Dr. D. talked me out of the biopsy my urologist had sent me to have. He’d looked over my medical records and told me he was confused about why I’d been sent for a biopsy. He said if he was me, and I just had a clean MRI, and my PSA had been steady for years, that he would put off having a biopsy of his prostate unless there was clear indication that one might be diagnostically helpful.

Since there was no indication that a biopsy was immediately necessary, the doctor told me, and since at my age any prostate cancer is going to be slow growing, there is no reason not to put it off until there is a clear indication of the need to do a biopsy.

Then he described the pain of the procedure and week of discomfort that is the normal after a needle biopsy takes twelve slices of your prostate, through your anus.   He convinced me there was no medical urgency to the biopsy, I thanked him and left without having the needles delicately inserted up my ass. 

The next time I saw my long-time urologist he immediately asked me why I didn’t have the biopsy. I told him the doctor he sent me to had talked me out of it.  I described our conversation. He pointed at his computer screen and read from my medical notes: “patient refused.”

Of course that’s what my medical record at the corporate hospital said. Phrasing it that way was the prudent, liability-avoiding way to notate our conversation. It was not false that I’d declined, or refused, the biopsy, though misleading. The medical record, after all, never lies. Put it on the witness stand, if it comes to it, and it will always say exactly the same thing.

The bit of self-protecting wording is also a nice snapshot of the essence of corporate narcissism.   The corporate bottom line, and only line, so ruled by the Supreme Court while creating this “person” out of legal fiction and political calculation, is profit and avoiding accountability/loss, after all.

What kind of person is a corporation, if not a single-minded, predatory psychopath?

Still, nice of Dr. D. to spare me the unnecessary hassle of that prostate biopsy. I sure hope he was right and I didn’t make a mistake refusing the treatment he was offering and ready to provide.