Monday, June 21, 2010

Doctor Stress Revisited & Relieved

Some of you may remember me bellyaching about not being able to find a decent doctor in my Lent Success and Doctor Stress post way back in February. I have never, in all my 37 years, had a doctor I liked. And so I rarely visit them. I'm relatively healthy, but they still manage to find something or other wrong with me and the solution always seems to be a prescription of some sort. I really, really hate taking medication. I always have. So I usually take their little scribbled piece of paper, spend the next week worrying about all the doom and gloom that is transpiring inside me, and then get on with my life and convince myself that the doctor was a big doofus anyway.

I know there are good doctors out there. My kids had a great pediatrician. I was so blessed to have found him. So I was uber dismayed when he told us he was moving to Utah last August. And finding new doctors for the kids has only given credence to my theory that there are many doctors out there that rate as big doofuses.

Anyway, back to me....

I decided to wait the ridiculously long amount of time to get into this new doctor. I prepared for the onslaught of medical history forms, disapproving looks, and hushed "uh-huhs" from the doctor while she scribbled notes.

It turns out the worst part of the visit happened before I ever met my new doctor. The nurse did the routine height/weight measurements and repeated the numbers as she wrote them down. I was fine with the weight thing. This was actually fun since I had lost weight and I was happy to see that the scale at the doctor's office agreed with mine at home. But as I was slipping on my shoes and walking out the door it dawned on me that she said 5'-5"......WHAT????? Clearly she has her measurements wrong because I'm 5'-6". I questioned her and she offered to measure me again.

5'-5".

Holy crap. I'm shrinking already?! Maybe I was given false information all those years ago when one of the previous doofuses told me I was 5'-6"? Does she have any idea what this is gonna do to my BMI? Doesn't she realize that Mr. Wii Fit Dude is not gonna have anything at all nice to say about this?

I was stunned - and not liking how the visit was progressing so far. But I dragged myself into the room behind the nurse in order for her to take more of those measurements like blood pressure and pulse and whatnot. Surely those numbers should've mattered more to me, but I just couldn't get passed the fact that I was gonna have to tell Mr. Wii Fit Dude that, even though I had lost weight, my BMI had just got markedly worse.

Stupid doctors.

I was already irritated and I hadn't even met my new doc yet.

She walked into the room and started speaking in a thick Scandinavian accent. I could barely understand her and wasn't sure that my smile and nod response to each question was really appropriate - but she was very personable. Quickly we got past the language barrier and it didn't take long for me to decide that I liked her. I mean, it wasn't her fault that I'm shrinking.

She was thorough, but not too quick to prescribe medications and understood my reluctance to take anything on a regular basis. She had my records and questioned why I didn't have a regular doctor, but didn't lecture me. She also noticed that I had lost a significant amount of weight since my last visit (albeit three years ago) and gave me a healthy round of "atta girls".

Of course I still had to do all sorts of labs and blood work. I was thrilled that all the important stuff like blood sugar and cholesterol were right where they should be. She did find that my thyroid is "all out of whack" as she put it. And in the understatement of the year she said, "It has probably made it pretty easy for you to gain weight".

Um...yeah. That and the chocolate cake.

So anyway, we got off to a great start. I will go see her again in a couple weeks. She's monitoring my blood pressure. Mine is pretty high and I have a family history of high blood pressure, but she is still letting me try to lower it on my own before she prescribes anything. She was actually supportive of my efforts rather than trying to persuade me to take the medication which is what every other doctor has tried to do. So I like her.

Its about time!

1 comment: