POCKET DOCTOR

I wish I had a pocket doctor, one I could bring out any time I had a concern.  Wikipedia and Web MD are not satisfactory – they can’t conduct a conversation.  And most discussion boards can be useless if they don’t hit on your exact symptoms and concerns. Many times you can become too agitated over what you read – you need a doctor to set your thinking on the right path.

Besides which, medicos really don’t like it when you bring your own ideas into the consultation room.  If you do consult the net just keep quiet about it until the right time comes up – don’t go in saying “Doctor, I’m sure I have a bad case of bungafatitis.”

 

I did that once, eons ago.  When I sat down with the doctor he asked “What seems to be the problem?” and I said “My gall bladder is acting up.”  Said he: “I’ll be the judge of that”, or words to that effect.  Well, excuse me! I had an honest reason to believe it was – and it was! – my gall bladder acting up. All the women on my mother’s side of the family were afflicted with wonky gall bladders, and many were the times I was present during a discussion and rehashing of symptom, operations, and recuperations.  I must say, my own operation and recuperation weren’t too bad. Having had that operation back in the late seventies, I’ve got a nice, long scar to show for it.  Battle scar, I say! Today there are just three little holes where they go in and pluck that sucker out arthroscopically.  Medical progress is surely wonderful.

I don’t mind that I had a bit more of an ordeal way back when. I’m so pleased that now, when a I’m in my 70’s and will really need advanced medical help one of these days, that medical sciences have made the strides they have.

I’m also glad that I live where I live. Medical help abounds here around Charlotte. My own general practitioner is part of the Carolinas Health Care System that has opened offices almost literally “right across the street” from our community.

 

But I do wish I had my doctor in my pocket.  When I do see him there is so little time to do more than go over what is already in the data base for me. (Why the nurse and doctor have to check this every time is beyond me. Don’t they trust me when I say there’s been no change? What a waste of time having to go through each and every vitamin and supplement on the list, to go over shots I’ve not had because I can’t have them, or the medicines I’m taking.  But then -  going off on a tangent of thought and trying to be diplomatic about it all -  the nurse’s checking this gives the doctor time with whatever patient he’s seeing right then.) If I go with a list of questions I invariably leave out a few.  So if the doc were in my pocket I could pull him out and go over those questions as they arose – never mind getting them on a list.  This is pie-in-the-sky wishing. It will never happen – but wouldn’t it be nice?

 

Who? Well, not this doctor, but of them all he was my favorite!
I think it was the scarf that did it.