Well, I have a petite papier report on our visit to Dr. Cannon,
the thoracic surgeon. We entered, bearing a note from our daughter
giving us permission to talk to him, since she is taking finals.
Basically, we just wanted to try and get his statistics on
thyroidectomies, and ask questions about vocal chords making him
aware that Liz is a professional singer.
The nurse ushered us into the examining room instead of his office
(always a bad sign). He entered, and we explained why we were there.
We had our questions printed out on computer paper.
We had decided that my husband who is a physicist would ask the
questions at first "scientist to scientist." We also decided that
no matter how he acted, we would not be confrontational or make
any decisions regarding the operation, since it was really Liz's
choice.
He was immediately defensive and hostile. We explained that we had
learned that there were two kinds of surgeons thru Liz's anthro
teacher, and that Dr. Siperstein had said that it was the amount
of surgery done rather than the label that was most important.
Dr. Cannon said that he did all the Clinic's surgeries, and that
we would just have to trust him. Arthur said that he was looking
for numbers, and asked how many surgeries he did per year: it was
about 50, and the SF group does 30 or so a week. Then we mentioned
Liz was a singer, and asked about vocal chord injuries. He got
all agitated and said that there were always injuries when you
operated there. We got him to say that he had had 6 major injuries
over the years; beyond that he didn't seem to want to comment. He
didn't seem to know that the blood supply could be released to the
chord periodically to minimize damage, as Siperstein had told Liz.

Then Dr. Cannon said that Liz just shouldnt have the surgery at
all. But we said she is very uncomfortable, and can't sing anyway.
He said if we didn't trust the clinic, then we could just pay for
the operation ourselves and take her to SF. Arthur pointed out that
Siperstein was part of FHP too, so a transfer would be possible.
Cannon said it was him or nothing. Actually by that point, Cannon
didn't want to operate on her anyway. He just wanted us gone. We
were trying to calm him down, but he was very arrogant and
confrontational. Finally, he said I'll cancel her procedure and
we said fine and left. During that entire time, he did not have
her chart, refer to any aspects of her case, or notice that she
was over 18 and that we had no power to cancel anything.

Arthur and I couldn't believe what had happened, since we
did not think what we asked was that unreasonable. We didn't
even get to the more confrontational questions. We left and
later talked to Dr. Tsung, Liz's internist. She will either
try to refer Liz to Siperstein, or we will just transfer Liz
totally to the UCSF medical group.

What really surprises me is how first Basso, the endo and now
this surgeon feel so threated by educated patients. We are living
in Palo Alto, California, home of Stanford University. Certainly
this is not a rare occurence for them.

I have not told my daughter what happened yet. She is going to
kill us. I just hope that the operation is not delayed for
months, but I am thankful that Cannon is not going to be the
surgeon.

Margaret Snyder