So you get some not so great news from your doctor. What is your first response? Are you sure those are my results? Is there any other way to check this? What next? I have learned the next thing to do (after surfing the internet and convincing myself my situation is terminal) is to pick up the phone and call the doctor back and rationally discuss the results after I have digested them.
I think when a doctor delivers the bad news, your brain hears one bad word and goes into overload and shuts down. Nothing registers and you blindly agree to whatever they say because you can't comprehend the impact. Often this news is delivered in an inconvenient place - on the phone while you are in a place you can't talk or have no reception, or when you are unexpectedly sitting in a little exam room dressed in a 'Dr Seymour Butz' gown and you are feeling a little exposed.
Based on few thousand experiences with this type of news, I have now learned to listen to what they tell me, get a copy of the pathology report and then research the crap out of it (and convince myself that its horrible) and stew over it for a few days and then call my doctor back to discuss it rationally and talk about options. This week I need to call my ankle doctor back to learn about options. With lymphedema I can't be on crutches so what's with the cast after surgery, can it be a walking cast? I need to get my two cents worth in. Also my goal is to lose some weight so how can I continue to be active while in a cast? (No I won't go for long walks in a walking cast but I certainly don't want to sit on my fat butt for the duration.)
Either way I will have a nice rational discussion ahead of time when I can talk and I have phone reception so I feel calm and in control.
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