The way we were . . . . as patients
I started a thread on Facebook and received a multiple of replies and reactions. The topic was being a gynecological/obstetrical patient until the 1970s. Stuff we take for granted these days.
When breast cancer was suspected, you were scheduled for surgery directly. You were sedated, a sample of tissue removed and tested for cancer. You were kept under sedation while the test was processed. If the pathology was benign, they stitched you up, and that was it. If the pathology was cancer, the surgeon didn't wake you up and get your consent. Your breast was removed. The theory was that women would have time to think about their choices and it was assumed that many would choose against mastectomy and would die of metastatic breast cancer. This happened twice to my aunt. I'm not sure whether the surgeon got consent for a mastectomy before she underwent surgery or whether it was understood that she risked waking up without her breast.
In the Fifties when I was born, obstetrical practice was to put birthing mothers to sleep, pull the baby out by the skull clamped between forceps, and then wake up the mother. The same thing happened with Carrie Fisher when she was born (although I don't know about the forceps for her situation).
Further, for many medical situations, e.g., surgery, doctors didn't get the consent from their actual female patients. They got it from their fathers or husbands. This changed toward the Sixties.
My father was a doctor and intervened regarding my mother's treatment for terminal cancer. He went behind her back, asked her doctor not to tell her that she was going to die and what were her options, and that he'd tell her. Except he didn't tell her. If my mother hadn't grabbed the white lapels of her doctor and shook her, she wouldn't have known that she had less than a week. She wanted to know.
I need to remember this advancement in physician-patient relations as I tend to take it for granted.
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