Recently I've Been Visiting my Doctor...A lot:

Pre-visit there is the proud moment of being among those who have gotten through to the receptionists and the prouder moment of battling them in order to secure a good appointment time.  Upon entry there are the sanitation stations and the pamphlets on prostates, smoking cessation, and menopause.  The nurses and the curious carebear-like designs on their outfits who look like they are all heading for a sleepover at someone’s house after work.  The feeling of having your diagnosis flash up on the ticker tape as you enter the waiting room.  Then there is your file and your curiosity over what mysterious things have been written therein. 

Doctors.  I have a good one, but she is on maternity leave, so I have been rotating through all the other doctors in her clinic.  It has kind of felt like speed dating but as a patient given the number of visits I’ve had lately.  In fact I’m quite sure that I’ve come close to being labeled as one of those frequent flyer patients.  I imagine all the staff at the clinic rolling their eyes back into their heads as they see me slither in – again.  The poor doctors are trying to fix me but here I am again slumped in the chair before them.

But first, there is checking in with reception.  The receptionists at the clinic I go to are shielded behind inch thick, prison-like, plate glass, with a small hole to talk into, that seals them off as if we are either going to rob them of all their health records or are carriers of the eboli virus.  Despite being behind a glass wall they speak in hushed voices, not to mention that both of them have unusually low affect, so that it is impossible to hear unless you press your ear up to the small hole in the glass.  As you do so you wonder what gaping wound the guy ahead of you had on the side of his head as he pressed up to try and hear.  The ladies seem like they’ve been given the diagnosis of being terminally strapped to their workstations.  Letting them know that I am there seems like the most uninteresting thing they have ever heard.   Sometimes I wonder if perhaps they are deeply empathetic people who out of the necessity of self preservation have developed a powerful defense against ever getting close to a patient again.  At a certain point they’ve had to say that they just can’t afford to care anymore.

Then, you head to the waiting room where you give the audience the once-over looking for anyone you might know and sniffing out the miserable cases and the children being treated for ADD.  You find a seat that isn’t right next to anyone and watch as an out of control kid crawls under the seat of an elderly man and begins to play with the tube of his mobile breathing machine.  All the while the boy’s mother in a flurry of texts is 100% engaged with her phone.  As I settle in I do a dress rehearsal in my head of the impending encounter with whomever I am about to see next as if they’re gonna need a good convincing. 

The waits can be long or short but we are all waiting for that moment when we are called off the bench and being put into the game.  The nurse pokes her head out.  Each of us gets a hit of adrenaline.  You hear your name which parts the waters amongst the sea of fellow sufferers and you rise revealing your chosenness.  Generally speaking I think most of us are decent people and we are genuinely happy for the guy who gets to go next.  Then there’s the odd time I’ve come, and I get a twinge of guilt, because I have only been seated for a short time compared with the lady next to me with 5 screaming kids hanging off her and yet my name gets called first.  Not to worry, if it’s the other way around I’ll be the first to flip through a catalogue of ‘unfairness’ in my mind searching for creative and subtle forms of self pity.

But then once I’m in the little room I clench up as I endure the interminable wait.  There you sit: rehearsing and defending your symptoms, going over your own findings on the internet, remembering the suggestions from the pharmacist, maybe you’ve written a few things down, and hoping above all things that this time…you will find the answer to your suffering.  I assess how badly I feel on a scale of 1-10, determine how to accurately present my symptoms, any embellishment would only happen if the doctor seems to be drifting off into a stupor or reaching for her prescription pad before I’ve got through my opening line.  It’s kind of feels like a job interview.  But in this case I’m hoping that by the precise descriptions of my symptoms an accurate diagnosis and treatment plan will crystallize in my doctor’s mind.  It just so happens that in my case it relates to my sanity.  So I would say I often border on desperation in these moments because if the visit begins to wobble off course, and go in a direction I know intuitively will be unproductive, large clouds move in to obscure that energy of that pre visit hope.  The last doctor at the end of the visit said, ‘don’t worry we’re gonna get you better’, and at least for that moment it felt like an avalanche of boulders tumbling off my shoulders.

There’s the odd time when due to mysterious forces of nature I might begin to feel better just as I’m seated in the doctor’s little room.  Then I begin to scramble because I figure the doctor is going to sniff me out as a fraud who is overusing the system.  My own analysis of this phenomenon is that the adrenalin of the doctor/patient encounter acts as a narcotic that dulls the pain which causes all manner of second guessing and minimizing of symptoms.  It’s a rookie mistake to get blown off course by the easing of symptoms at that precise moment.

Still waiting, I hear nurses and doctors talking outside the office door as butterflies flap through my GI tract I wonder if he/she is about to enter.  Then the sound of the door opening goes off like someone cocking a shotgun and the doctor enters at a pace significantly faster than the one I’m on.  In those first 10 seconds all my senses are honed in on this healer.  Believe me if their certifications are framed on the wall I will have already given it a good looking over.  I quickly begin to sense what the rapport will be like, whether they will be helpful, and then yearn for that moment in which it becomes clear that they are going to listen and allow me to finish my sentences. 

Blasting past me through the door without eye contact, heading straight for her computer she says, ‘so what can I do for you?’  Well, for reasons that pass understanding that question rubs me the wrong way!  It shouldn’t.  I’m in a doctor’s office.  But it does.  I suppose it makes me feel like I’ve just driven into a mechanic shop and want the guy to check out a rattling in the engine.  Regardless, that first line is always the hardest.  Sputtering, very much unlike how I had rehearsed it and with astounding imprecision, I manage to say, ‘I’m not well’.  She lowers her forehead while looking at me for the first time, eyebrows rise slightly and with eyes struggling to find patience she nonverbally says, ‘that’s really good Glenn…now use your words please.’  How I wish it were as simple as having a sharp stake sticking outta my leg or a jellyfish stuck to my head.

Until my next appt…