My female oncologist from the Mayo Clinic who was likely on the spectrum seemed off-put by my questioning attitude about my proposed breast cancer surgery and treatment. I had done copious research and had quite a number of studies and pictures to show me what I should expect from a superior surgeon and treatment options.

So, on my second meeting with her I asked if she could show me pictures of her recovered patients. She hesitated and didn't want to. Upon my insistence, she showed me a few. Most looked mismatched and some looked terrible with one small high breast, the other long and low. I told her I didn't think this was acceptable results for a top-tier surgeon at Mayo's and did not want this result.

She seemed insulted and then said that it shouldn't matter what I looked like after she did my double mastectomy and reconstruction, only that she 'got all the cancer'.

She then said to me, "your skin is old, you know". That comment made me laugh out loud. I have extremely nice skin for my age, and most people think I am a good 20 years younger than I am. Plus, my skin age would have no bearing on things anyway.

Each time I had to meet with her prior to the surgery, she would argue with me and make some sort of insult. Later, another doc who worked there said she was really a very good 'technical surgeon' but had terrible bedside manner. He said she was like that with his wife who had cancer and to just ignore her. When I was recovering from surgery I was pretty sick and having super low blood pressure that was making the alarm bells go off. One time I looked at the ringing machine and my BP was so low, I yelled at the nurse who ran in and said I was having vasovagal syncope. The next day the doc came to check in on me and I asked her about the issue following surgery. She said, well, you have high blood pressure, so...?!

Huh?

Not only do I not have high blood pressure, but it runs low. So my thought was, did she mistakenly put medicine to reduce my blood pressure on the med sheet for the nurse to administer which caused me to drop way too low? Was this on purpose, or an actual mistake?

She also told me that she found cancer in two of my lymph nodes and so 'she just decided to remove them all!' This meant she took 17 total. It turns out only two were infected. The rest were removed for no reason, causing me to have issues with my arm aching and holding fluid forever after.

Reckless? Pro-Active? Evil? Vindictive? Better to be safe than sorry? I can't know.