Doctor, doctor, give me the news

Several years ago, I had an emergency appendicectomy. I had been feeling horrible all day and had to be rushed to the emergency room. I was in so much pain, I’m not even sure how I made it home. When I got to the ER, the doctor looked me, pushed on my abdomen and diagnosed the problem right away. He told my wife that if we had waited much longer, I could have been looking at a burst appendicitis.

In the middle of the night, I remember being rather groggy from the medicine they had me on, but I kept waking up with the various doctors and nurses checking up on me. The medicine didn’t matter, I’ve never been able to sleep in a strange place.

Image by Pixabay.

Doctor, give it to me straight!

At one point, I vaguely recall looking up in my groggy state and saw the on-call doctor looking at something on the monitor. In my drugged up state, I asked him if I was going to die. He laughed and said that he had an emergency appendectomy just like me the previous summer and that I would be feeling better in no time.

If I wasn’t going to die, I figured that I would take the opportunity to tell the doctor that if I had a choice of Ironman, Superman, or Captain Jack Sparrow from The Pirates of the Caribbean visiting me in the hospital, I would prefer Ironman. He was taken back by my question, but said that he didn’t know of visits like that happening, but he thought that was a good choice. (A few weeks earlier, I had a watched a news story on volunteers at a hospital in Florida or somewhere who regularly dress up as superheroes to cheer up the children’s ward of the hospital. I’m not sure how that came into my mind, but somehow it did.)

Image by Pixabay

In good hands

In any event, the doctor’s reassurances made a difference for me. I was able to go back to sleep and sleep through the rest of the night.

A good doctor makes a huge difference. I write about a not-so-great experience today in my post, Proving the experts wrong!, on the Heart of the Matter. I write about how our son was first diagnosed as being dyslexic and the horrible way the doctor and her team gave us the news and temporarily stealing our hope and optimism.

Let me know what you think? What’s the best experience you’ve ever had with a doctor or medical personnel?

Related Link:

Proving the Experts Wrong!

On The Heart of The Matter