Slow down doctor
Patients for patients
Not long ago my doctor retired. He didn’t cure me of an otherwise terminal illness, but he did look after me. I have been lucky. Apart from a nasty case of poison oak where I had swollen up like a balloon, there hasn’t been much wrong with me under his watch.
He was a gentleman doctor of the old school, spoke French, and played badminton. After my yearly exam, we would sit down in his office and he would go over the results. He was the quintessential slow doctor. I liked him and his front desk help. She always knew who I was when I called. I like that, too. I felt comfortable with my doctor—well, about as comfortable as I can with a man who gives me a rectal exam.
But his retiring threw me into a maelstrom of medical-bureaucratic hyperactivity. The new doctors office was simply too busy to pick up the telephone. They had especially heavy call volume, and all of their agents were busy. I was very happy to be in good health in my attempts to contact the office, because it required strength and fortitude.
I left several messages asking for an appointment. But that office clearly had better things to do than to talk to a new patient. But patience pays off. On my fourth attempt I spoke to a woman who seemed to have attention deficit disorder. I wondered if the office was reduced to letting patients work off their medical bills in kind. It turned out that the woman I spoke to was not a patient but an employee.
The first question she asked me was my age. She seemed in an enormous hurry, and she spoke very fast in a high pitched voice. Right after I told her how old I was, she asked me the same question again. She seemed to think that my age was the most important thing to know. Perhaps she didn’t know that the living human could be as old as I am, because after I told her a second time, she apologized and asked me the same question yet again.
I asked her if she was ready, and she said she was. I think she must have been away the day they gave listening training.
I got the impression that being a patient wanting to see a doctor was a bother. I was interrupting something much more important.
My phone call to the hyper-breathless doctor’s office ended up being a success. I managed to calm down my frazzled interlocutor, and achieved an appointment. But I look forward to my appointment with some misgiving. Our culture does not place much emphasis on a calm and healing environment. Before we relied so much medical high-technology there was only caring and time for healing. Bernard Lown in his book The Lost Art of Healing talks about doctor patient relationship as being key to healing.
I know that being an HMO subscriber may not get you much by a way of a doctor who practices the art of healing but it will get you a few minutes with a medically trained mechanic.
This is my second attempt to find a doctor after mine retired. I had seen one doctor for ten minutes, she was interrupted by her mobile phone, told me that there was not much wrong with me, took my blood pressure, told me it was high, and prescribed some pills.
I had read that statistic about 195,000 deaths due to medical errors in the US a few years ago. I went out and bought a blood pressure gauge because I have never had high blood pressure. I put that down to a daily practice of slow exercises (Chi-Gung).
It turned out that by taking my own blood pressure several times I am just fine. I think it may have been the trip to the doctor’s office that made it high. If I