Being a Bad Patient Can Save Your Life

This article should be a "keeper" for everyone!!! I have had to be my own advocate several times in hospital situations, being insistent and a "pain in the neck" -- but it does pay off. When I was in a teaching hospital for a delicate throat operation, I wrote out instructions to my doctor and signed them -- saying he was the only one I would allow to do the surgery...no students should touch me and I wanted as small an incision as possible. When I was in the operating room I told my doctor and all in attendance, "My voice is as important to me as Barbra Streisand's is to her--so pretend I am Barbra Streisand." And I said it without a smile, so they knew I meant it. One of the students complained to me after the operation that "the incision was too small for us to see what he was doing -- we wanted him to make it bigger." I wrote to the hospital about that student's comment to me -- and to my doctor, explaining that a patient is not a lab rat. Personally, I try to stay away from hospitals as much as possible.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/10/02/ep.evan.handler.patient.advocate/index.html