Surgical Alternatives

The patient came in for a consultation telling me that the medical doctors were looking to amputate and/or do surgery on the patient's feet (particularly the hammertoe)During the consultation I explained to the potential patient at the time that the hammertoe treatment may be painful at times
because there is stretching and strengthening involvedI also told her that the in office hammertoe treatment may be uncomfortable in some spots as wellPatient surgery and/or amputation was not an option and wanted to go the alternative routeI told her it is going to take work on her part, there are no guarantees, and I gave her the paperwork to fill outIn the paperwork, it clearly explained that the procedure was not a substitute for surgery and that results vary from patient to patient and that there was no guarantees because in medical science (even with surgery) there is NEVER a guaranteeI sincerely did my best, spent many hours with her, and got blamed for it even though she clearly verbally understood that an alternative may not be successfulShe said she understood and signed off on itI have had tremendous success with bunions, hammertoes, and other foot ailments and have many many testimonials to back it upShe is the only person in my many years of practice that has filed any complaint as the vast majority of my patients are very very happyThis patient refused to perform her exercises and stretches (which is critical to the success of the treatment) and could not tolerate the treatment like the majority of my patients doI offered to perform a lighter version of the treatment (letting the patient know it is going to take longer to get results because it is necessary to stretch and strengthen areas of the footPatient seemed very impatient and did not seem to follow instructions (which is well documented)The typical treatment period is treatmentsI gave her an extra treatments so that she could tolerate the treatment (and was going to give her more till we helped to resolve her issue)That was an extra hours of my time (and was willing to do more) because I was trying to accomodate the patientI spent hours of my time with her as I charge for my time which averaged out to $an hourThis is well below my rate of $150/hourI charge for my time and was sincerely trying to help the patient but was very difficult to work