The medics I see walking around the cancer centre seem relaxed and readily make eye contact, and I note that the only doctor I meet who wears a white coat is my GP Oncologist. I have to meet with her every two weeks during chemo, but I won’t tell you her name; I’ll simply refer to her here as Dr Bitch.
It looks like she’s wearing her coat as a symbol of her hard-won status in a male-dominated, hierarchical system that demands perfection. Her arrogance and lack of empathy match the appearance. I hear shocking stories from others, so my experience of her is not just my projection onto the perfectly blank surface of her white coat.
Her first advice for me is a disdainful; “Don’t lie around on the couch too much; fatigue begets fatigue. and Chemo-Brain? Well, we all get forgetful with stress.” When I dare to ask her questions, each one appears to irritate her more as she frowns and tugs closed her coat. She eventually blows; “I really don’t have the expertise to answer these questions. They are more for a Medical Oncologist.”
“OK,” I reply testily, “then I won’t keep bringing them to you, but who can I ask?”
I feel I should have compassion for this woman. She is being put right in the frontline, with just a file of notes for defence. (And that white coat of armour). Her job apparently is just to order the next right dose of chemo based on my bloodwork, weight, blood pressure, side effects, maybe general morale, but I kinda doubt it. She’s reporting on my vital signs, not my quality of life.
I notice at the top of my file, it says ‘Doesn’t want to wear gown.’ I can’t help feeling like I’m back at school and seeing in my report: ‘Gets distracted by her friends. Should try harder’. But it’s probably just a note to let the nurses know not to offer me one because I prefer to remain dressed as me for these appointments, not humiliated by being in costume along with the White-Coated Doctor from Hell.
I tell her of my resolve to reduce the lumps to discrete areas removable by a lumpectomy. “No, no.” she quickly corrects, “You need the full double mastectomy with lymph clearance so we know that we’ve got every last microscopic cancer cell, with good margins. It only takes one cancer cell,” she quite animatedly elaborates like someone describing a favourite horror movie, “to be able to proliferate and cause a recurrence or metastases.”
My mind races to theories that say we all have cancer cells in us and that certain environmental or internal stressors create the right conditions for them to grow in number. That all they are is rogue cells which are very good at organizing themselves, taking up home in their weakened host, feeding off it and trashing the house as it crumbles down around their ears. Not such intelligent life. But then look at us humans, we’re no different really, are we?
My attempts at relationship with Dr Bitch end the day she comes barrelling in saying; “I’ve booked your next sonography. Your blood work and heart look fine, so I’ve ordered this week’s chemo doses and let Radio-Oncology know we’re on track for them in March, after recovery from surgery. So everything’s running smoothly and taken care of.”
For her maybe. None of this feels like “running smoothly” to me. I’m holding out for the lumpectomy plus radiation which research shows is equally as successful as a full double mastectomy, while she persists in telling me that this is not what it says in my Treatment Protocol. “And look at it this way, Emma: You can get a fresh, new pair of perky ones!”
Did she really just say that to me?!
THESE ARE MY BREASTS! THEY ARE NOT A RACK THAT’S SAGGING AND NEEDS TRADING FOR SCAR-STRIPED, NIPPLE-LESS, SENSATION-FREE, INFLATED DOMES OF FILLER! GET OUT OF MY FUCKING SIGHT!
That is, of course, what I want to scream at her, but characteristically I just seethe in silence.
In December, as the last of the worst chemo is checked off the calendar, I quite innocently ask her,
“My right breast feels quite different now, so when will I be getting breast imaging to see how well the lumps have been reduced by chemotherapy?”
She has her back to me, washing her hands at the sink, as I return my woolly hat to my bald head. “Oh no, that’s not on the Protocol.” she says, her words dripping with disdain, “You wouldn’t believe how many people ask that question; like men who’ve done chemo for rectal cancer and want to check before surgery that it’s really still there or something!”
What a bitch of a doctor!
I let her leave, then walk to the desk and ask to get a second opinion.