My friend, Jamie, HATES to go to the doctor. Actually, I can’t say I blame her, because she’s had some lulus of visits with the doc. But, today she went. And so did I. No….I didn’t go with her…..I went to my doctor.
\nIt’s frustrating to make up your mind that you need attention and take the step of going to the doc, and then be told that they need to do a phalanx of tests to eliminate the possibilities. And even more frustrating to be handed from doc to doc as you try to find out what’s wrong, because each doc wants to take more tests!
\nI understand the necessity of the tests. It’s just that those of us who are not in the medical profession want to be able to come in for just one visit and get things corrected and waltz out as good as we were at 20.
\nIt doesn’t work like that.<\/p>\n
\nI mean no disrespect to doctors. Well….not much anyway. I’m bothered by how little they have to tell me as they shuffle me out the door on the way to the next specialist. I wish that I knew what questions to ask before I hit the door.
\nI miss the kind of doctoring that was still around when I was a child. You had one doctor for the entire family and he saw you through all your emergencies. They knew you. Their kids went to the same school as yours and you might have worshiped in the same church. When I was about 13, I had an anaphalactic (pardon my spelling) reaction to lobster that my parents had cooked at home. Our doctor lived about three blocksaway, and he made a house call that night. It was a LONG way to the closest hospital. I might not have made it.
\nWhen I went to see the doctor, I saw HIM, not one of ten in the practice. One person carried the knowledge of my asthma and allergies, and I knew that he was aware of the larger picture of my health as he treated an individual problem.
\nI don’t like being shuffled from one doc to the next. I hope I have finally hit the one who will resolve these issues and spare me from the run around.
\nWhen we first moved to this house I found a female doctor and visited her for an annual physical, and for the stray allergy or poison ivy. Even with those few visits, over the years we became friends, and I was confident that she carried the details of my health in her head. I was even more confident that she would brush up on my chart before she saw me, just to make sure that nothing slipped through.
\nI miss that relationship of trust and confidence.
\nAnd the root of all of this…..for me, and for Jamie (I suspect), is that I want to be well. I want to return to the time when my body functioned properly and I never gave it a thought. I want to be free to do all the things I used to take for granted, and not have to chat with doctors more than twice a year.
\nIs it too much to ask?? Probably.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
My friend, Jamie, HATES to go to the doctor. Actually, I can’t say I blame her, because she’s had some lulus of visits with the doc. But, today she went. And so did I. No….I didn’t go with her…..I went … Continue reading