While straightening the deck
chairs on my personal Titanic, I received a letter from my MD, which I'll
paraphrase. “Mona, it says, bad news. I've been your personal physician for 40
years, but I'm hanging up my sign. At the end of September I begin my
retirement and will be transferring my patients to other doctors in the
community. In the mean time I hope to minimize your inconvenience. So long and
thanks for all the business.”
Bummer! In my 20's, 30's and 40's stopping by once a
decade or so worked OK for each of us. In my 50's it's been two times more per
year than I'd like, and I'm soon be ramping up towards the age when people see
their doctor every few weeks, just to get out of the house. When I planned on
needing him most, I'll be abandoned, lost in the wilderness.
Paying up prolongs the
inevitable. He wants to quit, selfishly I want him to stay. To leave now, while
in good health or in several years feels like the same option. Fortunately, I
live in a community where Md's are thick on the ground, so here's what I've
made up my mind to do.
I want to find an MD finishing
his/her residency this spring, and become their first patient. The likelihood
of them knowing anything useful now is slim, but I don't ask for much now. Down
the road, when they are smarter, and I'm sicker, they'll be so grateful for my
being their first patient and sticking with them, they'll work extra hard to
keep me alive.
If you have a better plan, let me
know.
2 comments:
Dear Mona:
There is one thing pleasantly unconfusing about medicine. The direction and the end are fixed and the patient never works backward.
I suppose the present day reason from the patients point of view is to get through his life with as little pain and confusion as possible and out of it neatly and decently. But for the duration the doctor is supposed to listen to frustrations and to cater to various whims of the central nervous system.
Two kinds of pain there are—or rather a number of kinds. I think especially of the teaching pain which counsels patience not to hurt themselves as opposed to the blast that signals slow or fast disintegration. Unskilled, you do not know the difference.
Then there is the signal for the curtain. I think, since the end is the same, that the chief protagonist should have the right to judge his exit, if he can, taking into consideration his survivors who are after all, the only ones who matter.
Then there is the daily regimen and I have always considered this a fake in most people—the diet, the exercise, the pills, the rest, the elimination. It is probably true that careful following of learned instructions will prolong a life, but it has been my observation that by the time the subject needs such advice, he is too firmly fixed in his habits to take it. Pills he will take but little else unless terror should get to him, in which case, many men and women become voluntary invalids and soon find that they love it.
Of course we love to fool ourselves but not to the point where we find it ridiculous. I am trying to give you a chart, Mona, so that you will know whom you are dealing with.
Do think of pain as a punishment and avoid it as much as you can. In reporting effects be reasonably honest. I know it is difficult to remember after any trouble has passed. Lastly, do not find illness as a hobby and draw attention to yourself since the attention you draw is nearly always reluctantly given and unpleasantly carried out.
Now finally, I am not religious so that I have no apprehension of a hereafter, I can neither give you hope of reward nor instill fear of punishment. It is not a matter of belief. It is what I feel to be true from my experience, observation and simple tissue probing.
One last thing you should know. I like my patients, their well being and comfort are important to me.
I hope this is of some value to you. Now, we go on from there.
Yours,
Dr. A
Thank you Dr. A., I think you will do just fine.
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