Doctors

I've had a lot of medical issues in my life, and have seen a lot of doctors. While a couple of people I know and/or love are in the medical profession, I don't have a very high opinion of most medical practitioners.

There's an arrogance about many them, and my own ego is just too big for that. Every time you go to a doctor's office, you have to wait. And wait, and wait. And wait. A twenty minute appointment usually takes at least an hour, and many people take off at least half a day to see a doctor. What, my time's not valuable? I don't have a job to go to? It's like they don't realize that you're coming to see them through the insurance supplied by your place of employment. Given that insurance is what really lines their pockets, you'd think they'd have an interest in accomodating the schedules of working people. Now that I work in the South Bronx and have most of my doctors in Manhattan, getting to them is a logistical nightmare. Plus, it's less and less a priority to attempt to see them, since they always run late. I just don't have time to sit around waiting in someone's office reading magazines.

So I had a 4:45 appointment with a sleep doctor today. My sleep doctor is retiring. but all he does is write scrips for Ambien. I did want to go by his office to say goodbye and wish him well (even though his office didn't know if he'd be in or not), but my appointment was with someone new, whose name I never even bothered to remember. I leave my office at 4:00 (except I'm using a cheap Radio Shack clock that's 4 minutes behind), and I can never just walk out of the office, and then I chose to wait for the bus instead of taking an $8 cab ride to the subway, and by the time I finally get to the train, it's 4:28. I call the doctor to tell him I'm running late, and find they had the appointment scheduled for 4:30. If I'm going to be late, they say, I'll have to reschedule.

I didn't reschedule. I thanked them and told them I wouldn't need to see the doctor anymore. But I'm really pissed off -- what if I refused to see doctors every time they were 15 minutes late? Or what if I started to charge them for my time spent in their waiting rooms? I understand that caring for people is important, but doctors seldom actually care for people -- they usually just push people through their offices so they can process insurance claims. I can't remember the last time I saw a doctor who gave me information I couldn't get from WebMD. (My surgeons and oncologist are notable exceptions). And it pisses me off that doctors, as a whole, are so self-absorbed with what they do that they fail to understand that lots of people have "important" things to do. A lot of doctors remind me of a lot of preachers -- they've chosen a career of service, but they live it out as if they are to be served because they've chosen the career of "service."

I'm not condoning the behavior by any stretch of the imagination, but I can certainly understand the frustration level that must have been present in the British guy who went on the mad rampage today. This morning I got off the bus thinking that everyone on the route must have flunked out of elementary school. If I didn't have Jesus and a monster workout, I imagine being surrounded by people who are not on the ball, and people who are supposed to be caretakers but who are not, and people who, in whatever way, fail to meet expectations -- I imagine that being surrounded by all that and feeling one has no way out could be frustrating. Don't know that it's frustrating enough to incite murder, but I'm pretty much a pacifist until you threaten my body or my life.

***end rant***