you would know enough about me, the patient, to know how I want to live my life, what my goals are, and what is important to me. See, these are the questions you should be asking me.
Why should you, the doctor, listen to me, the patient? After all, I’m not the one who spent years in medical school. I am, however, the one who is coming to you because of your years in medical school and training. My hope is that during those years, you also had training on how to be caring and compassionate.
The doctor/patient relationship is so important to the patient. I would hope it is important to the doctor as well.
Thank you for taking the time to read this letter.
Sincerely,
The patient you haven’t yet met
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