This week, I read an article published in my local newspaper, about an appalling experience a woman endured during an investigative medical appointment. The polio survivor who'd found a lump in her breast, was treated more as a curiosity than a frightened patient.
Susan Turner related a heart wrenching tale of an x-ray technician, a nurse and a doctor who ignored her fear and anxiety about the current condition of her breast: Rather than allay her fears, they peppered her with insensitive questions about the polio she’d acquired as a child, and chastised her for having not received a polio vaccine, something that wasn’t even available until two years after she’d already been stricken.
Though Turner had lived most of her life valiantly rising above the challenges and visible reminders her polio left behind, she refused to allow her disability to keep her from fulfilling her potential and helping others along the way. That said, her recent personal fear was real: She had watched her own mother endure 14 years of cancer, chemotherapy, nausea, and hair loss.
Mammograms can be traumatic and painful at the best of times. I personally had an unfortunate experience that left me marked and bruised at the hands of an insensitive technician. I cannot imagine how much worse the experience might have been if I’d already been worried about a possible diagnosis of cancer.
Turner, showed great courage and tenacity in coming forward about the unprofessional treatment she received during what should have been a compassionate and competent breast cancer screening and diagnosis. Her straight forward condemnation of the doctor’s inappropriately timed curiosity about her childhood illness – “Stop with the unnecessary questions. What about my breast?” – had me cheering, Bravo!
Susan Turner states, “Polio is in my history but it’s not who I am”. She is, as the Washington Post credits, an advocate who has, “Spent her career working with disenfranchised groups, including people with physical disabilities and those infected and affected by HIV/AIDS."
Too often, people are judged by their outward appearance rather than on their abilities or their accomplishments. Three self-absorbed health care professionals made this mistake with Susan Turner. I thank her for bringing this failure to provide compassionate medical care to the attention of medical professionals and lay people everywhere.
We all needed to know.
Link to - The Washington Post article
Link to - The Hamilton Spectator article
Link to - Pulse - Voices from the Heart of Medicine article
