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At my final meeting with him, accompanied by my friend, JC, I asked First Cardiologist why I was allowed to sleep during the catheterization. The hospital literature said that I will be able to watch the screen with the doctor. He said I was awake and talking but to forget what transpired I was given an amnesiac drug.
No denying he knows everything about three-inch long, quarter-inch wide slices of my body. No denying he recommended a good surgeon. But medical treatment is something I need to understand. Much of their work is perfectly comprehensible. After getting a second opinion I called him to thank him for bringing me this far. His appearance in my life forced me to decide to be the best patient I could be, but his work was done.
(This is not the place for detail, but in the back of my mind last winter was a medical intervention that became the family nightmare. My Dad’s last surgery was eagerly sold to the family by a surgeon; it was a terrible turn of events that removed him from conscious awareness of his family while he spent the last three weeks of his life on morphine, head in a clamp. Even with a Class A surgeon in my family, I believe, we will forever be cautious about that knife.)
Upon leaving the cardiologist’s office, JC and I agreed that his practice is from a different age - Mom’s in fact. But was I stepping into an abyss? Was I making too much of a fuss? And now what?
Next: Shaky Bridge Over Troubled Waters
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