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**Note: This is my first post using Blogsy, an iPad app -- hopefully everything works OK!!**

 

This morning, I had to go to the doctor's office for a simple blood test. I was fasting and hadn't had any coffee so was a little on edge. The lab tech didn't help when she looked over my file and loudly asked, when was the last time you took your lithium?

To begin with, this question was quite annoying because I haven't taken lithium for the past five months, and the office is entirely electronic so they really should have been able to figure that out. Second, the woman said it loudly, audibly, so that two other nurses came over to help her figure out what was going on. There were two other patients in the lab that could see me. The other two nurses came up to me and one of them bent over to be eye to eye with me (I was sitting down) and said, "When. Was. The. Last. Time. You. Took. Lithium" as though the medication treats severe mental retardation and my dose clearly was not high enough. She also said the word lithium just as loudly as the other words so that for the second time, everyone in the busy office could have heard it. I told her, not quite as loudly but certainly as clearly, that I had not taken it in four months.

Perhaps because people who have been on lithium in the past are not trustworthy, the lab tech decided to call my doctor's assistant (at this point, the tourniquet was already on my arm, so I wasn't particularly comfortable and/or happy) and ask her, loudly and publicly, why I was saying that I didn't take lithium anymore. Note the phrasing: she didn't ask to verify whether or not I was taking it. She asked why I was saying something. Talk about presumed guilt. Finally, the physician's assistant verified my "claim," as it was called, and the tech, satisfied that my psychiatric health was being managed in some other way, preceded to draw blood.

I obviously complained to the doctor's office (incidentally, I have been a patient there for over ten years), but I was livid. Had the tech not undergone any training whatsoever? Could she not sense the increased irritation and anger in my voice when I asked her to maybe keep her voice down? Did she really need four of her coworkers to verify something that a patient was saying? In the worst case, she could have not tested my lithium level, and I would have had to come in again to repeat. Discretion would not have harmed her in the slightest, but her lack of discretion harmed me.

If any health care professionals read this, I have a simple message for you. Don't be a jerk.

 

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