I have an optometrist who rocks on ice. The guy is so good, you cannot believe it. When you are in his examining room, you feel as if you are his only patient. His father was an optometrist, as is his son. He practices in the house he grew up in, across the street from a coffee shop and two doors down from a local theater. He has gone far afield to provide for my special needs as a shooter, and frankly, he’s done an excellent job.

Good lord, but I wish I could find a GP who was this good.

When I first found I was going to become a father, when I first discovered I was going to have a reason to live beyond the next five minutes, I sought out the first doctor I’d seen in probably 18 years. At that time, I just went to the first name in the list of covered doctors, and frankly, he was an asshat. This was a guy my size, who continuously told me, “eat less. Exercise more” Obviously it worked for him.

The next guy was my wife’s doctor; he had helped us through some hard times with her, and seemed like a nice guy. He was, actually, but his office staff left something to be desired. They would change appointments and not tell me, and bill me for missed appointments. The next guy was reccomended to me by my optometrist! I though, NOW we’re getting somewhere. He was nice enough, I guess, and did what he could, I think, but he also had a staff that was unreliable. I made it clear on half a dozen occasions that the only reliable way to get in touch with me was via cellphone; they persisted in calling my home and leaving voicemail messages. Which I never got. SO I missed appointments. And when I did make appointments, the doctor couldn’t even be bothered to read my file two minutes ahead of time. He’d walk in the examining room and ask me what I was there for. Always seemed a bit scatterbrained.

Next, I saw another doctor I came across via an online doctor finder. His nurse/practitioner assistant was very nice, though he kept reminding me she was leaving, and he kept ducking into the next room to confirm tee-times with his associates- I could hear him in the next room!! He ordered a volley of tests, and then when the followup appontment came, he called at the very last minute to change it. Apparently you don’t want to miss those good golf days.

So someone my wife reccomends me to a husband and wife team, an internist and cardiologist. They are the first non-anglo saxon doctors I’ve ever seen, and while that bothers me not in the least, (and they speak english extraordinarily well for east indians) I still feel as if I’ve been churned.

I go to see the wife, get her to write me for some new scrips, let her know that I’ve had some chest, arm, leg pain, she never looks at my arm or chest nor anything else, just turns me over to her husband.

The husband puts me onto a treadmill, which he doesn’t like that i can’t do for ten minutes (hell, he can’t keep the probes attached to me!) gives me an echocardiogram, sends me to the hospital for a dobutamine stress test, more pictures, finally gives me an angiogram, day before yesterday.

Not yet has anyone said “let’s see if that arm pain is musculoskeletal”.
Not yet has anyone said “let me take a look at your old medical records”
Not yet has anyone said “Here are some things you can do to improve your health that don’t do more harm than good”

Pah. A pox on them. My friend Jenny, a medical transcriptionist, thinks I’m nuts, thinks I’m looking for a magic bullet to “fix” all my problems. Not the case at all. I want a doctor who works to help me, not help his/her pocketbook, ego, professional status. I dislike that the only standard doctors are held to is created by other doctors, I dislike that they aren’t answerable to anyne but themselves, for the most part. I dislike that this won’t likely change.

When you take a test like an angiogram, which by cardio standards is pretty simple, you still take risks. In my case, those risks were not balanced well against what was already known (in my opinion). Each time you get through something like this, you’re supposed to thank the doctor for the wonderful work he’s done. Me, frankly, I want to kick him in the nads, he put me through a fairly stressful procedure to find what he could probably have found out other ways. You have no choices, though, because you have to trust what the doctor says, have to trust that his judgement is good, and so far, I have not found that to be the case.