30 Something Baby Doc

I was staffing the residents for surgery today. I had never met the patient before but her name sounded remotely familiar to me. I went to the OR holding room to meet the patient (Ms. X) and was shock when I discovered Ms X. was one of my former patients when I was a resident several years ago. She seemed to take an inappropriate interest in me back then and had repeatedly called me at my home address (before I realized that physicians should universally keep their home phone #'s unlisted) . She had left several messages on my answering machine asking me out to dinner and finally reached me one day, asked if she could speak with Dr. tommy. I told her she had the wrong number (I don't think she recognized my voice). She even sent a couples of letters to my office expressing her interest in me. Luckily she eventually transferred out of my care,,,Thank God

I had serious reservations about scrubbing on the case given our past interactions or more appropriately put, lack of interaction. If there were any sort of surgical or post-op complication, would our past interaction have any influence on her decision to seek legal action. I'm very sensitive about this issue because a had another patient in my practice who took an inappropriate interest in me....this patient had a poor outcome. She attempted to use the threat of legal action to manipulate me.

I was contemplating asking another physician to take my place today, but the case was getting started so I felt guilty about asking one of my colleagues to operate on such short notice.

I decided to scrub the case and everthing went well with minimal blood loss. I hope everything continues to go well until discharge.

I bet Richard Gere never had to deal with this kinda shit