Face Focused

I found Dr. Hang and his staff to be pleasant during the phone consultation, which I paid money for. I live on the east coast near NYC. I missed the call we scheduled and they were nice enough to make time for me. After the call, Dr. Hang emailed me a personalized summary of his proposal, and he copied the surgeon. This is where things got bad.
While Dr. Hang’s speech and written communication were comforting, the surgeon was a wall of silence. When I called the surgeon’s office, his personal assistant would never answer the phone. It would go straight to her voice mail and she even lost my email, so that she failed to send me the on-​boarding documents initially. I would say that the surgeon has little empathy or time for Dr. Hang’s patients as well, because he never replied to Dr. Hang’s treatment proposal or myself. I started to get nervous, where I had not been before.
Looking up the surgeon, I did not get a good visual impression of the surgeon either. He looked a little arrogant and younger than Dr. Hang. He had stylish glasses and a shaved bald head. I don’t judge appearances, but he looked deliberately aloof and cool. And his office’s behavior confirmed that.
I am Turkish as well, so it has nothing to do with foreign names.
When his assistant did call me, she was not personable. I do not sit in awe of doctors. I went to a pre-​med vocational high school. I have been around a lot of doctors. I have shadowed surgeons and have learned to appreciate hospital staff or volunteers. If a surgeon’s office is broadcasting silent superiority to potential patients, then I will call it out. The least thing I expected from an innovator who works with Dr. Hang was such elite behaviors, but unfortunately, some individual people appear to act as elitists even if they think outside of the box medically.
After some time went by, I was able to reschedule since the surgeon’s assistant finally sent me the on-​boarding documents. I had offered to pay them for a consultation ahead of time to try to build rapport, but the assistant told me that they could not speak on the phone to me for another two weeks now, but that they would still accept the money ahead of time. To this, I emailed her quite sternly that I thought she could be more personable and helpful. Unspoken, the understanding should be that if a patient is offering to pay ahead of time (even though your office lost his phone/​email and caused some heartache), you should not kick the can too far.
In email form, it could have read harsh. But I was a stressed out patient, and I also suffer from the effects of a traumatic brain concussion from a few years back. Nothing like what came next has ever happened to me before.
I called Dr. Hang’s office, set an appointment, tried to stop stressing out about waiting for an email from the surgeon so I signed out of the email thread, and I took off from work in order to drive across the country to California at the end of the month. Both my appointments would be when I arrived there. Like many people, I only use my personal email sometimes. I also get a lot of junk mail, so some emails do not get received.
When I arrived, I was informed by Dr. Hang’s staff that the surgeon had rejected me as a patient and that Dr. Hang’s office had cancelled my appointment. It was devastating for them to not call me or send me a physical letter for such news. They had the information. With much awkwardness, Dr. Hang did see me briefly. After all, I had driven across the country just to begin treatment with him.
I felt like my character was under question by the manner of Dr. Hang’s office receptionist, so I tried to be very gracious during this visit. It was awful.
I cried in my car for a half hour, and I am a grown man. I emailed the surgeon’s office an apology and explained to them that I have a concussion and asked them to have some compassion. True to form, the surgeon’s assistant told me that all of their other patients have no problem with their process, and that people all over the world give them great reviews, so my past criticism was uncalled for and their decision would be permanent. It was true to form, because it proved my initial concerns. How can a surgeon have an assistant who does not even understand that patients who have concussions find things harder and that one process does not uniformly work? Will the surgeon please stand up? If he is still very pleased with his assistant, he should know better deep down. I faxed my medical history over.
I waited six months to write this review to be fair.
To his credit, Dr. Hang did offer to do treatment with me if I could find another surgeon, but he insisted that there was no other surgeon in the country who would do the type of surgery I needed. For that, I can only give Dr. Hang two stars, because he has a good concept but we would judge any other business sorely if they can fall on only one vendor.
I have an under bite and support the Weston A. Price Foundation.