cancer – day 158

So whatever happened with Dr. Lombardi, why was he suddenly gone from Sutter Cancer Center on an unexpected Friday evening at exactly 5PM?

Turns out it was administrative politics, and not the kind that increases quality of patient care. Dr. Lombardi was spending TOO MUCH time with patients, and was working long hours every day to see to it that all of his patients got the quality of care they needed. His mother, his grandmother, and his sister all had breast cancer, and he’s incredibly sensitive to the patients as a result. The administrative powers that be didn’t like that because more patient time per patient means less patients seen overall, and they have a business to run. So, Dr. Lombardi was determined unfit to the mold of what Sutter Cancer Center wanted in its medical oncologists and was summarily released without notice, without access to even say goodbye to his patients and try to reassure them somehow that they were going to be ok even through all the change. What a travesty. Devastating for Lombardi.

I had made a handful of cards with my blog path on them so that Heide could hand them out to other new breast cancer patients that may be interested but not really up to a phone call (I remember those days extremely well), and Heidi said she would give one to Dr. Lombardi too, so maybe he’s gotten to see in my blog that he was deeply respected and appreciated for his expertise and beside manner. And actually Heidi was going to bring my blog cards up at their staff meeting too, so that everyone working the desks would know this blog is out there as another resource, because people are ALWAYS asking them how to get real information from actually patients but not really wanting to disturb them.

So, that’s the short story of what I understand of the Lombardi/Sutter Saga. Very abridged, but still enough information to piss you off that it couldn’t at least be handled more professionally and less like patient abandonment.