It’s so strange being on the receiving end.
You see, shortly after I was born, my parents told me I grew a lump at the back of my ear. It wasn’t of particular concern, didn’t seem to bother infant-me and was extremely considerate by forming in a completely hidden spot (you really wouldn’t know it existed unless I pointed it out). So my parents chose to leave it as it was. When the time came when I was about 10 and the question was posed to me again, I chose likewise.
Now, if a similar patient were to come up to me, I know I would advise them to undergo the procedure and just, well remove it. Admittedly, this is advice coming from an ungraduated medical student but by and large the principles should be sound. The risks are minimal, the scar barely visible. I would be in and out and whatever risks that were associated with keeping the lump around would be thrown out the window. There’s really no reason why someone should refuse the procedure.
But I did. Call me a hypocrite but I refused the procedure mainly because I couldn’t objectively assess its necessity.
Somehow, over the years, I had grown attached to this tiny lump of skin/flesh/thingamabob at the back of my ear. It was a starter for many group introductions when people scrambled for some fact when thrown the “tell us something interesting about yourself” bomb. It was a running joke that it housed my last two brain cells (helped me operate on little to no sleep sometimes was the claim) Could you say it formed part of my identity? Maybe. Was that a stretch for something that really was just an enlarged mole? I’m not sure.
Perhaps though, this was why I put off visiting the doctor myself when I first noticed that I had injured my ear over the lump. It had started to ulcerate but I vehemently denied the fact, dabbed away at the bits of blood and pus that seeped out and reassured myself that it would get better. Nothing particularly serious had happened over 20 years so there was no reason why it should now, was there? And I found myself relying on the exact same excuses we’ve been taught to convince our patients not to. It was only when it began to ulcerate that I went to the clinic and even then, it was mostly just to appease my mother. You would think that someone with all that background knowledge, with the awareness of what it could be and the red flags that tell you that you should be seeing the doctor would have a sounder decision-making process. But that wasn’t the case, not in the slightest. Even now, when I’ve finally given in and admitted something needed to be done, I repeat to myself that there was no harm in me having left it alone. I was only agreeing because the procedure would affirm that my initial lack of concern wasn’t wrong. It seemed that when I was the one being faced with the choice, logic and rationality simply disappeared.
Objectively speaking, my lump was benign i.e. would not impact mty health. I might have developed an infection but beyond that, nothing that wasn’t salvageable. But the next time I internally, unintentionally judge anyone at the hospital or clinic for not having sought help earlier (because honestly all healthcare professionals do this to differing extents even if we shouldn’t be), I would think twice. This process and the hesitation I’ve harbored for years has been a tiny window that revealed how hard it must be for anyone on the streets to admit they might need medical assistance. The breast cancer patient who put aside the strange lump on her chest, the patient with colon cancer who might pretend not to see the blood streaks in their stool. That’s not them being irresponsible.
That’s just them being human.
Thoughts of a Goldfish 