The Qualities to Look For In an Excellent Specialist
With my husband and me, having five handicapped children where we have been in to see numerous of doctors in specialties that deal with the heart, lungs, brain, orthopedic, specialties, where we can pick up by talking with the doctor, which doctor will be an excellent caring doctor that has his priorities in order. When it came to us having to find a neurologist for our daughter who was having several types of seizures that were life threaten. We met with several doctors before we found one that would be very understanding and cared about the patient when they entered the room. We knew when we met Dr. Larry White, a neurologist from CHKD in Norfolk, VA, that he seemed to be the best match for our daughter when she was in danger of dying.
The very first time I met Dr. White was when Cyndy’s primary care doctor had sent her to the hospital for having multiple seizures in a twenty-four hour period. When Dr. White came into the room, he grabbed a chair and pulled the chair up in front of me and sat down where he was eye level with me, and let me know what his plan was to bring Cyndy’s seizures back under control. He was not in a hurry to get up and rush to the next patient, he wanted to make sure I knew exactly what was happening and was going to happen. This particular hospital visit was twenty years ago, and he still has not changed from that same caring doctor. He treats each child has if they are his only patient. Dr. White had told me when interviewing a doctor, you can tell how he will be by how he answers your questions, whether he will explain the condition to you in layman’s terms or if he goes way over your head and when you ask him to repeat if he will brake down the terms or not.
While doctors are, still in medical school they are taught to detach themselves from the patient to keep from getting their feelings hurt over their patients especially when the doctor has gone through a lot with that patient and their family. With all that can happen to a patient, the doctor is taught to guard his heart and developed a tuff exterior because if they don’t every patient that has something harsh happen to them the doctor will brake down emotionally. As for my family, we became good friends with Dr. White over the years because of his involvement with not just one of our children but all six of our children had mild to severe neurological disorders. He has a tender heart where different issues such as child abuse seem to hurt him the most.
When he had to tell me that my daughter was dying, I notice that he had a very hard time telling me that Cyndy was going to die with in the year. The day he told me was, after I had asked him directly was Cyndy going down hill faster then we thought she was. He turned from me for a few minutes and there was complete silence, when he had turned back around tears were streaming down his cheeks when he came out and told me yes she is worst.
While working on Cyndy’s Blessed Assurance with him, he told me one time that he wish parents would realized that doctors have feelings too and are easily hurt. Over the twenty years of having him as my children’s doctor, there were several things that have stuck out to me about how committed he is when it comes to his patients. When I first met Dr. White, he would come out to the special education preschool to do physicals on the children coming into the program, while at the school one day he fought for getting Cyndy placed in a better-suited program in preschool to be able to have Cyndy reach her highest potential.
Dr. white was also famous for being his patients and parents number one cheerleader, where he would encourage them to aim high and go for getting our children’s medical care, schooling or support groups that would help us get through the rough times in our child’s life. As a nurse, myself many years back, I have seen very few doctors exhibit the tender loving care that he shows his patients and their families. He has the qualities of the doctors from the olden days, where they didn’t mind spending time with their patients, where very few errors were made by them observing their patients for a few minutes. Dr. White is one doctor that has not been able to change his old fashion views of spending time with the patient into a modern day doctor of herding people in and out like cattle. To be honest I really hope he doesn’t because that is what makes him so special to his patients and parents.
