Medical Macinations

Doctors have one heck of a racket going for themselves.

I went to the doctor yesterday, and for reasons of tact I will not go into the specifics. It was my first experience with this particular doctor and this particular clinic, and it was good. The people were nice, helpful, and best of all, empathetic to the patients they were treating. I left feeling pretty good about the experience overall, even though there were certain parts of it I would not enjoy repeating.

That experience, I have found, is much more the exception than the rule.

The whole thing about dealing with medical environments is that is the one thriving industry that does not care if it is customer-friendly. If you sit out in the waiting room - or the examining room - for a few hours, well, you are just going to do it. Unlike your favorite restaurant or the dry cleaners, you have to see these people. Your ball is in their yard and you have to play their game to get what you need.

That may not be true for general practitioners, because you certainly can change to other ones. But even there, the racket that is medicine rears its head. Most people do not get a new doctor if their current one ticks them off. You have to fill out hours of paperwork - the same paperwork you filled out with the previous doctor - and the new guy has to accept your insurance (assuming you have insurance).

He may even decide that he has enough patients right now and does not want to accept you as a patient. How does that work in other walks of life? Have you ever pulled into a car wash to get your ride spiffied up, and the manager says, "Well, bud, I am swamped right now. I am just too busy to deal with you at all. Good luck."

Are you going to rush back to him after you ride down a dusty road? Heck, no. But we all queue up at the doctor's office no matter how badly we were treated last time out.

Customer service is certainly hinted at in the medical profession. If not, who would have invested in waiting rooms? Which reminds me - why in the name of sanity would a doctor not subscribe to a wide variety of magazines, instead of the ones that just suit their tastes? I have sat in countless waiting rooms, praying for something at least slightly interesting to read, and the best I can come up with is Good Housekeeping, Entrepreneur, or Kayaking Quarterly, all of which are six months old. The most current Newsweek I found celebrated the election to the U.S. Senate of a newcomer from Illinois named Obama.

The office manager should turn to page 155 of their two-year old Ladies Home Journal and discover fourteen wonderful ways to recycle this stupid waste of trees.

I usually go to female doctors. Perhaps I am seeking a maternal influence from my medical professionals. I haven't really gone into any deep analysis about this. Perhaps it boils down to the basic requirement that if anyone is going to touch my personal areas or have their finger up my butt, we are not going to share similar gender. If this is homophobic, so be it.

I was reminded of a line from the movie "Same Time Next Year," a classic in which a couple carry on an affair over the same weekend every year for over 20 years. The man, who was played by Alan Alda, was talking about how he had a woman doctor and she was giving him a rectal exam. She asked if he was tense, and he said he was. She asked if he was tense because she was a woman. He replied, "No, I get tense whenever anyone does that to me."

No wonder doctors are often accused of being God-like. In what other profession would a person walk in into a small room with you, drop their pants and point their bare posterior at you - all the while knowing what you, as the doctor, were going to do? You don't go to that personal a level with just anyone. What a power to behold.

And I wonder why it is that over the course of medical history, no one has come up with a better way to check for problems with the prostate? I mean, in the age of MRI, CT scans and high-tech peeks inside the human body, the best way to see if the prostate gland is acting up is to stick your finger in your patient's butt?

Who first suggested this, anyway? Can you imagine the reaction he got at that medical convention? "Sure, Larry, I'll try that as soon as I get back home. Try not to drink so much before you present your paper next time."

By the way, a quick little English lesson: Prostate is a gland in the body. Prostrate is lying down. Mixing these up makes you look stupid. (Excuse me while I check these facts ........... yep, that is correct.) Remember: You get prostrate to check your prostate.

Know why? Because if you were on your feet and someone tried to do that, you'd run like hell.

My favorite person in the world that agreed to marry me says that all doctors are learners. What she means is that doctors do not know it all, and probably never will. What she does not say is that if a doctor does not know what is wrong with you, by and large, they will decide you are making it up or are imagining the symptoms. If you had something wrong, by God, they would have found it.

That is the attitude - and believe me, it is prevalent - that pisses me off about doctors. I will gladly go to them and see if they can take my pain away or fix what ails me so I can live to a ripe old age. But for crying out loud, let's not stop when the problem gets too challenging.

Many will recommend a specialist. That is the out for a GP - he can always send you to someone who specializes in this particular part of the body. But when those guys recommend other specialists, what they are really saying is, "Dude, it beats the hell outta me; let's ask this other guy."

That starts a chain of guys who have no idea what is going on. There are not a lot of original thinkers in the medical community. Most doctors stick to research and book learning to treat a patient, and if it ain't in the book, then someone is flat out of luck - the patient.

Of course, a doctor that thinks out of the box won't be good friends with his lawyer or his insurance company. But sometimes you just have to look at something from a new perspective to gain some insight.

We will all still keep going to doctors and keep doing just what they say. There's no way around it. And to show my support of changing the health care system in this country, I am willing to make the following deal with all the other patients. I will donate a year's worth of my prized Sports Illustrated magazines to the waiting room of the next doctor's office I visit, if someone out there will pledge to do the same with their US News and World Report.

Shoot, I'd settle for Reader's Digest.