My Left Boob

Yesterday, about ten minutes before I was scheduled to meet with the President of the N.C. Medical Board and its lead attorney, I got a phone call.

I had a mammogram on Monday - a "routine" screen scheduled as a follow-up to a bit of a scare six months ago. As background, I've had on-and-off left-sided breast pain for years . . . part and parcel of living with fibrocystic breast disease. I've been getting yearly mammograms since my late thirties. I've not borne children and there is a family history of breast cancer (translation: I'm "high-risk"). Lately, my left boob has been exquisitely tender and very sore.

There was an anomaly on one of the scans, and I needed to come in for more pictures (and since they know I travel for a living, they wanted to get me in this week).

It's happened before. It's always a sick-in-the-pit-of-the-stomach, very scary feeling.

In the interest of full disclosure, I advised the gentlemen I met with that I'd gotten this phone call right before walking in the room. I wanted them to know I was scared.

But NOT of them.

I did tell them that perhaps the most frightening thing about the possibility of breast cancer was that I might not be able to work. And, after eleven years of what the Board's lead attorney called a "perfect storm" of everything that could go wrong in medical-legal oversight going wrong, I have no financial reserves. It is only in the last year than I have been able to get on more of a fiscal even keel.

I have no reserves because after I was abandoned by all of the regulatory agencies I trusted to have my back when I answered that phone call in the middle of the night in January 1998, and was forced to turn to the North Carolina legal system for vindication and restitution, I was swindled by liars and cheats.

The thing about that is that a whole lot of state & federal money was spent to bring me home . . . and these particular liars and cheats are employed by a "non-profit" hospital - ergo they should not be able to get away with lying and cheating. Indeed, this whole ugly mess would seem, to the average bloke, to a matter for the North Carolina Attorney General's office (and/or the U.S. Attorney).

But so far, the Attorneys Generals on whose watch this happened (that would be Mike Easley, followed by Roy Cooper) have taken a dive.

Randolph Hospital executives knowingly and repeatedly lied under Oath (about the "confidentiality" of financial information on the public record) because, contrary to Steve Eblin's learned opinion, good Pediatricians are worth a whole lot more than "a dime-a-dozen" . . . and when you maliciously take the hammer to their practices and careers, paying the piper can be an expensive proposition.

Unless, of course, you lie.

I digress. The meeting, I think, went well. I went alone. The message was delivered. And because I think the meeting went well, I'm not going to blog about the details. But I will say that I think, for the first time in eleven years, someone was really listening, and I have some small hope that something might finally be done (1) to address my situation specifically and (2) address the more global problem of a Medical Board and a state government/legislature that does not protect or defend the duties they require of licensed physicians.

And if they don't do something (very soon), well, I hear there's a lot of out-of-work, hungry lawyers out there. I'm at the point where I'm beyond ready to dance.

After the meeting, I drove straight from Raleigh to Greensboro (like a banshee-let-out-of-hell) to get the repeat pictures of my left boob.

When I got there, I was surprised to hear that the problem was actually with my right boob (even more scary because most of the time breast cancer is not associated with pain). The pictures were taken. And once again, it was a false alarm. Afterwards, I went to Four Seasons to try and walk it all off, but I did not stay long.

They've closed the Disney Store, you see. I think I knew that. But I had forgotten.

I got home last night emotionally drained and physically exhausted. I fell into bed without locking the door or setting the alarm.

But at least I slept well.