The first hands that touched me were those of a doctor. It is only fitting that they return to give me a hand into old age. If I had to describe the frequency of my visits to the doctor over time with a letter of the alphabet, I'd use a sort of jagged U.
The left upright accounts for the umpteen trips following birth: normal checkups, runny noses, fevers, and the bumps, scrapes, and bruises that you are certain will bring the County Social Services folks to your door.
The jagged bottom of the U is, mostly, my own stupidity. I'm lucky that it did not do me in before the medical profession could offer serious senior help to me. There was the dog, the knife, the axe, the fraternity, the stage combat training, and the weekend warrior stuff. It also includes my twice-a-decade annual physical, and visits to the dentist for biting things unintended for human teeth.
Now, I have reached the right upright of the jagged U. My blasé attitude toward annual physicals is gone, and in its place are two doctors who see me twice a year each. One of them gives me a hand with several unmentionable parts of my body; the other just talks to me about my feet. I won't go into details, so don't worry about reading on.
The real purpose in writing this down is to help you prepare for, survive, and take full advantage of your doctor's presence in your life. The two most important things to do are:
- Adjust your expectations, and
- Adjust those of your doctor and his/her staff.
Your Expectations
Waiting is the pits. You must wait for the appointment, wait in the Waiting Room, wait in the Exam Room, wait for the lab work, and then wait for AAA to come start your car because the battery died from lack of use. In adjusting your expectations, the objective is to minimize anything that induces the frustration of waiting.
The major offender is your calendar. I use Outlook. When I enter the start time for an appointment, it defaults to an end time of an hour later.
An hour isn't even enough to account for wait time. Instead, check the little box labeled All day event. Then, don't schedule anything else. If you have an appointment book, you can accomplish the same thing by drawing an arrow from the appointment time all the way up to the top of the page, and then another one from the appointment time all the way down to the bottom of the page. I am exaggerating a bit because the doctor and staff will probably want to go home at some point. They have families, too. Healthy ones, probably.
The second cause of frustration is Waiting Room reading material. Two rules apply here:
- Bring your own. Avoid forever the aggravation of looking at the same ratty magazines and helpful pamphlets on the plague; bring your own reading material.
- Think big. The cards in your wallet, even those with lots of fine print, aren't enough. Conveniently, Wikipedia has an entry for List of Longest Novels. Start there.
Finally, there is the TV. I am certain that doctors' offices subscribe to the same network that is broadcast to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. Even so, there is a potential cure: buy a universal remote, but get one that looks like a PDA or cell phone of some kind. In the doctor's office, inconspicuously set up the remote for the TV. It helps to have a plastic stylus like the kind that come with real PDAs, but something stylus-like will do. If you are lucky, the TV is the kind that doesn't need line-of-sight access to the remote so you can keep the remote hidden.
That takes care of your attitude adjustment. Now it is time to work on the doc and staff's.
Doctor and Staff Expectations
Keep in mind that most medical offices see things that you and I probably won't see in a lifetime. So, anticipate that adjusting their expectations will take a little time. They currently expect that you will wait patiently, like a patient (comes from the Latin for "one who is suffering"). Instead of one who is suffering, I recommend that you become one who is acting. Here are two things to try:
- Wardrobe Waiting. Put on that gown that they give you, and then go visit. Visit the nurses and office staff. Avoid other patients because you might catch something you don't want. Use Wardrobe Waiting on every visit, and it won't be long before you are in and out, so to speak.
- Artifact Waiting. Exam rooms are full of interesting things. Make sure that you are using some of them whenever anyone walks into the room. If you are always playing with their stuff, they will move you along. Try examining one of the anatomy posters present in every exam room with the hand held magnifiers used for eyes and ears, or leave an empty alcohol bottle on the counter and burp when someone enters, or . . . be creative: the Popsicle sticks, cotton balls, and Q-tips are craft heaven!
Don't forget to bring donuts to every sojourn. No one fusses at anyone who supplies the donuts.
