Oh, that's disturbing and I would be as perplexed and dismayed as you if that happened to me.

My current rule of thumb when talking to doctors is to assume they are toddlers with a short attention span. I tell them what I'm going to tell them. Then I tell them. And before I leave the office, if I have any reason to doubt the quality of the communication, I remind them what I told them. The odds are that at least one of those three recitations was heard.

And I question any statements they make if I have even a tiny doubt that I understood it perfectly. I think people are just so busy now, and multitasking so much, that miscommunication is alarmingly common...