Your Doctor

Last time I tried to see him he was ill. That was encouraging.

rofl. Mine's quite good. A bit... preachy (he likes to give *lectures* on the illness, something I don't mind at all, but also like to complain about today's society). I think he's ace. He's located about twenty minutes away but I gladly take that trip over visiting the one around the corner (who has made some dubious mistakes).

Today we're going tosee another pediatrician. The one we had doesn't seem to have a good rep (after talking about him to friends). So we switched. Hopefully she can keep the urinary infection away cause it's reappeared for a third time in less than 3 months. :-(

Yeah twenty minutes isn't too far to go if you're seeing a good doctor at the end of it.

My old doctors surgery was great, all old wood and creaking floors and dark corridors. he doctor was an old man with mutton chops and I felt like I was acting in a film when I went.

But then I moved house again and had to register with the 'healthcentre' and it's multitude of different practices.

My dad talks about his old doc: "You would come in and all these different brands (of cigarettes) were spreak over the table!" Times do change!

Mine gave me a prescription that basically gives you asthma, then she treated me for asthma for six months, with steroids and inhalers and everything, then realised what she'd done and changed my medication. Stupid cow.

I either get a guy who wants to give me antibiotics for a cold (!) or the one who keeps on reminding me that I'm getting older...

Doctor #1 = irritable, dismissive and downright unpleasant Chinese man - believe me, you'd be better off suffering than visiting this prick

Doctor #2 = bearded ineffectual (and ineffective) "nice" doctor with a preference for herbal rememdies THAT DON'T WORK

i have no doctor, when i tried to register they told me i had to contact the surgery where my records were, i have absolutely no idea of this and no idea how to find out

I've got a new one now. Who didn't give me a repeat prescription, and didn't give me top-up ills. Grrr. :-(

I had finally got the old doctor to the point where he stopped fussing and only saw me once ever 8 months or so, but this new one wants to like, MAKE SURE I'M OK... and caring in the community crap like that. I'm fine. Give me my pills. Now leave me alone.

Doc #1 - Mr Have Some Antibiotics Whether You Need Them Or Not
Doc #2 - Mr It's A Viral Infection It'll Pass I Ain't Giving You Any Drugs

For some reason I always get the wrong one for whatever illness I have.

Doc #1 at least always takes my blood pressure, congratulates me on still not smoking and reminds me I could do with losing a stone in weight.

Doc #2 is convinced the only people who want to see doctors are malingerers and drug addicts.

my doc is pretty good but my insurance company sucks goat balls and is ridiculously stingy about covering one of my regular prescriptions because there's no generic for it.

My last doctor is all "Why do you want to stop taking anti-depressants? Why not just take them for the rest of your life?". I suppose he's got a point but really I'd rather not take medication if I don't have to. Although perhaps the main reason for wanting to stop taking them is because they interfere with booze is not particularly healthy.

Haven't got new doctor yet.

Haven't seen a doc in a while (touch wood), but I go to a medical centre where the (both female) doctors are:

1. cosy, matronly-type doc who's much more inclined to prescribe some common-sense cheapo off-the-shelf remedy rather than expensive stuff.

2. somewhat spiky, glum doc who relieved my plantar fasciitis-related foot pain by doing acupuncture on it in a very "I've read a bit about it, sure we'll give it a go" kind of way.

Both CLASSIC, obv.

Two doctors?!? For a brief period I'd go around the corner (to the local doc) but stopped doing that figuring it was confusing (?!?).

Usually you register with a particular doctor at a medical surgery but since they're often not there, you end up seeing a different doctor.

Is it usual for GPs to only work 25 hours a week? Do they do other work outside surgery hours, or is just my last couple of doctors are lazy good-for-nothings?

Before going to the doctor, take a shower and put on clean clothes.

I will if he will.

Had an experience at an urgent care place yesterday that was not really bad, but confirmed my long-since-absorbed notion that you really gotta advocate for yourself in medical situations. As I mentioned on the Big Ears thread, the third day of the fest I started feeling pretty crummy. Key thing is that this past week was the big annual explosion of tree pollen here in East Tennessee, which always ranks as one of the 10 worst places in the country for seasonal allergies (it's pretty! it's green! it tries to kill you!).

I had already been having sort of normal symptoms during the week, some sinus stuff, itchy eyes, etc. In a good year, daily claritin and decongestant will keep it manageable. This often overlaps with Big Ears, depending on which weekend it is. Last year I had kind of a mild allergy haze all the way through the festival, which is how this year started too. But on Friday, I started to feel a little tightness in my airways and told my wife I thought it was moving into my chest. Saturday morning I woke up with my chest unpleasantly tight, but still didn't feel too bad. I even said to my wife, "I hope it doesn't turn into a chest infection." (Something I have experienced from allergies before, although thankfully not for a while.)

But Saturday afternoon things headed downhill fast. I started getting some mild chills. I toughed it out through the Mei Semones set that I really wanted to see (it was great), and then cut things short and hightailed it home — where my temperature promptly rose from 98.8 to 102.6 in about two hours. Ugh. Took a covid test, since we have them at the house, which was negative.

Sunday morning, with the temp subsided a bit, I went to urgent care figuring that if it's a bacterial infection I should get some drugs on it asap. The first thing they did was run tests for covid and flu, which were again negative. Then the nurse came in to talk to me and I laid out all of the above and told her that based on my own experience with my body and past bouts of all the most likely culprits, this felt bacterial to me. She was very skeptical! She said the tests weren't very reliable because my symptoms had just hit the day before — ignoring that I told her I'd been having worsening allergy symptoms all week — and that with me being at a music festival, my odds of having been exposed to something viral were quite high. I was friendly and told her I understood that, it just hadn't really come on like covid or flu but had very much come on like an airway infection. She was also nice and said she'd be glad to give me penicillin, but also I should wait a day and do a home covid/flu test one more time before starting the drugs. I said OK.

Then I went and got the Z-Pack and started taking it immediately. I wasn't 100 percent sure, but I felt pretty lousy and if anything was going to help I wanted to start it soon. So. Today I did the retest. Still negative for covid and flu. I watched the results with no small amount of self-satisfaction, and took my 3rd dose.

Which is a long and not exciting story, but I do think points to the reality that all of us know our own bodies better than anyone else. Doctors and nurses are just working through statistical checklists, eliminating the most likely things first, which of course is all they can do because they can't feel what we actually feel. I'm sure they deal with all manner of people self-diagnosing all kinds of things, and I get that, but also it's totally fine to think the doctor's just wrong. Anyway, urgent care nurse — I told you so!