Dear Doctor,

This letter is written to advise you that I am no longer a patient in your office.

After my surgery - when I sought your expertise and support, when I came to you with problems and hoped for solutions, you brushed me aside and attributed my difficulties to emotional problems or problems outside the scope of your medical specialty. Actually, the problems I have had to deal with are secondary to the surgery you performed on me - although they may now involve another specialty.

If you are to continue treating patients - it might behoove you to bone up on the multiple complications that arise from the "simple" procedure that you performed on me. The literature is out there - I have been forced to research it in an effort to become "whole" again.

Perhaps before you casually recommend to your next pre-hysterectomy patient that they do not need their reproductive organs, you would like to spend a day or week or month walking in our shoes. Your job was not over when you sent my organs to Pathology.

Your job is over when I am healthy and whole and living a productive, pain-free, hormonally well-balanced life. DO YOU THINK THAT YOU HAVE DONE YOUR JOB PROPERLY? HAVE OTHER PATIENTS LEFT YOUR PRACTICE FOR THE SAME REASON? DO YOU EVEN CARE?

Ellen