I think Surgeons are amazing individuals. They spend many years (approximately 6) studying medicine just to become an intern, and then they still need to progress through to resident, registrar and eventually they become a consultant. Due to their incredible intelligence, which makes them a perfect candidate to become a surgeon in the first place, they often lack the "people skills" which can make them appear arrogant and disinterested to us "lay" people. So when I think about it like this I can understand why the stereotypical surgeon can appear so intimidating.
For anyone who has not been to see a specialist I will try to fill you in on my experience of seeing a surgeon towards the start of my hip troubles. Time in these appointments is of the essence so everything that was done in his little office was done for a reason. The specialist initially looked at the reports and scans and then complete his own physical assessment. He then had a few questions which he expected a clear brief answer to. I'm not sure if his room had some certain force field but as soon as I walked into his office I found that my words did not follow me in.. Even when asked the simple question "do you have pain?" I found myself taking the longest approach to provide a very vague answer... saying something along the lines of "well I don't really get pain, you see I have pain but I would consider that my normal pain, so if you are asking if I get pain that is unbearable I would say no, but if you are asking if I have pain at all then my answer would be yes". You can appreciate why my specialists didn't ask me too many questions!!
The other tricky component to an appointment is making sure you leave with all the information that you need and therefore before going to the specialist appointment I made a mental note of what I wanted to find out. However on this occasion I still left the appointment only to get to the car park to think "darn I forgot to ask..." Plus that's not even going into my thoughts on trying to ask questions in a smart way so that I don't sound "dumb" to my surgeon!
So now that you know the goings on in my head during an average specialist appointment I hope you can appreciate how petrified I was when I attended my first joint clinic. After seeing the initial specialist and being told that I have a very "unique hip" I was invited to attend a group style consultation at the Frankston Hospital. This is when many surgeons would be in the one place at the same time providing a great opportunity to discuss my case.
When I walked into the room there was about 30 people sitting and staring at me. From the looks of it most appeared to be surgeons (older men, some who I recognised from my orthopaedic physiotherapy placement at the hospital the previous year) and there was also some other individuals who I assumed to be surgeons in training and other allied health professionals including physiotherapists. I was asked to strip down to my underwear and complete different tasks such as walking, mini squats, standing on one leg etc so that they could look at my biomechanics. They also took me through a hip range of motion assessment. While standing there, still in my underwear, the surgeons talked amongst themselves about what they would do if they were my specialist. They spoke about me as if I was not in the room with comments like "She should never run again, this hip is the worst I have seen for her age". From this session the general consensus was to do nothing and wait until I was older to get a new hip.
Many years later in 2011 I attended my second joint clinic under care of David Young at Melbourne orthopaedic group where a group of 12 of Australia's best hip surgeons and a "guru" from overseas were invited to discuss my management. I was much more prepared for what to expect but despite this and the fact that I understood more of the surgeons' conversation I still felt that I was not included in the decision making process and I had very little time to ask questions or part take in the session.
It was not long after this session when I met Mr Jit Balakumar while he was presenting a lecture for the Australian Physiotherapy Association about hip dysplasia. During this session I found out that Jit was an orthopaedic surgeon with extensive expertise in lower limb surgery and that he specialises in joint preservation surgeries of the hip including the Peri-acetabular osteotomy. I thought to myself it couldn't hurt going to meet him for another opinion. So I booked my appointment for November 2011.
After all these years of appointments with specialists and also due to the fact that I am now much older (and therefore wiser?!?) I no longer find the specialist appointments as intimidating instead I find them very interesting.
My top hints for if you ever have to see a specialist:
1. Write down notes before you go, include any questions that you want to ask
2. Try not to feel rushed or pressured. Remember you are the surgeons priority while in that room so feel free to ask questions even if you think they will sound dumb.
3. Ask for a copy of the report which the specialist will send to your referring doctor. This can help you keep track of what was said and decided in the appointment allowing you to stay in control of your health management.
