Give Worrying A Rest
The bathroom scale went to the dump several diets ago on the excuse it was defective because it always registered heavy. Practicing my own aversion therapy of “what you don’t see isn’t happening,” I never got around to replacing it.
Passing by the doctor’s office, I stopped in to see if my tighter waistband meant what it usually does. I also had to renew a prescription. What should have taken five minutes at the reception desk turned into a half-hour ambush in the inner sanctum.
Why is it that when you’re dying of flu or have a broken thumb it takes hours to see a physician, but when you don’t want one the doctor miraculously finds time for a spontaneous “little chat?”
“Did you get that mammogram I ordered last winter? Oh.”
“Have you been to the specialist who needs to oversee this prescription you want renewed? Why not?”
“I see you’ve had another birthday. Time to start checking your colon.”
“I didn’t get that report from your eye doctor you promised me. How come?”
On and on he went, riffling through my medical file, shaking his head at my dilatory behavior. Are you monitoring this? Did you follow up on that? To every question my response was an increasingly defensive “no.”
Doctors like professional backup. Who can blame them in this litigious society? When general practitioners aren’t sure about something they hand you off like a baton in a relay race to a specialist who charges $250 for a 15-minute consultation. The expert, barely getting your name straight, then “highly recommends” $1,000 worth of tests that the insurance company which pays only for sickness, not health, may or may not cover (for 43 million Americans, insurance isn’t even an option).
I’m increasingly at loggerheads with doctors over this carpet-bombing approach to medicine. I think blanket testing lets doctors off the diagnostic hook. Last year Americans spent a trillion dollars on health care. By 2008, that figure is expected to double. A lot of that money will be paid for tests that aren’t necessary.
If, every time I got an ache or a burp, I had “exploratory” lab work for conditions that might conceivably kill me, I’d wind up spending half my life and most of my money running from MRI to colonoscopy, glaucoma exam to mammogram, bone density test to Pap smear. I could even go to a Los Angeles clinic and, without exhibiting a symptom of illness, have a full-body CT scan for about $800, giving new meaning to the phrase “more money than brains.”
The health care industry admonishes us that taking precautions is prudent. But this isn’t a perfect world and we aren’t going to live forever. Knowing with human certainty that “something’s gonna get you,” how many medical tests are driven by industry greed preying on patient paranoia? How many are truly necessary vs. frivolous, especially when radiation is involved?
I went into the doctor’s office feeling fine. I came out worried, stressed and sick following his diagnosis that I was being irresponsible.
Two aspirins later, I admitted he was right to remind me of my tardy mammogram. Ditto the specialist on the prescription. But as for the rest of it, common sense must prevail as I factor in symptoms, cost and other family members’ needs to prioritize what I’m going to buy as a medical consumer.
Not once did my doctor mention holistic, homeopathic, Oriental and acupuncture approaches to healing. Where were the words nutrition, fitness and exercise? It’s up to me to stay trim, eat right, live moderately, know my own body. If I feel good, I’m not going shopping for trouble.