November 13, 2004

• Here's what it's like to go to the doctor with an earache if you're me:

  First, find a place. I ended up going to PacMed for two reasons: 1) I had been a patient there, and they'd have my records, and I wouldn't be a new patient. 2) They were open, and I got an appointment for an hour and a half after I hung up the phone.

  Second: Prepare mentally. Is my blood sugar low? Have I had enough to eat? Remind myself that these people are on my side.

  Third: Check-in, waiting room, flourescent lights (when will they learn?), other people looking sick, waiting in chairs, trying to be non-chalant, but they're as nervous as I am. Manage, somehow, to maintain a positive attitude, thinking about how I got this appointment so instantaneously, how easygoing the appointment-maker on the phone had been, how I had just eaten lunch and I was feeling pretty good...

  Except, they didn't have my records. They couldn't find my chart. The receptionist explains that they throw out that information after a certain time period... Great. She hands me a medical history form to fill out.

  I start to fill it out, and decide not to. I have a freaking earache. How honest do I have to be about my medical past to get treated for an earache? I get as far as my name and stuff like how many beers a week I drink.

  Fourth: The nurse. She guides me to the exam room, more flourescent lights, she asks me about the earache. She's got that easygoing-but-efficient nurse patter thing going on. She tells me to 'hop up and get on the scale,' and I literally hop. She takes it as a joke, but I know it's a bad sign: I didn't mean to make a joke about it. I'm being overly-literal, and it's a sign I'm stressed. But it's good that she's laughing about it. Later on, she takes my pulse, and says, "Why am I getting two pulses?" It has to do with the way she's holding my arm up. She puts my arm on my lap and proceeds. For some reason I want to joke some more: "I should have told you: I have three hearts. So it's kind of strange that you only got two pulses." She looks at me. A long moment passes. I tell her: "It was a joke." "OH!!"

  Fifth: The doctor. I wait a while for the doctor. She comes in and introduces herself. She sees my medical history form, unfilled, sits down, and immediately begins to ask me the questions for the form. Being hyperliteral means that you simply can't not answer a question. It means not being very good at interjecting a new topic into a conversation. It means that if the doctor authority figure starts asking you about hospitalizations when you were a child, you simply have no choice but tell her, and tell her the whole truth.

  So I told her. In my mind, I thought: Some of it might be relevant, but most of it wouldn't be. As a point of reference, I had already diagnosed myself using the internet, and I was dead on (so to speak). I didn't need to know that I had been in the hospital at age 5 with head trauma to figure it out. And these assholes are going to throw it all away before I come back next time anyway, so there's only one reason that I'm sitting here being dragged through the muck of my elaborate and futile medical history: She's asking. She doesn't know that this is what it amounts to, but the Tyrrany Of The Unfilled Form is a strong motivator.

  Finally, however, when she asked: "What educational level did you achieve? High school? College?" I finally blurted out, "This is why I hate going to doctors." I welled up and the frustration and assorted undifferentiated rage that had built up came out as snot and tears. She was very good. She said: "You don't have to answer any of this if you don't want to," as a way to be nice (and remove herself from responsibility), but ended up making the issue all that more idiotic. If I don't have to answer any of this shit, why are you asking it, especially if it'll all get thrown away in three years? All of these things occurred to me, but because I was in a new environment talking to someone I'd never met before, my only reaction was to sit there like a crying child.

  Sixth: The awkward attempts by the doctor to get me to a psychiatrist. This happens without fail on doctor visits, because that cathartic moment happens without fail, too. I'd tell her that I'm upset as a result of the neurological condition I just told you about as part of my medical history, and because your clinic's record-keeping system is bullshit, not because I'm in need of hand-holding and Prozac.. if I were capable. But I'm not. No doubt she thinks there's some traumatic thing associated with high school graduation that made me cry when she mentioned it. And I'm thinking this while I manage to tell her, "No, I don't need a shrink. Just help me get my ear fixed up and then I can go on with my life."

  Seventh: The actual examination. Pokes and prods, stick things in ears, stethoscope, etc. Hand me three prescriptions for allergy medications to clear out my sinuses. I ask: "Now, I came in here with an ear infection..." She explains that it's not common to prescribe antibiotics for otitis media (my internet diagnosis), and I'll just have to let it drain and heal itself.

  So here I am with an ear still full of fluid despite $150 worth of allergy medications and having done one of the most stressful things that exists for me: Going to the doctor. Fucking useless.

  • 4:29 pm
  • 8 Comments