Boston Medical Center medical note

January 29, 2015

That's most of the note that the doctor who saw me today at Boston Medical Center wrote about the visit.

The Past Medical History is what shows up in every medical record about me at Boston Medical Center; she didn't write it.

I had already rescheduled the appointment once so that I could have a female physician.  The reason that I did that was that I'd already had an ECG done by a medical assistant at the primary care office, and I knew that having an ECG meant lying on my back for several minutes with my chest totally exposed:  no bra.  I knew that I'd have another ECG at Cardiology, and I also didn't know what else the exam would demand of me.

I did have another ECG today.  Two women administered it.  One seemed to be training the other, which I didn't mind that much except that, when it was over, they stood next to me talking while I was still lying on my back with the hospital gown totally open.  In the midst of their discussion of the process of doing the ECG, they had forgotten that I might like to be told that I could cover myself.

I finally asked "Are you done with this," indicating my half-naked state.  I was told "Yes," and I closed the hospital nightgown.  They hadn't asked me to remove my pants.

When they left the room, I sat in the patient chair next to the desk, with the nightgown tied in the front.  After several minutes, a man entered the room and said "Hello, Ms. Kochman."  I asked him who he was.  He said he was a male resident who would be working with the attending doctor.  I said that I didn't want to talk to him.  He left the room.

After that, he and the female, attending physician entered the room together.  She seemed angry.  She said "This is a teaching hospital, and this is the way it's done here."  She said a few other things along the same lines, all in an angry and admonishing tone of voice.  She finally stopped talking and it seemed that she was waiting for a response from me.  I didn't say anything.  She prompted me for a response.  I said "You're telling me that this is the way it's done here."  She said, angrily, "If you want, we can do it a different way, but this is the way it's done."  I said "I changed the appointment so that I could have a female doctor.  I also was just lying on that table with my gown open while the staff talked, so if there's another way to do this, that's how I'd like to do it."

She let the male resident leave.  Then she angrily sat at the desk, impatiently moving the medication list which I was told to have for the appointment to another part of the desk, toward me and away from her.  She said, angrily, "Who sent you?"  I told her that I was referred by primary care at Boston Medical a Center.  I had my phone in my hands, because I was taking pictures of the screensaver right before she walked in with the resident.  I started to record the conversation, then set the phone on my book bag, all without telling her that I was recording the conversation but also without taking particular care to hide what I was doing.

She was polite for the rest of the appointment.  However, the note that she wrote in my chart does not mention that the resident with whom I refused to speak was male.  It doesn't mention my concern that I was left with my chest exposed after the ECG was done, until I asked if it was all right to close the gown.  Also, the next thing that the note does is remind everyone who might read it of almost every psychiatric diagnosis that I have had at Boston Medical Center, particularly the diagnoses that have to do with reality perception and paranoia.

Copyright, with noted exceptions, L. Kochman, January 29, 2015 @ 1:31 p.m.