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I don’t think I am telling any tales out of school when I say that men don’t like going to the doctor. I’m not saying that women do, it’s just that they don’t seem to have as much of a problem going as we males do. For us, there has to be something seriously wrong to get us to make an appointment, like a third arm growing out of our forehead.
I can literally go for years, many years, without seeing a doctor and be a happy camper. Again, I think I can speak for most men when I say that in this case, ignorance is bliss. We don’t want to know about it. Women don’t understand this mindset. Let’s just say that it is one in the long list of things that women attribute to men being the stupid beings that we are.
If you are married, and paying for medical insurance, there is only so long you can live in this state of ignorant bliss. Eventually, something comes along that forces the issue. It can be somebody close to you that gets sick, a news report on cholesterol, or a TV commercial about getting a colonoscopy. Once the seed is planted, you can bet that your better half will make sure that you are on the way to the doctor’s office.
In my case, it was fate that got me back. When I had my car accident a few weeks back I hit my head on the windshield. After a week and a half of a headache that wouldn’t go away my wife insisted that I go to the doctor. The thing was, we had changed insurance polices quite a while back and I hadn’t chosen a new doctor yet. To be honest, had it not been for the accident, I could have waited another couple of years.
What made this time different, then say the last 18 years, was that I was not going to an HMO; I was on a plan with a PPO. This meant that I could pick any doctor I wanted not just the ones on the HMO “list.” So to the Internet we went and found a doctor that looked good, and most importantly, geographically close. Dr. Dino Clarizio fit the bill and the appointment was made. Just the thought of going to a doctor’s office made my blood pressure rise along with my stress levels.
I went to Dr. C’s office with one thing in mind and that was my headache. Excedrin was having no effect and I just wanted something stronger. Having been in the HMO system for so long my vision of what happens at a doctor’s office was, shall we say, a bit tainted. The drill was always the same. They would take my blood pressure, tell me it was high, tell me to stop smoking, loose weight, ask me a battery of questions, write me a prescription for what I needed for the problem I was there for, and like a flash I was gone.
Dr. C’s drill started out the same way but he didn’t stop there. Because I was a “new patient” it turned into a complete physical. Uh oh, this wasn’t what I signed up for. After this much time not seeing a doctor, I was sure that he was going to find something wrong with me. I mean you can always find something wrong if you look hard enough, right? After all the poking and prodding I suddenly remembered what also was included with a complete physical, blood work.
All of you who read this column on a regular basis know that I dislike or hate a lot of things in this world. Well at the top of that list is NEEDLES. Unless some new form of drawing blood had been discovered since my last doctor’s visit I knew that it was just around the corner. My wife is a diabetic, and to this day, I have a difficult time watching her do her insulin injection. So as beads of sweat start forming on my forehead I braced myself for the grand finale of my visit.
I felt a little weak and abused as I finished getting dressed when Dr. C told me that my blood pressure was through the roof and that I was to start taking medication for it immediately. He wasn’t kidding about this as he was standing in front of me with a blood pressure pill and a glass of water. I was also to come back in less than a week and see where we would go from there. Wait a minute, all I came in for was a headache, what about that? He gave me some pills that he thought might work and perhaps he would be scheduling me for an MRI.
Fast forward through the week of stress worrying about my blood work to our next meeting. A week that, by the way, wasn’t headache free due to the fact that the pills he gave me didn’t do a damn thing. During our second little get together he informs me that my cholesterol is sky high and that’s not the good cholesterol. I will be going on medication for that immediately and that he would indeed be scheduling me for an MRI. As he is telling me this he produces a syringe, which I could swear was even bigger than the one he used last week, and informs me that he needs to run another test. At this point in time I inform him that if every time we see one another he sticks me with a needle, our newly formed relationship is not going to survive.
The one good thing about our last encounter was that he gave me a prescription for something that actually works on my headaches. It was a long way around the horn but at least we got there. As I sit waiting for more test results and my impending brain scan I can’t help thinking about all the reasons why I avoided doctors in the first place. Even though all I had was a headache I felt fine before going. I almost feel as though I was justified in my male paranoia about going to doctors.
If I can only shake this cold that I have had for the last week before I see Dr. C for my next follow up, I’ll be a happy camper, because lord knows how big the syringe for that test will be.
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