My cardiologist: "the devil himself?"

Letters to the Editor, Victoria Times Colonist, Wednesday, June 24, 2009

‘Dress codes in hospital should respect patients’

Dear Editor,

'In May, I had to stay in the Royal Jubilee Hospital cardiology ward. At that time they decided to do a cardio conversion. Then in walks the devil himself to do the task. He wore tight jeans, a shirt of some ungodly print and had curly hair hanging down past his bum. Not OK. I am a 66-year-old woman with a serious heart condition and I just wanted to get up and run.

Whatever happened to dress code? A white coat and clean hands gives a person a feeling of confidence. Is it some kind of infringement on these people’s rights? One seldom knows if they are talking to the janitor or head nurse. I feel I deserve better than that in the hospital."

Sincerely,

Mrs. M.A., Victoria

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Letters to the Editor, Victoria Times Colonist,
Friday, June 26, 2009

Dear Editor,

Re: ‘Dress codes in hospital should respect patients’, June 24, 2009

"I’m pretty sure that 'the devil himself' — as the letter-writer described the doctor who helped her in cardiology wearing tight blue jeans, a “shirt of some ungodly print” and long curly hair — was the same cardiologist who saved my life a year ago.

Two weeks earlier, I’d been sent home from that same hospital's Emergency department by an older, white-coat-wearing, officious, über-confident, old-school kind of physician whom your letter-writer would have certainly preferred.

This white-coat clad doctor did not introduce himself, did not make eye contact and made it clear that I was wasting his and his colleagues’ valuable time.

He told me with absolute certainty and the superior tone that comes from decades of wearing white coats that I merely had acid reflux (despite presenting with textbook heart attack symptoms like crushing chest pain, sweating, nausea and pain radiating down my left arm).

Then he sent me home, feeling extremely embarrassed for having made a fuss over nothing, with instructions to go see my family doctor, who would prescribe antacids for my indigestion.

Fast forward two weeks of increasingly debilitating symptoms (but hey! at least I knew it wasn’t my heart!) until I finally presented myself again in Emergency in extremely serious condition.

This time “the devil himself” was called in, and immediately administered a 30-second non-invasive cardiac assessment test*** (pressing on my abdomen with both hands while observing my abnormal jugular pulse) and, after checking my EKG and cardiac blood enzyme test results, announced that I had “significant heart disease.”

I was taken from E.R. to O.R. immediately. Later, when three cardiology residents came to examine me as I lay recuperating in Intensive Care, I learned they had all come to Victoria just to study under the cardiovascular mentorship of “the devil himself.”

I’ll take “the devil” any day - “ungodly printed” shirts and all."

Sincerely,

Carolyn Thomas, Victoria

© Copyright 2009 The Victoria Times Colonist


** NOTE ** The brief diagnostic procedure that my cardiologist performed is called an abdominojugular test (previously known as hepatojugular reflux). Jugular veins bring de-oxygenated blood from the head back to the heart. Healthy people undergoing an abdominojugular test will have a temporary increase in the internal jugular pulse for just a heartbeat or two before the venous pressure returns back to normal. But a skilled physician can observe in the sick patient’s jugular vein and earlobe pulse the characteristic double flicker of a sustained elevated jugular venous pressure – a sign of active or impending heart failure.

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PS The cardiologist described here is of East Indian descent - sadly, my hospital pals and I are pretty sure Mrs. M.A.'s objections were largely racially-based, e.g. "these people", her insinuation that his hands were not clean, and her apparent confusion between him and one of the hospital janitors, most of whom are also East Indian.

XOXOXO

http://www.myheartsisters.org