After not having seen a doctor for years (except the Urgent Care Clinic, when I had a sinus infection) I suddenly found myself dealing with all manners of doctors. We can talk about the breast people another day, right now I want to talk about the orthopedic surgeons.
First let me say that I think my GP's office means well, but they are, as my husband sometimes says, in the ultimate know. They sent me to an erroneous breast doctor, which ended up costing me a fair amount of money for not much, and then sent me all around to orthopedic surgeons, too.
So when I finally saw a doctor, I first saw KA. (I'm going to use initials to be fair to them). KA is a ball-of-fire African-American man whose resume terrified me when I looked him up, but who turned out to be wonderful. He was all enthused--said I needed a new hip, but that was really all that was wrong with me, if I got my hip fixed, it would fix everything else. Alas, he's a knee guy, so he couldn't continue to be my doctor. So, after building me up, and incidentally hooking me up with some good pain meds (non-narcotic), he sent me to JP.
Ah, JP. I didn't like him when I made the appointment, honestly. I spent most of April and the beginning of May in doctors' offices and I had some firm opinions. (Some of these opinions were formed during my father's 17-month decline and death, when I dealt with the medical community almost daily). First of all, I believe that a doctor works for you. You pay his salary, you buy all the cool gadgets he's got, and if you (and all your friends) stop being his patients, then he has no one to practice medicine on. So, the appointment-making process irked me, but I kept an open mind.
The waiting room and the checking-in process was not all it could have been, either. There was a low-level attitude of, we think you're stupid and probably lazy and that's why you're here. Then I foudn the reason for this. JP is a man who is probably right around, if not at 70, and a dour doctor of the old school. I admit it--I'm overweight (more then than now) and middle-aged and didn't necessarily look like an ideal candidate for anything. He treated me like I was, if not dumb, then certainly just slightly sub-normal. (What I generally do with doctors is pick up their language fast, which throws them off and makes them respect me). He said that hip replacements were largely successful, but there were impediments to that. I said, yes, my weight. He said, yes, many people understand it's their weight, but in his experience, no one manages to lose any without gastric bypass surgery. (What?) He asked me questions and then seemed dissatisfied with my answers. The height of it came, to me, when he asked what I wanted from the surgery and I said I wanted the pain to stop. He responded that they didn't prescribe narcotics. Also, once he had opened the door to weight, there were other things, like my telling him that I had lost weight, and it helped and his dismissing that. Or getting me on the table, not telling me to take off my shoes, then taking them off, as though I were stupid. Oh, and asking me questions, which were clearly stated on the 6-page, very redundant, questionnaire.
I left in a fury. I also left my x-rays, which I then had to get more of.
So then I called my sister-in-law, who's a nurse. She asked around and found the name of someone else--with whom I was supposed to have an appointment, and who was supposed to be good. So I made yet another appointment with him.
His name is, sadly, VD. Yes...but anyway. VD was everything JP was not. His office was pleasant, as was the staff. It didn't hurt that his assistant, who conducted the preliminary interview, started it by telling me there was no way I looked 56. I don't honestly care if she meant it--it was certainly what I needed to hear. Anyway, VD, bless him, told me the same as everyone else, that I needed a new hip, and probably yesterday. I said I wanted some time to lose weight, because I was aware that my weight was a very negative factor in the surgery. He looked startled and said, "Not really," and then had me hop up on the table. He basically checked where I carry my fat, and said that, nah, I wasn't so bad, and that it was the initial incision and its healing that caused problems. After that, everyone pretty much healed at the same rate. I said, well, I wanted to anyway, and could I please do physical therapy? His attitude was more of, it couldn't hoit, than, absolutely! but he prescribed it. Needless to say, when my hip finally gets sliced into and they cut out a bit of me and put in some stainless steel, he's the one who'll be doing it.
I don't really feel I need to hit anyone over the head with a conclusion here. Some doctors are good. Some suck. Some need to quit, and some need to remember that they're not God (and that they shouldn't be taking kick-backs, which my cousin suspects JP of). Also, continuing in my spirit of stating the obvious, there's more than one doctor, they work for you and they CAN be fired. Keep looking.
So for the moment, as you know, if you've been reading along, I'm eating better, losing weight, working out, and making progress at physical therapy. It would give me the utmost pleasure, somewhere along the line, to waltz into JP's office, in a pair of high heels (it's a theme) and a size 8 (or 10 or 12) dress and...thumb my nose at him.
Because that's very mature.
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