The doctor fired for having cancer speaks up

I recently reported on Stephanie Waggel, the doctor fired by a prestigious U.S. hospital for getting cancer (story also the Washington Post). In a transcription of her whistleblower video, Stephanie describes how she nearly died due to obstruction of medical care: It started during my intern year of residency. Which, bizarrely, was the happiest year of my life. And all my friends are like, “You’re an intern, you’re not supposed to be happy, something is clearly wrong with you.” But, I’m like, “I’m out! I’m doing psychiatry. This is what I’ve always wanted to do.” I absolutely loved it. I had so much energy, and I planned my outfits weeks in advance and had themes. And I had all these lectures for the medical students, and it was just everything that I always wanted, and it was completely delightful. I started having this pain, and it was waking me up from my sleep. And I really didn’t have time (because I was an intern) to get it worked up. But it was getting really, really bad. I was feeling really sick a lot and something had to be wrong so I really had to push to go to these appointments. For example, one time I went to get an MRI, but the MRI machine broke and then I had to go again the next day. And then when I told my team and my attending the MRI machine broke, they made some joke about my weight. And I was like, “No it’s actually cause there’s some helium tank in it that broke.” They were not letting me go. It was awful, and I’m like, ...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: Journals (General) Authors: Tags: Physician Cancer Source Type: blogs