Next Time, I'll Request a Veterinary Surgeon

[queerbychoice]

So, I searched Google News for news articles involving skin cysts. And I found an article about how much easier cyst removal is with laser surgery instead of a scalpel, how it causes less pain and less swelling and is all over in only a few minutes . . . and how wonderful it is that this laser surgery is now becoming available even to dogs, since it's already been available to humans for the past 30 years.

And I just spent an hour yesterday getting carved up with a scalpel.

Comments

[chisparoja.livejournal.com]

Yes the first thing I thought when I read your story was how insane it was that in California of all places they are still using scalpels for removing cysts. :( I so wish you would change your clinic.... actually your entire insurance.

~chisparoja

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I can't change my insurance; it's what my employer chooses to buy for me.

[chisparoja.livejournal.com]

That sounds like a very good reason to get a new job. :p

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

I don't think any other insurance would be better. Possibly another clinic would be better, but I think my insurance is one of the better ones. As a kid I had Kaiser, which gave me no choice at all of what hospital system to use, whereas now I have Blue Shield, which at least lets me choose between several hospital systems if I fill out a bunch of paperwork and wait a month.

But I don't think the problem is really with the clinic either. I think there's a mix of good and bad doctors in any clinic and this particular clinic happens to have bad ones in the surgery department. Their other departments might be just fine, and I don't plan to be using the surgery department any further. (The surgery department is tiny and has only two doctors in it; I think they only ever perform minor surgeries, and the major surgeries have to go to a real hospital. Probably the only surgeons who ever would end up working at any mere tiny clinic would be bad ones.)

[sankta.livejournal.com]

'Dr. Woodley moves over the chest area where the cyst lies just below the skin and begins to burn in a circular incision.'

Was your cyst very superficial? Because unless they've had advances in laser surgery, or my doctors have all formed a conspiracy for the purpose of deceiving helen, laser surgery is only really used for things that don't go very deep. One of my doctors was considering sending me to have one of my moles done that way, but even my mole went so deep that a scalpel was necessary to dig it out.

The surgeons who work at a mere tiny clinic can't be too bad, or they wouldn't be working even there. Also, it's much more likely that they don't like the stress of larger surgeries, or the stress of very long operations, or the stress of having a patient under general anesthesia, or the faster pace of a larger facility. My oral surgeon is a wonderful person who is very good at his job and works in a small town because he prefers surgeries that last less than four hours, and surgeries where the patient is under local anesthetic. My general anesthetic surgery involved less of my mouth than the one under local, but the one under local I recovered from in a few days, and the one under general, which should have been easier, took weeks. It also involved three times as many people and a longer time frame than the same surgery would have meant under local anesthetic. I can easily see why a surgeon would want to avoid getting complicated cases very often, especially one who's getting a bit older, or wants more time to spend with hir family or something. One of my father's co-workers is married to an anesthesiologist, and by all accounts she's very good at her job, but she works at a major Seattle hospital and the stress of being responsible for knocking out people who've been brought in after emergencies or who are having major surgery that could kill them is really stressful for her. Not all people thrive on that kind of pressure, and she'd probably like to eventually move to a smaller practice that does voluntary surgeries.

Of course, they could also just be horrible people, but there are plenty of reasons a surgeon would work in a smaller clinic.

I love my dentist. She's a wonderful woman. I just wanted to mention that.

[queerbychoice.livejournal.com]

Okay, I did not know this about laser surgery. It was attached to the underside of my skin, but it was big so it did go deep.

Can I have your dentist? I'm in the market for a new one. I need her to move to Sacramento though.

[kalte.livejournal.com]

Yes, but you have to occasionally give her little cards or extra flowers if you grow flowers as thanks for her amazing sweetness even after her husband left her in a messy messy way, and if you forget to show up to an appointment and don't call first, you're required by law to give her a cookie.

I'll get a big box to mail her in.

[deadinmotion.livejournal.com]

more appropriately:

that is why you should orchestrate a revolution that gives quality health coverage to all people of the nation, like most industrialized countries do.

of course neither option, in retrospect, is really viable.