I hate Doctor appointments

??? Why? Did you not have awesome and fun pediatricians? I don't understand people who hate the dentist, either, but then I've never had a cavity.

My current problem is I hate picking a PCP every six months when I move. Wah wah wah.

You're not crazy, LF, but your screen name would suggest otherwise. :-)

I don't dislike going to the dentist or doctor either. I have to go for surgery this afternoon (something very minor). It's not pleasant, but not extremely unpleasant, so I'm OK.

Good luck, LF.

So it may still be in my head...off to the Internal Medicine guy!

I don't like doctor's appointments because the clinic at my university is ARTARDED! If it's not mono or Strep, they're confused and it's your head. I don't have a family doctor and none are accepting patients in my city. Welcome to Ontario Health Care. Woo.

So socialized medicine is to blame! I should have known. Or at least guessed.

I hope everything turns out okay, (((LF))).



Although I actually like both my doctor and dentist I still dislike visiting them. It's the invasion of privacy that bugs me. Heck it's only in the past few years that I've learned to enjoy the giving and receiving of hugs!

The mister, of course, is the exception to the rule.

I'm the same way, deborah. I dislike being touched by people other than the boy. That's actually how I knew the last two boys I dated weren't going to work out, when I didn't want them hugging me anymore.

Gee, I didn't read all of Lori's comment, I hope everything goes easy-peasy today!

I hate going to the doctor, too. I get a condescending pat on the head every single time even when there's something clearly wrong. Occasionally I get completely and blatantly wrong information and when they figure it out they don't even apologize.

PLUS, working with insurance as I do, I am way too aware of how a casual, idiotic notation will screw a person up for years and years afterwards. And a lot of times they write stuff in there that's just straight up nonsense, but they clearly disliked the person so they add things like extraneous, unsubstantiated accusations of illegal drug use (nevermind that the labs came out clean- it's written the the doctor's notes so it MUST be true!) So I'm extra paranoid about that, too.

And LF- my friend, who goes to Kaiser, (as do I) gets the same "it's in your head" BS you get. Lightheaded and irritable after you exercise for 2 hours in the morning? You must need therapy! (No, you must need breakfast!) Argh!!!!

You must need therapy! (No, you must need breakfast!)

That just made me laugh. A lot. Partly because I've been feeling lately that my main job as a counselor is tell people to eat, sleep, and exercise. A 16-year-old boy whose mother refuses to let him leave the house to play sports or hang out with friends does not, in fact, have ADD, he's just bored out of his mind.

I like my current doctor, but I loathed my student health doctors back in the day. I will never forget the one that told me it would serve me right if my pregnancy test was positive because I was probably a typical student who spent my birth control money on alcohol. Arsehole.

Oh, gaspode, that's just wroooooong.

Haha gaspode, that's so perfect.

I went to a therapist in college who said to come back with real problems. Another friend was told her problems were too big to deal with, and yet another's therapist couldn't get over the fact that my friend's parents were not only not married and never had been, but never intended to be. THAT must have been the root of all my friend's problems. Also: they weren't Christian.

Oh- and my college ob/gyn claimed that because the birth control I was on didn't make HER moody, it couldn't be making me moody either. (I went off it and then I was fine.)

Gradually it dawned on me that the university system doesn't attract the best and the brightest.

(Actually, the ob/gyn I just ended up seeing at Kaiser said the same thing to me about another patient. "She thinks her irritability is because of the birth control I prescribed but I told her she should just needed counselling." Yi!)

Oh, yes. University health care:

The time I was told I shouldn't even be having sex as a college student when I asked if my birth control pills could be giving me headaches.

The time a nurse told me on the phone my backache was due to stress instead of the UTI because "It couldn't have gotten to your kidneys that fast." I didn't listen to her, instead going in to emergency care -- sure enough, that kidney infection was worth a week out of school and free codeine if I'd have wanted it.

When I reported said nurse above, she later retaliated by waltzing into the room while I was waiting for the doctor, exclaiming that I "wasn't covered up enough", and then tugging my paper gown OFF me. Yes, I was sexually harassed by a University health nurse.

These stories are so horrible that they are making me laugh.

Our university health services were rather notorious for throwing sleeping pills at any student reporting depression, because there tended to be at least a two-week wait for psych services and no one thought to train anyone else in how "I'm really stressed out and overwhelmed and unhappy and maybe thinking of killing myself" and "Here, have a bunch of pills on which you could overdose" perhaps don't really mix so well.

Holy crap. Some of these doctors should never have been licensed.

I had one great university health care doctor--she had studied under my granddad and gave me her home number when I was having problems with substance abuse. I don't even think this was because of the family connection--she told me one of her kids had had the same problem and so she wanted to help any way she could. She also prescribed (not to me but to a friend) decent painkillers for her awful, crippling cramps, saying that it was appalling in this day and age that women were expected to just put up with the pain no matter how bad it got. In stark contrast was the doctor who blamed every illness on smoking, without doing any kind of examination. I was getting dizzy spells (which were not unrelated to a brief experiment with vegetarianism that didn't include a properly balanced diet), which she, of course, blamed on smoking. I swear to god that if you went in with a broken leg she would somehow link it to smoking.

ummm it occurs to me belatedly, as always, that maybe this wasn't the best time to pull out bad doctor stories. How'd it go, LF?

I really like my family doctor. I've been seeing him since I was 8 or something. (When my first doctor died. I loved that guy, too!) I don't have a problem with doctors. My blood pressure does go up when I know they're going to check it...but that's just me being a freak and has nothing to do with the doctor. He is a-ok and cracks me up.

I hate going to the dentist, though. I know it's because of a couple things that happened when I had braces (a couple issues with hardware that really had nothing to do with me...I just really hated how the issues were dealt with by my orthodontist.) I freak out when I know I've got to go to the dentist. UGH! I am super hyper vigilant about taking care of my teeth because of my phobia ...so it's not all bad!

Hee, fbk, that reminds me of a good doctor story. My current GP is great, and his is a teaching practice, so sometimes I get an intern instead. I went in for a checkup, and the intern said, "Before I take your blood pressure, I need to know: do doctors make you nervous?"

"Hey, my dad's a doctor, my granddad was a doctor, my great-granddad was a doctor."

"Okay, so we've established that doctors make you nervous."

I think he'll do just fine.

elizard, ha!

And yes, LF, I hope that all the bad doctor stories make you appreciate how good your own doctor's visit was, and do not instead make you go running from the room while swearing off Western medicine forever!

It went fine but a bunch of symptoms and "normal" bloodwork means I'm off to see an Internal Medicine guy. Currently waiting on an appointment. It looks like hypothyroidism but my TSH is 1.6 and my T3/T4 something was "normal" (he told me the number but I think I misheard him - thought I heard 13 but that would be far from normal I think). Anyways, he's interested to find out what could be causing my symptoms. THis is the first doctor at this clinic that I haven't wanted to strangle and I almost cried with joy at having him not say it was stress and that I just need to exercise more and eat better. Seriously almost cried.

yay LF! So nice not to get a patronizing pat on the head. You should email him and tell him that.