Apparently I’m a jackass and a bonehead

As of last night, all the women in my world are mad at me. By the end of the day today, no doubt, all the women in the entire world will be mad at me.

Why, you ask?

A lapse of biopsy etiquette on my part. You see, yesterday’s post was damn near real-time. I started writing it immediately after it happened. The punch biopsy was just before lunch and my cheek was so numb I was afraid I’d bite myself if I started eating. And I wanted to capture the smoke-snake image in words while it was still dancing across my retina.

The entry done, minutes before my first afternoon patient, I quickly posted it to the internet and got on with my day.

I did not, however, call my wife first.

Or my mother.

Or my sisters, my niece, my mother-in-law, my gal friends, my female editors, my lady colleagues, my woman associates, my girl fans, my mistress, or my maid. OK, I made up that last part. I don’t have a maid.

So I’m a bit unpopular right now.

But this does pose a legitimate question of medical ethics for patients. Who do you tell what, and when do you tell them? Right now we know nothing. Why worry people? Of course, blogging about it lets the cat out of the bag and isn’t helping my argument… I confess, I always forget that many of my loved ones read my blog. My bad. But this is still a question patients have to wrestle with every day. And one I don’t think that we, as a society, talk about enough.

Now back to all the pissed-off women. In my own defense, it’s not like Debbie was totally out of the loop like the time I had all the symptoms of a heart attack and drove myself to the ER only to come home hours later with a bouquet of flowers, pills, reams of instructions, and missing patches of chest hair from the EKG. This time she was the one who insisted that I get a medical opinion about it.

And it’s not like she stumbled across the post by accident. I sent her an email telling her to check it out. I guess she expected the doctor to say it was nothing to worry about. It never occurred to her I might be getting a same-day biopsy.

She’s freaking the fuck out. And she’s pissed. And she’s worried. It would be kind of sweet if it didn’t come with all the insults and foul language and flying dishes.

Me? I don’t know what to feel. But I do know I don’t like one other aspect all too common in modern medicine: waiting. Now, you all know I have a well-documented (but currently medicated and controlled) eBay addiction. But eBay stresses me out as much as it makes me happy. Waiting to see if I’ve won or lost can put me in a near catatonic state. And even if I win, I hate waiting for the damn delivery. If I want something, I want it now. Not in two weeks. Not next week. Not tomorrow. Not this evening. Not in an hour. I want it NOW.

Of course in this arena of medicine, waiting is just a fact. There is no speeding it up. And there is no point in letting your mind run down dark alleys while you are waiting. It will be what it will be, and I’m not thinking about it until I know what it is I need to think about.

But to preserve my sanity, like avoiding eBay, I am so avoiding entering dermoid cyst or melanoma into a search engine.

At least until the biopsy report comes back.

Instead, today, I’m spending my time at online florists. Sorry ladies.